Yes, I am writing a blog entry after quite some time. What prompted me to write is an interesting encounter or rather conversation I had this Saturday night with a Mumbai auto-rickshaw driver. I was coming back from a dinner, and had taken this auto from the station to my place, it was around 11 in the night. Our place is very close to Bal Thackeray’s, and as we passed his place, we saw a mini-congregation of TV reporters and cameramen outside, which had actually been a feature last few days, owing to the sudden increase in importance of politics and consequently our high profile politicians due to the trust vote facing the government.
The rickshaw driver wondered aloud what the fuss was all about, and politics being one of my favorite topics (we Bongs love to discuss politics, you see!), I launched into a full-fledged gyan session about the current Indian political scenario, the impending fall-outs of the trust vote, and so on. The driver was listening quite attentively, and once we reached our place, asked me if I have some time. Of course, I was totally vella, and sensing he wanted to talk about the topic, couldn’t resist it. He parked the auto at one side, and we, an unlikely discussion pair of an auto-rickshaw driver and a pseudo-intellectual wannabe, started discussing one of the most discussed national topics- Indian politics.
To my surprise, I found him to be very sensible and with strong views on Indian politics. He hailed from Uttar Pradesh, the state with the highest number of MPs in Lok Sabha, I guess that had an effect on his interest. We covered the full range- him talking about Rajiv Gandhi- his favorite politician, about how anyone who tries to do good work in politics either ends up dead or out of reckoning, to the dirty divisive politics being played by some of our current politicians. He had strong views on the recent attacks on North Indians in Mumbai, and how politicians are using the common people to foment hatred and thus keep themselves from losing political relevance.
We talked for about half an hour, during which we straddled the murky political world and the socio-economic issues as well, and we established a connect as many of our views matched. We parted with the decision that it’s the responsibility of people who understand and realize the wrongs that are perpetrated to try and spread the awareness among people, and when he mentioned he would try and do this in his own and nearby villages in U.P. and that he would approach the local councilor with the peoples issues and their stated support, I felt a sense of comfort, a sense that as long as there are some people like him in our villages and interiors, we need not worry.
Moral of the story- Sometimes you can have the most interesting conversations in the most unexpected places!!
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Attitude is everything- is it??
“Attitude is everything”. How often have we heard the above cliché (or so we believe it is), from teachers, parents, friends, success cookbooks, management gurus, so on and so forth? Remember that forward, which said that “attitude” is the only word in English the sum of whose alphabets’ position values adds up to 100?
Bah, you say, or most of us do, another one of those pseudo-intellectual discussions which lead to nowhere, how does attitude help me get rid of my problematic boss? Or my griping about being made to slave and being paid peanuts, relatively speaking? Or my girlfriend who never seems to understand my point of view? Or my potential in-laws who seem hell bent on marrying their daughter off to any Tom, Dick or Harry in this universe but me?
Well, the fact is that attitude, or for that matter, nothing will rid us of the above problems. Nothing can, because more often than not, its us where the problems start with. Trust me, this is not as part of any success cook-book, but something that I have realized over time.
By now you must be wondering, why this sermon, that too from someone who cannot lay claim to any level of success apart from somehow getting into a premier B-school and managing to come out of it unscathed? Well the fact of the matter is somehow I have been made to think a bit of late, due to whatever reasons, and just wanted to share my thoughts with whoever reads this. I wont deny it, I was reading this book “You can win” by Shiv Khera, and while I have no intention of promoting the book in this forum (no, I am not getting paid by him nor is he offering the hand of his beautiful daughter to me in marriage!), the first chapter itself set me thinking, and thus, by extension, typing this.
There is no success cook-book, no guarantee of instant success, if there would be then life would be so much easier. But the fact is that when you read such a book, you get to spend some time with yourself, and some times, also open some closed windows of our minds. Yeah, we interact a lot with people throughout the day, but with ourselves? No we don’t usually do that. Interacting with yourself, this guy must be a loony bin, you must be thinking! Well, what I mean by that is we all live with certain prejudices, and that includes a certain notion about ourselves, which sometimes makes it difficult to judge ourselves impartially.
But it helps, from time-to-time, to have these conversations with ourselves, where we are honest and where we try and open the windows of our minds. It helps us to know ourselves better, and trust me, I have realized, a lot of issues we create are because of the way we think, and if a little bit of change in that helps making our lives better and more successful, then why not?
Don’t know if this will help me, yet to find that out, don’t even know if I can sustain this looking inward thing, but would be glad to know anyone’s comments on this.
Cheers!
Bah, you say, or most of us do, another one of those pseudo-intellectual discussions which lead to nowhere, how does attitude help me get rid of my problematic boss? Or my griping about being made to slave and being paid peanuts, relatively speaking? Or my girlfriend who never seems to understand my point of view? Or my potential in-laws who seem hell bent on marrying their daughter off to any Tom, Dick or Harry in this universe but me?
Well, the fact is that attitude, or for that matter, nothing will rid us of the above problems. Nothing can, because more often than not, its us where the problems start with. Trust me, this is not as part of any success cook-book, but something that I have realized over time.
By now you must be wondering, why this sermon, that too from someone who cannot lay claim to any level of success apart from somehow getting into a premier B-school and managing to come out of it unscathed? Well the fact of the matter is somehow I have been made to think a bit of late, due to whatever reasons, and just wanted to share my thoughts with whoever reads this. I wont deny it, I was reading this book “You can win” by Shiv Khera, and while I have no intention of promoting the book in this forum (no, I am not getting paid by him nor is he offering the hand of his beautiful daughter to me in marriage!), the first chapter itself set me thinking, and thus, by extension, typing this.
There is no success cook-book, no guarantee of instant success, if there would be then life would be so much easier. But the fact is that when you read such a book, you get to spend some time with yourself, and some times, also open some closed windows of our minds. Yeah, we interact a lot with people throughout the day, but with ourselves? No we don’t usually do that. Interacting with yourself, this guy must be a loony bin, you must be thinking! Well, what I mean by that is we all live with certain prejudices, and that includes a certain notion about ourselves, which sometimes makes it difficult to judge ourselves impartially.
But it helps, from time-to-time, to have these conversations with ourselves, where we are honest and where we try and open the windows of our minds. It helps us to know ourselves better, and trust me, I have realized, a lot of issues we create are because of the way we think, and if a little bit of change in that helps making our lives better and more successful, then why not?
Don’t know if this will help me, yet to find that out, don’t even know if I can sustain this looking inward thing, but would be glad to know anyone’s comments on this.
Cheers!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
And Dhoni goes to....
And Dhoni goes to.......Chennai!!(slam!)
And thus was ushered in a new era in cricket, or so it seems!! Well, love it, hate it, but the fat cash cows of BCCI have made sure that no one on this earth remotely interested in cricket will be able to ignore whats going on in IPL.
Every expert worth his salt has a view on the recent happenings, and there is no doubt whatsoever that the world of cricket has been shaken up from its very roots. Cricket, since its inception, has been a slow game compared to its peers like football and hockey, infinitely faster and more physically demanding. Perhaps in keeping pace with that, even ICC has generally been a rather slow, geriatric and reactive kind of a body, mostly manned by some old men wiht stubborn mindsets, and it takes, from time to time, a revolution of the sorts of Kerry Packer and now, the IPL to shake it out of its slumber, and redefine the rules of the game, so to say.
I'm by no means suggesting that IPL is the panacea that will change everything for the better, it comes with its own downfalls, like putting further strain on the already bloated international calendar, forcing(sometimes) players to choose between city(IPL) and country, however there is no missing the fact that there is already a buzz that has been created around the cricketing world, and everyone is waiting with bated breath to see what course the events take.
Indeed, images of an alien-looking SRK or glam doll Preity Zinta lapping up Gilchrist and Dhoni like they were blue-chip stocks in a bullish market (its difficult to miss the India connection here) has taken commoditisation of cricketers to a new level, hitherto unforeseen or unheard of, and I cant help but feel that there would be a heartburn or tw among retired greats of he game seeing the obscene amounts of money the players are being bought for.
I was reading an interesting article by Allan Border about how India has too much say in world cricket at the moment, and how we are acting like 'imperial' rulers (couldnt help but chuckle at this:), and there will be a lot written about and spoken about this entire episode, but one thig can be said for certain, cricket as we knew it, will never be the same again. For better or for worse, only time will tell!
So till then, pass the popcorn, and start the show!
And thus was ushered in a new era in cricket, or so it seems!! Well, love it, hate it, but the fat cash cows of BCCI have made sure that no one on this earth remotely interested in cricket will be able to ignore whats going on in IPL.
Every expert worth his salt has a view on the recent happenings, and there is no doubt whatsoever that the world of cricket has been shaken up from its very roots. Cricket, since its inception, has been a slow game compared to its peers like football and hockey, infinitely faster and more physically demanding. Perhaps in keeping pace with that, even ICC has generally been a rather slow, geriatric and reactive kind of a body, mostly manned by some old men wiht stubborn mindsets, and it takes, from time to time, a revolution of the sorts of Kerry Packer and now, the IPL to shake it out of its slumber, and redefine the rules of the game, so to say.
I'm by no means suggesting that IPL is the panacea that will change everything for the better, it comes with its own downfalls, like putting further strain on the already bloated international calendar, forcing(sometimes) players to choose between city(IPL) and country, however there is no missing the fact that there is already a buzz that has been created around the cricketing world, and everyone is waiting with bated breath to see what course the events take.
Indeed, images of an alien-looking SRK or glam doll Preity Zinta lapping up Gilchrist and Dhoni like they were blue-chip stocks in a bullish market (its difficult to miss the India connection here) has taken commoditisation of cricketers to a new level, hitherto unforeseen or unheard of, and I cant help but feel that there would be a heartburn or tw among retired greats of he game seeing the obscene amounts of money the players are being bought for.
I was reading an interesting article by Allan Border about how India has too much say in world cricket at the moment, and how we are acting like 'imperial' rulers (couldnt help but chuckle at this:), and there will be a lot written about and spoken about this entire episode, but one thig can be said for certain, cricket as we knew it, will never be the same again. For better or for worse, only time will tell!
So till then, pass the popcorn, and start the show!
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Games we play!
I had thought of writing a blog many times, once I had even started one, but somehow the enthusiasm didn’t last. But today, when after coming back from office, I was seated in front of the television, greeted by visuals of some vandals beating up people owing to regional sentiments, and most of all, people playing dirty politics and using it to foment poison in the minds of followers, I really thought restarting this blog could be the best way to give vent to my anger and frustration at all this.
These are dangerous games being played, no doubts about that, and poisoning the minds of the common man is nothing short of a heinous crime being committed here. The more we advance as a nation towards world dominance and superpower status, the more we are given towards sensationalisation and dramatization of smaller issues on the one hand, and sheer public apathy towards more critical issues on the other. Sample these news items over the past few days: divisive politics at its best (or worst) in Maharashtra, an alleged kidney kingpin who reportedly carried on his business for a long time with the connivance of the police, one of our brightest young tennis stars Sania being forced to think of not playing in her own country because of some hyper-imaginative elements.
Can you see a trend in all this? All this happening not in the rural areas, no, but in the heart of some of our major and supposedly most progressive cities. So what is the issue? Where does the problem lie?
A country is only as good or bad as its people, and the way we react to situations often defines us and our country. We Indians have always been apathetic by nature, it really doesn’t bother us if something wrong is going on around us, the common mentality being, as long as I don’t get affected, its ok. But the problem is, its not ok. It is this very apathy that is so often taken advantage of, and before we realize, we would be the ones getting affected as well. It’s a dangerous mindset to have, this i- me- myself thing, because if everyone starts thinking like that, can we imagine what our society is gonna be like?
Nothing ever changes, nothing ever will, that’s what we always tell ourselves, right? And why do we need anything to change, we all have enough issues of our own- at our workplace, with our girlfriends/ boyfriends, parents and many more- the sweaty polluted drive to work, the irritating colleague, I could go on and on. But in the midst of all this, we just need to ask ourselves once: are we really happy and satisfied at being so apathetic to everything? At shrugging our shoulders to everything? I bet the answer would be in the negative, well, at least I hope it will be!
That day some one of our generation mentioned to me she doesn’t want to vote, because whoever comes to power would be the same. But tell me honestly guys, how will someone good ever come to power if we don’t cast our votes at all?
Anyways, I am not a social reformer, and even I am trying to find answers to many questions life is posing currently, but I did feel very strongly seeing whats happening, and that’s why this long tirade! All I want to say is, there are many things that are good with our country, and there are things that can be better, and it is nobody but us who can make them better. And that I am sure of!
These are dangerous games being played, no doubts about that, and poisoning the minds of the common man is nothing short of a heinous crime being committed here. The more we advance as a nation towards world dominance and superpower status, the more we are given towards sensationalisation and dramatization of smaller issues on the one hand, and sheer public apathy towards more critical issues on the other. Sample these news items over the past few days: divisive politics at its best (or worst) in Maharashtra, an alleged kidney kingpin who reportedly carried on his business for a long time with the connivance of the police, one of our brightest young tennis stars Sania being forced to think of not playing in her own country because of some hyper-imaginative elements.
Can you see a trend in all this? All this happening not in the rural areas, no, but in the heart of some of our major and supposedly most progressive cities. So what is the issue? Where does the problem lie?
A country is only as good or bad as its people, and the way we react to situations often defines us and our country. We Indians have always been apathetic by nature, it really doesn’t bother us if something wrong is going on around us, the common mentality being, as long as I don’t get affected, its ok. But the problem is, its not ok. It is this very apathy that is so often taken advantage of, and before we realize, we would be the ones getting affected as well. It’s a dangerous mindset to have, this i- me- myself thing, because if everyone starts thinking like that, can we imagine what our society is gonna be like?
Nothing ever changes, nothing ever will, that’s what we always tell ourselves, right? And why do we need anything to change, we all have enough issues of our own- at our workplace, with our girlfriends/ boyfriends, parents and many more- the sweaty polluted drive to work, the irritating colleague, I could go on and on. But in the midst of all this, we just need to ask ourselves once: are we really happy and satisfied at being so apathetic to everything? At shrugging our shoulders to everything? I bet the answer would be in the negative, well, at least I hope it will be!
That day some one of our generation mentioned to me she doesn’t want to vote, because whoever comes to power would be the same. But tell me honestly guys, how will someone good ever come to power if we don’t cast our votes at all?
Anyways, I am not a social reformer, and even I am trying to find answers to many questions life is posing currently, but I did feel very strongly seeing whats happening, and that’s why this long tirade! All I want to say is, there are many things that are good with our country, and there are things that can be better, and it is nobody but us who can make them better. And that I am sure of!
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