Did I Win?

Read an interesting news article recently - the list of top failed countries. Pakistan as one of the top failed counties in the world. The first reaction to the news is a subtle happiness, for some reason that I don’t know.

May be this is the success of all the news hungry media/politicians and the so-called patriotic movies that stole a part of my hard (not really) earned money. For whatever reason, this country is my enemy and the first reaction to the news that it is in the list of failed countries is my victory, even though I have no role to play in its success or failure.

And then when I talked to few of my friends about this news, they too share the same happiness. So I am not the only one who is thinking iniquitous

A little more research on the same topic suggested that few other countries – Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh are also in the top of the list. God all our neighbors failed. Now is this a good sign. May be not.

And then I am confused, not because I have to rule India and talk to all these countries every week and day, but because of the weird correlation that came to my mind – the competitiveness in me. And I think all of us at different levels; share this attitude – fervor to win. And along with it comes this mysterious happiness on others failure, if we consider them as competition.

It’s more like this – all the while you struggle to reach the top. But when you succeed to reach there, then it will become all the more difficult to celebrate it, because you might have lost friends in the journey who would otherwise cheer you. And then you will keep wondering why you are not on cloud 7 at-least if not 9 at your victory.

Well it is not as worse too, but sometimes, a little exaggeration is required for your eyes to see the truth. But seriously, many a times the concept of victory looks dappled – especially if it comes because of other party’s failure. The only thing that can keep your sole at bay is the conviction that you played fair.

eNjoy,
Morus

With the Present - one more time

“It's already late. The traffic of the outer ring road will be insane. And the 3 signals! I am surely to miss the train.” This used to be part of the travel packages almost all the time. Well, you can read that almost as certainly.

But this time it is a little different. Letting 3 buses go at 1 AM, drinking the tea from the platform vendor is not something that I generally do. Just to be transparent to my usual self I chose these reasons - the first bus was crowded, the seats of the second bus were not good and the conductor of the third bus was not shaved properly.

While these reasons will not satisfy my usual self that has mastered the world of reasoning, today I choose to enjoy my journey.
No advance booking, no enquiries of the routes. But this time, the time is spent on all the important unimportant things like copying all the new songs to iPod, thinking about the book to read on the journey.

Part of the excitement is that I am going into the deeper parts of Karnataka to spend time with my dad - the same place that my dad took me when I was 2 feet tall. Now both my Kannada knowledge and my height grew alike (meaning not enough). Nevertheless I can understand if not talk a little more Kannada now.

It feels great to set your foot in a place that you know nothing about - nothing but the fact that you have been there in some distant past.
Yo man! Life is long. (Or I am old!)

This feeling is close to what I used to have back then - the distant past. The magnetic chessboard was all that I cared about and some company to play and loose the game against me, watching the bright round light of the coramandel express.

I think the similarity is that I am living in the present - in both the cases.

Of course it is true that even if I take bike rides, I will reach the 180 odd kilometers by tomorrow morning. But the point I am trying to make here is that I generally loose the charm in life because I am more concerned about the uncertainty of the future, taking it for granted that the present that has not gone wrong is in fact a stage for celebration. (Err, curse my English for yet another long sentence!)

Let me leave you with this thought -
Did you ever have this urge of forwarding all the songs in your play list expecting the next song to be better; while all of them were in-fact the songs chosen by you and your favourites. I have it often - more so when I’m psyched. But now I've been using iPod only to write this blog, enjoying all the songs in my play list.

eNjoy,
Morus

What managers expect...

Am a lil busy guys, these days.. Will catch up with you soon.. and will be something big this time...
(not getting married, of all the things)

meanwhile, dont want you guys to miss the best appraisal fwd mail i got....

What managers expect.... (feel free to use it in your self appraisals, short term/long term goals). A picture is worth 1000 words, if not more :P

It is not my story

Refer to the ‘Wattha Hell Series: The introduction'

It is not my story

If not for that not, the above sentence is heard a lot these days from the India’s best selling author Chetan Bhagat hereinafter called CB. The term of CB means and includes his respective names, nicknames, pen names and extra hyped publicity. (if you want to know more about the controversy, this is your hot stop)
My interest in the topic this time – for a change is not because it managed to reach the top of the crap news that Bangalore Times sells. But because I hold high regards for both the parties involved in the controversy. I am a big fan of direction/plot/screen play of the Munna Bahi series (and 3 idiots just took that regard to the new level), and the other guy for his speeches and columns (I personally feel that his books are crap)

I read this on CB’s blog "I don’t need anything. Even if I have no more movies made on my stories or nobody wants to read my books and columns, I’ll happily join ISKCON and dedicate my life to Krishna. But I will not shy away from the truth – ever." and I felt, what a guy – all the logic in his blog is unquestionable! India needs politicians like him. And then thought about it for a while and felt, what a crap – no surprise if he becomes a politician soon. If this guy talks so much of logic now, what stopped him from using a pitch of it during his involvement in the whole project?

Well, but let’s not take things too seriously. These guys - both CB and 3 idiots team are doing their job – to keep people entertained and give media a bone to bite.
From his blog, looks like CB (along with his fans) has moved on, without getting any of the credits - for what he fought. But what he got is a percentage increase in this fan following, increase in sales of his book and his popularity. I was doing a Google search for some “check” and when I typed “che”, it suggested chetan bhagat (while chess. check, cheap all start with che). Look at his whuffie bank stats for a visual clue of that he achieved – popularity. His books are there for 5 years and he is aleady FAMOUS. But the stats say differently. ( i mean not just this analytics bit, but how often did you hear him in the media pannel discussions before this issue?)




“Read my book, watch the movie – and then you decide” is what he has to say. In the gusto of being a judge, looks like junta are doing both – reading book and watching movie. The sales of his books have been shot up by 30% apparently and 3 idiots movie is crossing breaching all the box office records.
I’ll not be hesitant to believe any rumor saying that this is a self-created melodrama – after all he is an IIM alumni and ex-Investment Banker, who has to now live solely on writings.

By the way, if CB gets his due credit for the movie - will the title be changed to 4 idiots?

eNjoy,
Morus
P.S 1: Since I borrowed most of his dialogues (not sure of the percentage), not to create any controversy, I am giving this post’s credits to CB (that too before any other end rolls)
P.S 2: Did not include 3idiots team, as they don’t take this credits funda seriously

Happy New Year!

Let me start this blog and the year with my status message on IM

History will remember 2009 as the year of slowdown... but lets forget it while we are marching into 2010... Happy New Year

I just closed the 67 open browsers in firefox, safari, and sea monkey and quit all of them before I opened this window to pen down this post.

The 30 minutes rain drive back home locked me at home for the remaining part of the day (not that I had plans otherwise). So decided to take a step back and plan on how I will welcome the New Year now that partying is ruled out.

Not a difficult task at all, looking at my room that was like the Xerox store - full of papers and the white marble floor self decorated with the dust that got accumulated for ages.
Definitely I needed to clear this mess before I plan of my welcome to the New Year.
But before that there are other things that I had to address in the list of my personal mess, like my hair (that falls more than it grows), that needed a haircut for more than a ... (don’t even remember for how long) and by the time I am done with these basic un- screwing up, I realized there is a little time left to plan or execute anything.

But then, when the clock stuck 12 and 2009 mentally departed from my mind I needed no more thinking or planning about this welcome party! I am not partying, not even watching TV exclusive New Year realty shows (that sucks anyways). But I liked this, conscious effort to clear the mess of the past and welcoming the future with a clean board to write upon. Closing these 67 tabs was one such effort.

And that in itself filled me with energy that was long concealed in the pretest of busy life!

For those of you, for whom occasions like New Year are just another day, try this – just try to complete something(s) that is (are) long pending and just wait for it to come. You are sure to make it a special day!

Stay tuned… a lot is to come into this space in 2010

Happy New Year!

eNjoy,

Morus

P.S: Just got myself a pen name – Morus (not sure how long it’ll stay though)

Only they didn’t

I am up to a lot of things these days, and to be frank all of them are quite urgent to handle and very important for me.
I would have been surprised if I managed all of them… even decently sound. But the present circumstance, I definitely am not surprising myself. Well… partly because I’ve been bought into the fact that I cannot handle all of them effectively.

One of them is my Guitar. This is my second attempt to learn Guitar, and I believe that I am far better this time than my first attempt. But that’s where I stopped. Not able to go any further I’ve stopped going to classes for almost a month. That is the equal amount of time that I have actually gone to the classes. One of my reasons was that I would get time to practice my entire backlog if I had time to practice. I am proving myself wrong till now.

Hmmm, this is not one of those confession stuffs. I am not even complaining, but this is what came to my mind when I read this today:
“The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in mind. Folks seem to have just landed in them. But I expect they had lot of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those that just went on” Sam Gamgee chatting with his master Frodo in The Lord Of The Rings. If a good sentence can change a life, I don’t need anything more inspiring than this.

How much of wisdom can these old tales give you? But only, if you care to open your ears and listen. Not everything is relevant to what I am. I definitely am not one of those who want to go out and try adventures. But surely all the people/characters in the famous stories are remembered because they didn’t turn back at lot of chances that would have come to them. And here we live as their legacy. And for those who did, they just never mattered… like many others.
Well… I don’t know what I really would do this time, but here I have a chance to turn back (as always).

Allz for good

A trip to my native was not a very rosy one this time. This post is certainly not to bother you with them, as those grievances are my private treasure. Weird ways to encourage children do dads’ possess- one such was the archaic tales that they tell us. This one particularly looked too simple to be interesting, but made a lot of sense when I think about it later.

Long ago when the world was relaxed, was a king who ruled not so prominent province. He has a minister whom he is very close to, and took his counsel for almost everything he does. Very encouraging he was to the king, and helped him keep his calm in the times of need. One sentence he used to advice too often that it almost became gibberish in that kingdom “allz for good”. Whenever the king was discontented with anything, the minster would tell this to console and encourage his king.

Like any other royal blood of his time, the king liked hunting a lot. He used to go on hunting very frequently. And he used to fancy the rare animals that fell for his arrow. The horns of the antlered deer that hung in his room were his souvenir of pride. In one of those hunting outings, he was upset that he could not fell any wild animal. The very few that he spotted also managed to escape successfully. Thanks to all the professional hunters, the animals in that forest either perished and the survived fittest are now too tactful for king's hunt. Suddenly the king gave a sudden shrill of agony. Blood was all on his chariot by the time he realized that an arrow stuck to his thumb, and removed it. Probably some hunter shot at him, attracted by the sound he made, or it could be one of his foes, no one ever knows.
The king rushed to his palace, where the imperial docs treated the hand and his pain. But the thumb has to be removed. The king was very upset that he can no longer hunt, and that in it qualifies the loss of thumb as the greatest disability. He was very much wretched, when he was telling his minster of the disaster.

The minister felt pity of the king, and advised him all the political stuff like asking the king to ban the professional hunters from entering the forest for a while. And about his hunting, he said, “don’t worry! Allz for good.” The king was expecting some exceptional advice from him, but he is very upset for his advice not just seemed useless, but also looked like ridicule. His frustration reached another highs, and shouted on his minister. He fired him and abandoned him from entering the kingdom for life. Insulting king and proving worthless in the hour of need is the greatest mistake for a minister, told the king to rest of his counsel.

His short province was seeing its king’s gloominess, and the minister's little sentence became a story rather than an advice in the empire. After a few years that looked like a lot more, the king went out wandering into the same forests just to revisit his golden days. The local cult there kidnapped the king and took him to their leader. They were performing some ritual as it appeared to the king. Few people are setting the fire, and he felt that it was made to burn him. May be this is a cannibal tribe thought the king. He being a king would not matter, as the tribe seems to be unaware of any king or kingdom. All his warnings, pleas proved in vain as they didn’t know his language. His death seemed inevitable, and even a king could not help himself. The priests started performing rituals on the king. Suddenly the priest stopped the ritual, took kings hand and spoke in a harsh voice to his men and the leader. And then astoundingly the king is left free.

Shocked at the unknown miracle that saved his life, he retuned to his palace. He summoned the scholars and asked them to enquire about the tribe and what happened to him that night. He then learnt that they were performing one of their sacred rituals and had to give a human sacrifice. But since the king lacked a finger, he was not eligible for the sacrifice, and hence they left him free. He immediately remembered his minister and his “allz for good” advice. Had he not lost his finger, he would have been dead – sacrificed to god. His repentance has no limits, and he could not have peace of mind till he met the minister and apologized.

Well a very short moral from this long story. The good advices can sometimes be boring. & . it doesn’t harm being optimistic. If you felt this post is too simple to be interesting, think about it later, you may find it make some real sense.