Give me some sunshine, give me some rain!!

...give me another chance, I wanna grow up once again!!!

What a wonderful movie. Thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable from start to end. Despite Kareena Kapoor, despite a couple of really slap-stick jokes, despite a few slightly "message"-ful scenes in the first half and despite the fact that it's said to be inspired from a largely crappy book, this one is a real gem of a movie.

Love Aamir Khan, love being able to relate to the movie so much, love my company for organizing everyone to see it. Worth seeing at least a few times for being a movie that manages to have the right mix of emotion, entertainment and substance for the most part.

Go watch 3 Idiots people, it is the Andaz Apna Apna of 2009! (and show it to your parents)

Being 18 again

The most unexpected of things has happened. Or at least, I am guessing that's what it is.
The chaos in life is back. The sinusoids are back. The random events, random people, freshness, impulse and wide range of emotion within a span of 24 hours - they are all back.
I don't feel comfortably numb any more like I did a few months back - neither of those two, actually. I almost feel like I'm 18 again - in a much different, older, almost-23 kinda way, but I almost feel that craziness of life. Things don't make sense. People seem different and distant., and nobody's close enough to keep me protected, so I can be wild again, wandering around like Brownian motion. New people and random conversations keep appearing every few weeks from nowhere, adding spark to a life that's suddenly started looking highly unlivable every few days . The stress is killing me. The loneliness makes me want to cry. New unexplored adventures make me happy and unleash energy that I have no clue I had. I am making new connections that don't make sense. I am "feeling" love and pain and joy and disappointment, and given that I'm almost 23 and not almost 18 and hence considerably more cognizant (also have significantly less margin of error and license to thrill) it feels different.

The adrenaline is back, don't know where all this is going to lead.
Whichever way, I'm loving it.

The art of not caring

There's one thing I have to give to Mumbai: it's one city where by and large people will leave you alone as long as you don't fall in their way. The apathy or indifference or whatever you may choose to call it, is fairly high, and there are both good and bad sides to it.

On one hand, there would be people like my deranged lunatic landlady who only care about getting more and more money out of you and be completely unsympathetic to your point of view. People will largely refuse to help you out of any humane instincts, only if it profits them somehow. The fanatics will get away with whatever speeches they want to make and the govt will get away with not doing anything because nobody will care enough to question, and those who comprehend will not care enough to vote.

But on the good side, it means by and large you can be yourself and random people would not stare at you. Neighbors will not get nosy even if you consistently come past 2 am at home. If you manage to stay away from the moral police types, you can conveniently walk hand in hand with a guy, wear skimpy clothers, get sloshed etc. And you can sit at Marine Drive alone at midnight, stare at the dark sea and cry all you want for an hour and nobody would bother.

I feel slightly lost in the hurried sea of people running about me. Part of it could be being forced to grow up so soon, and being so alone in all of it. Dunno. Nobody cares for anyone, and that's why they just add "take care" and absolve themselves of any responsibility and concern. Nobody expects you to care, either. Is this what it's like to be an "adult"?

If you care, you just get disappointed all the time. If you don't care nothing matters so you are never upset
- Calvin

Maybe I'm over-reacting. It should get better, right?
Life is not easy, but it's still good.

All I am..

... is a small kid in a big, bad, confusing world.

Sigh..

Bits and pieces from a consultant's life: Chapter 1

Three months is a long time in consulting - long enough, I reckon, for me to begin writing my memoirs. In any case, the rate at which my hair are graying and my memory cells degenerating, I fear I'd be too senile too soon to remember any of this. :)

Many, many people have asked me what do I do as a consultant. Depending on the context and the person quizzing me, I find a different answer each time. But if I were to reflect and give a neat three bullet point summary (rule #1: There are always three points about everything!) about what I do just to myself, I think I'd struggle. Being a consultant is being so many different things at once, from a hardcore analyst to an efficient networker to a top class call center executive as you adopt both their lifestyle and cold-calling skills. Being a consultant is about learning and unlearning a lot of things really quickly - from being a manager to being a
waiter taking food orders ( :D especially true if you're the junior-most member on the team!).

Last month we were in Kuala Lumpur for regional training, and one of those team-building/ice-breaker games was built on a speed date format, meant to give us a chance to know and interact with our colleagues from other offices. It is amusing how invariably "How's your work-life balance?" was one of the top three ice-breaker questions, and how people found solace in knowing people elsewhere were just as screwed as they were. It was an-almost cheerful feeling of bonding.
The people around you are the single biggest reason what keeps people doing this job. I'm really lucky though, I work out of office for this project and it's a series of pranks and cracks at one another, interspersed with some work. Absolutely adore my team, even the bosses (except when they become too bossy :P). More than anything else - even more than the fact that I enjoy what I do despite obscene hours- so far, that's what keeps me going. Making fun of my 'boss' for wearing a pink shirt, or sending silly emails from each other's accounts to the entire floor, I suppose that's all I remember now.

I've been told I'd be a different person, at least in terms of work and work maturity, at the end of one year here. I don't know how true it is, but I sure can feel some growth, and all I wish for is that I'm still the same person at heart. Silly, naughty, sensitive kiddo.

There are several joys of consulting, and there are several pains. But that's true everywhere, isn't it. There are thrills in consulting, and that has somewhat fewer parallels elsewhere in the world. There are also kills, but let's not go into those. :)

Cheers to living another day.

330 am

As I woke up my building guard yet another time this week, at an ungodly 330 am of the morning, he added, alongwith his usual sleepy marathi gaalis, "Sunday ko bhi sabse late?" Given that the taxi driver dropping me off had already asked if our call center worked sundays also (the Meru guys are now used to the 2 am phone calls from or office address), I wondered if it was a happy thought that I returned home at night happily alone as my team slogged another half hour in office or whether it was just sad to be happy about it on a sunday night (or monday morning!). It is a beautiful time of the day, with silent streets waiting to wake up, the sea watching the shores like a watchdog, the stray cars, policemen, couple and bunches of random people loitering around, and enough silence to let you talk to yourself, with whatever energy left. Some days though, the newspaper guy beats me to my home, and once in a while my roommates look at me bewildered because I'm back home before they've slept off. Both are amusing events

This city, and this job, has so far kept me off any monday morning blues whatsoever.

Random notes

As life drifts apart
should we try to hang on
or just get up and leave?

Why do something "better"
if it cannot keep you happy
if it wouldn't let you live?

As we grow up,
it becomes easier to accept
and harder to believe.

The questions we ask
are more important
than the answers we give.

Fast(!)Forward?

Came across this interesting article in TOI. Reminded me of a discussion I recently had on how quickly people have started growing up, and how there are at least a couple of generations that have passed in the 6 years it's been since we left school. I mean seriously, people in your early/mid 20s, have you felt how quickly life has changed for those only 4-5 years younger (even less!). When I passed out of school, having a girlfriend in class was newsworthy and relatively rare; only three years later, anyone who didn't have one was almost an outcast. My brother is only 4.5 yrs younger than me, and in his lifetime has went through (at least) 4 relationships, while me, sadly, is still stuck stuck on the first!
What just happened?

A lot of things have gone from being super-tabboo to super-normal in the last decade, and some of us (maybe not us, but someone a few years older) are caught in between the two worlds where pre-marital sex was a huge NO and love was a pure romantic illusory notion, to the other where 15 yr olds regularly buy morning-after pills.

The world has opened really quickly for India in the last 15 years, and globalisation has started to make not only markets but even cultures more uniform in east and west. Not surprisingly, extreme fascism and intolerance has also suddenly grown in India in this period, as sudden changes become inpalatable for some and they react violently.

When (if at all) and how will we strike a sustainable balance?
What will happen to this generation of today's school-goers?

And if people start having "relationships" as early as Std 5, with no maturity to handle them and most of them unsupervised and stealth without parental guidance, where are we going?
In west, dating, esp in the first few years, is permitted and controlled by parents and guardians, making it easier for people to handle the floods of emotions and stay safe.
Our society does not have that safety net yet as most parents have not woken up to the world their kids reside in, and strict oppressive rules no longer work - it's almost like a free market capitalistic bubble waiting to bust.

It's worrying, and damn, I already feel old!!!

What's going on?

I haven't written here for like forever.

Even about things as cool as a rocking Malaysian visit with associated adventures, few tons of workload, a really close friend's wedding and recruiting at IITD campus.

That says something about the mad sleepless rush that life is. High adrenaline, lots of action.

I'd be back.