Rules of the game, please?

Is this a journey with a goal?
Are we actually trying to get some place?
Or are we delusional, in this rat race,
merely, for the thrill of the chase?

Is there a zenith, a winner's post
for whoever runs at the fastest pace?
A blissful, content, shiny life prize
If only I outlast this "short, tough phase"?

What if I tire, what if I am hurt?
Where would I go if I fell from grace?
What if I can't win, is there a darkness
for the losers and quitters to hide their face?

What if I am afraid, running alone?
Will someone be waiting if I return to the base?
What if I realize, at the end when I've won
That I am out of time. That life beat me anyways...

Confusion

First up, apologies for the few who have missed updates on this page the last 3 weeks or so. And apologies to everyone who is looking for a follow-up of the fairly confusing previous posts -I promise there's a story to tell, and I promise to complete the Camouflage drafts currently lying on blogger, on my phone and in my head. But not now, not today.

Today is the day to ramble and wonder without much purpose. This whole purpose and meaning quest is an overhyped one, methinks. "Be yourself and follow your dreams" is great to hear and probably great to do, but what do you do when you don't really know who you are and what your dream is. And since you're a confused, lost soul scampering about for some elusive meaning, and that's who you're also encouraged to be, there's bound to come a point where you go whatthehell. Read this for more. Anyway, what choice do we have sirji.

So anyway, my own wandering and questioning took me last month from consulting to investing. For a while it felt like nothing had changed. There I was, on a morning flight to Mumbai, talking about same old stuff with someone I've known for more than 6 years now. Cribbing about morning flights and airline service. Looking for the driver at the airport holding a placard of my name. Only this time, the company name was different. And since then, it has been starting from scratch all over again. Finding my place. Finding new people. Being judged. Finding comfort in my own skin. Trying. And wondering whether I like it. Wondering where I'd end up. Wondering how. 

Life makes me want to live in a limbo. 

It's too early to look for answers anyway. I'm only looking for questions. And hoping. 

It's official...

...looks are deceptive. Especially in bosses.

Their cuteness (and other such seemingly nice things, including apparent-coolness) has no correlation to their being jerks or not. :-)

No love lost!

Good morning, and welcome on-board what feels like a bad week coming. Or at least, the start couldn't have been insaner. It feels wrong to crib in the morning, but short of kicking myself (and including that), this is the best I can do. So here's what happened:

After the thought of the longgg flight to Chennai and the long day and week ahead made my sleep disappear over night, after I got out of bed at 4 feeling refreshed with a 2.5 hour sleep, there I was trying to get to the airport at 530 in the morning when the car broke down. Had Einstein been around and amnesiac, he would have probably rediscovered relativity seeing how long and short 15 minutes are early in the morning - the 15 minutes of sleep, too little, the 15 minutes of car breaking down, too much. And just as I managed to reach the airport 2 minutes too late, I realize to my horror that I forgot my wallet (with all my money, cards, ID proof et al) at home. The ah moment of taking out change at 1030 pm returned. The sleeplessness kicked me on discovering that the next flight out is only at 850, and the guilt of asking my dad to wake up early in the morning and bring me the fateful wallet has sapped all my energies for the week already. And hence, here we are, suited booted packed and sleepless, waiting at the airport for Dad to come and the flight to leave. For all the work I was supposed to do in two hours in morning getting pushed to late at night. For more sleeplessness.

Yes, you can go awwww now. And repeat that when I crib about working so hard on Valentine's day, with no one to swoon over. Double awww. 

And double yawn. Damn.

The rant againt too much connectivity

My submission to the argument against globalisation is simple : it homogenizes too much and takes away the pleasure of being "local, lazy" :) Whatever good it may have done or not, people can argue, but what good is it that makes people wake up at obscene time to do "calls" because someone else in some other time zone is up (and sometimes, not even that). Worse, globalised, connected worlds bring so much standardisation...for instance, in pre-globalisation era, probably in another town, I could have stayed put in the quilt till 9 in the morning everyday because it is so cold, and all offices and shop would shut down by 6 with dusk because nobody gets out in the cold anyway, let's stay at home, sip hot chocolate and dream away. 

Who spoilt my party? Why should I work and travel in the chill just because other places like Mumbai (they call India office "one office" - huh) or Singapore ("one region") or some other place with "important" people is unfortunate to be not cold and is open and working. I say, bring on the end of too-much-connectivity, let's sip hot coffee to the awesome dilli ki sardi.

Kitna kaam karte hain aj kal log, and yet, such little is constructive. 

Chhutti!!

PS You thought I'd rant about Facebook, twitter types again. Woh to you already know ji :)

Bits and pieces of a consultant's life: Chapter 2

So, some of what they say about consulting is true. One day in a year you get to live a "high-flying" life. Somebody says the client wants to do the meeting in Dubai, somebody says, "What the hell, you come too", and in a haze, while you generate slides after slides for the said meeting, somebody makes the booking and one evening you find yourself flying with other much senior, darker people in the team (and thanks to them, flying business class, no less). Few hours later, you find yourself chauffeured in a 7 series Limo to a splendid hotel (which sadly enough, is only 5 minutes from the airport). That's the part they tell you - the glamor!
And then there's the rest of the iceberg. Like you spend a total of less than 24 hours (including 4 hours of sleep) in a new country, only seeing the airport, one hotel, one "view", and one boardroom for 14 hours :) And then you fly back, landing at an odd hour in the night, body tired of too much exhaustion, wanting to just sleep in peace. That you didn't get to see more of the city at 50 degrees C is hardly a regret by then. Lots of people will still kill for this job. :)
Or maybe not. But show off of the one good day in the year apart, it's actually been more than 10 months in this job. Thanks to the fact that our joining was delayed, the new batch for this year is already in and we are already the "older", "experienced" lot. Really? :)
I wonder if I've changed much in this time. I wish there was someone who could point out and explain. I would like to reflect what I learnt and what I unlearnt. The collage in my mind has started filling in with memories of the good times and the bad ones. Of crying in a meeting, to the ones where awesome people around made life feel a breeze. Of mistakes made, of misjudgments, of frustration, of fatigue, of excitement. Yeah, I guess I have grown somewhat.

Don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. :)

How much is too much?

There's only so much you can stretch a string before it breaks. After a point you have got to say enough is enough, or the string will break and the recoil will hurt you bad, real bad. But it's hard, isn't it, to know when.
I mean look at cricket, IPL was a good exciting thing when it started, but it got bigger than first cut calculations and suddenly someone thinks it is an infinite money-making machine. Ad plug-ins in between balls and in every sentence of the commentary, way too much noise and crackers, way too many matches coming up, too much blatant, vulgar money - IPL3 is already an overkill I've little interest left in, and it's bound to get worse. It feels like a bubble, much like sub-prime, waiting to burst, IMHO.

It's just greed, isn't it? This desire to milk a good thing for more and more until it dies in the hope of well..more. Blinding disillusioning greed.
Greed that makes corporate bosses push their people to work harder and longer in less and less time for less and less money, screwing their lives to increase their margins until it starts hitting the breaking point and the brave among the good people begin to leave their jobs. (Sounds familiar?)

It is also greed of some kind that makes us hang on to relationships that aren't working - eternal hope or just desire to get more. I don't know really. It does feel like greed if you don't do anything about a problem just because you know that the other person is somehow living with it, even if with enough difficulty. The string will snap at some point, won't it. Wouldn't/ shouldn't at some point, you hear - enough is enough.
What's the right thing to do - I'm confused (and incoherent, sorry!)

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.

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.

Occupational Hazards

Everywhere I go these days, a certain kind of questions naturally pop up in my head:

How does this business make money?
How to optimize this process to make it efficient/cut costs/increase reach?
Why is this guy doing this job this way?
How can he make more profit?
How big is this market/margin?

Everywhere, I tell you, from neighbourhood paan kiosk to the Big Bazar checkout queue.

I bet designers constantly analyse street fashion, teachers consistently look for cues to teach effectively and doctors see germs everywhere too.
Side effects of the job, phew! :(

Somwhere in the middle...

Here, in this world, things happen too quickly sometimes. And at other times, they feel as if the sameness has consumed all your life.

Here, in this world, I feel a little weird, trying hard to belong, yet the convoluted detached style of living of all the 'mature', warm and friendly grown-ups around me feels so unreal. What is missing?

Life is a roller-coaster, and should you forget that, it makes you a consultant.

I cribbed when they ruined my farewell three weeks back. Should I crib now, when I was just about getting the hang of this routine and I've been suddenly asked to leave the project mid-way onto something new, in 'hometown' Mumbai.

Bottomline, here I am, all alone at a swanky airport, cribbing about flight delays like those regular consultants, wondering just where is life going. Yes, this is it, that point where I need to go make my 'home' in an unknown city in a job that grows stranger by the day. Without any help, far away from those I love. Welcome, Mumbai.

It's just me. And my life. I can end up the happy all-conquering superwoman with a gazillion new friends, or I can end up the overworked fatigued depressive maniac.

Like most things though, I suspect, this too will lie somewhere in the middle.

The one in which I talk of being corporate, and housewifely

So, I'm a fortnight into the job. Wow. How hectic has it been is evident from the lack of posts on this page and a growing list of to-read stuff on the reader, among others.

Has it been exciting? Yes, I'd say, for the most part. It's a little confusing at times, a little lonely and slightly intimidating, but mostly there's a buzz, so far. It should stay for the first project, methinks.

Has it been tiring? Most definitely. My body revolts at 14-15 hour work days after so many months of lethargy.

What else does it feel like? Slightly weird, very grown up, and all the corporate frustration around me feels (so far) very unfamiliar. The people are good though, and things look sure to get warmer and faster in the next month. And the 35 km commute to Gurgaon is killing me.

Oh, and I got my first salary. :)

The lucky bit is that my first three weekends are all 3-day. Talk about spoiling habits! And so, last weekend I took a wonderful trip to Lansdowne (more on this should follow) with a bunch of friends, that ended up a nice roadtrip and jungle trekking combined. This weekend, I took a trip to my "home" in Mumbai. Had to finish some formalities, and wanted to know how it felt like living in 'my' home (at an outrageous 10k bucks per night :P ). Spent a lot of time setting up, cleaning, buying provisions, mopping, putting up the curtains, making the kitchen functional (cooking the ritualistic coffee and maggi etc) and generally being super housewifely. (My housemate is a little lazy at all this and struggling very hard at living all alone in a new city) Now the home is fairly habitable, though my housemate doesn't intend to cook, so it would have to wait for me to move in to make it totally home-like. There was nothing more to do in Mumbai though (everyone hits at my housemate, none at me :( :( :( ) except watch society Dandiya and meet Yashshri (finally, after several attempts over at least 2 years!) :P

So bottomline is that in the last two weeks I got a taste of the corporate and the housewifely shades of evil, uncomfortable grown-up life, and though it'd take more time to grow into it, and it's gonna be a bit before I have to be a superwoman and do all of it simultaneously, I will survive.

I think.

Anti-climax II

Imagine a heavily melodramatic sentimental movie scene featuring a judaai among loved ones, or a farewell of some sort. Imagine, for the sake of the effects, a teary bidding-adieu moment at a railway station where one person is leaving for some xyz place for long, and in the final few moments before the train is about to leave, looks back at the place people and memories he/she is leaving behind. In fact, add flashbacks, loaded dialogues, background scores or even full-fledged sob-songs to the scene just so the flavor is complete.
So, the person finally breaks the embrace of his beloved people and place, who're perhaps secretly thankful they're gonna get a reprieve from this person but give nice sobby goodbyes anyway, and gets on the train. The train moves a few metres and suddenly comes to a stop. The station master tells you that because of "technical difficulties", the train cant leave right now, and there's a full 24 hour delay. So you have no choice but to go back, bag and baggage, to your home or whatever, and those people who just bid you goodbye and had already reallocated your room have to accomodate you again.

You understand the anti-climax, right?

Well, that just happened to me. :)

Okay, of course there wasn't so much drama and I still retain a room here at home, but you know, I was supposed to shift to Mumbai today and stuff, and everybody said goodbyes (I'd even done the packing!) and suddenly my company HR says, why don't you report in Gurgaon office on Monday instead of Mumbai office :)
Apparently, the project I've been staffed on, the team is in Delhi, so it made no sense to fly to Mumbai on sat and back on Sun because the mon morning meeting was in Delhi office and my ticket's cancelled. Now I don't have any other details at all, including whether this is a one-day, one-week or a one-month delay. I don't know anything yet, except that people who're happily calling me since last evening hoping to say bye, shoo, go to bombay, are being met with disappointment that the teary farewell has been postponed.

So, I'm gonna shift to Mumbai afterall (I'm so not unpacking!), but it could be later than sooner, and I have no clue when. Meanwhile I continue to pay a gigantic rent on a place in Mumbai I'm still not living in, and my poor flatmate has to grapple with setting up the house all alone. All this, when I'd always asked for a Delhi posting in the first place.

Life's suddenly exciting again. Fingers crossed for Monday. Wish me luck.

Phew, welcome to consulting, Taru.

Information overload

Gyaan. Names. Faces. Roads. Process. Rules. Rigor. Shortcuts. Opportunities. Assessment. Logistics. First impressions. People. Eccentricities. Addresses. Judgements. Rental. Tax. Behavior. Habits. Mistakes. Questions. Communication. Over-communication. Integrity. Hesitation. Truth. Insight. Database. Pivot charts. Money. Hours. Bills. Luxury. Food. Price. Value. Alcohol. Richness. Cheapness. Insecurity. Zeal. Competition. Fakeness. Culture. Help. Hypothesis. Knowledge. Impact.

Who? What? Why?

The beginning.