Bring Out Your Red's

   Its 'Festember' time once again, and thoughts, of going back to the same road which you always dreaded to be full of Heart-Breaks,  knock at your head. I believe that is clue enough to hint and thus to hit at what is amiss( A Miss !) in life. Having taken enough lessons from the romantic movies that I lately have started borrowing , I am going to add some zing in my life by  some colouring and that too in red( not to mention the OtheR thing which has filled my life again with a re-MARKed in red ). The situation should normally push me towards a gloomy secluded corner of library, where I am found by default .And thus, I am going to throw some light on me this time and that too the spotlight as they use in those 'Choreography Nights'. In sync with my philosophy of taking an easy and fun filled approach during  testing times( youu don’t want to look like someone who tried and still failed ), I am going to take a week off and go back to slate and find out why the drawing in process is  going haywire. Having done that many times and failed an equal number of times, I would take the safer option of colouring it, and that too with red. Anything coloured is bound to be more appealing than the bland sketches and some red would make it a masterpiece (Or a cheap imitation ! ), guess that qualifies as being smart :-)

   I think that, by now you might have discovered that from where the rotting smell is coming from. And thus I would go to the root of the problem and shave off that beard which I thought looked macho, foolishly forgetting that it’s the car that is central to the purchaser’s mind and not the colour. But, what if you want to position yourself like the American Dream ‘Black Ford Model-T’ OR (OR, not again ! ) our princely and unfailingly white Ambassadors from bygone era, only a little trendy and yes, in red. Yes, it makes a huge difference and that’s the reason why McD and other big brands go for red. If McD is so desirable because of the red, painting myself red, won’t be a foolish idea ( at least I think so ! ).

   The kind of colours that men and women have traditionally chosen for themselves has always been in tune with what they want to portray themselves as. This proposition certainly discounts the ones who wear shiny ones and aspire to become a fish ,and a ‘Hilsa’ at that, pricey, classy and tasty as well. The clarity of male logic makes us fill our wardrobes with shades of blues (denim Always!) and whites, but women certainly don’t seem to appreciate that. A recent experiment establishes that women choose pinkish things in life. So, while you thought that it’s the muscles that they go for, it’s your being in the pinkest of health ( That’s literary logic,though living in Pink City-Jaipur for the best years of your life might not have helped ! ). The male belief of ‘peach not being a colour, and a fruit’, leaves us with red, the colour of love and choice. 

   By now, you might have also sensed a burning smell, and where is it coming from. I guess am not wired right and thus the frequent fireworks in my circuit (which I put on display as if its celebrations of Diwali or New Year ! ) .The few of all those  surviving active grey cells are now daydreaming about the evening to follow. At the same time another signal is being transmitted, probably from that part of the human brain where fear resides,that red might alert the prey about the camouflage I am putting on,as there are many who do it on a a regular basis and I am a novice here.

    The game is on,wish I hunt one down and pray to be the prey tonight.Yes, I believe miracles do happen even if you have wishes which cancel each other and the second one being the preferred one here( it saves you from making the awkward and risky first move.......also the subject of my next blog ). :-)

Arrival of The Second Fiddle !

The unassuming 'Second Fiddle' has declared his arrival and it applies to the 'hers' as well. For matters of simplicity and being courteous towards women, I would hereafter make this piece gender biased. The argument for the same is based on the preferential treatment of women and hence the omission here. So much for scoring brownie points, lets get back to the proposition we were considering.’Second Fiddle', the guy who does not take the lead in any work but ends up completing it and did not aspire to achieve something very significant or serious in life, has never had it any better. Always being the one who improvised, has now chosen to be assertive. And voicing or lending an ear to this opinion are millions of Indians. Not only has he got social acceptance but his life is now being celebrated as well. Thus, its no surprise that the chief protagonists in India's most loved writer's (Chetan Bhagat) novels were individuals who lacked the drive to go the distance and were comfortable being the pillion rider. While the driver had the skills and took all the pains to steer in the crowded and narrow lanes of life, our pillion rider had the high position and that is not only because the seats are designed so. And when they arrive at the party, the pillion rider gets down first to make his presence felt, while our heartthrob rider makes a guest appearance of sorts as he had to take the pain of parking the bike. By now you must be thinking that this piece has also skid away on flattery road, hold that thought as I am about to make my point.

  It is more than coincidence that the movies which represented the same shift in social acceptance became trend setters and I mean more than the hair do. Be it RDB, Dil Chahta Hai or Zindagi Naa Milegi Doobara. The pattern continues into the breath n blood of the country where a SRK & Dhoni take up the captain-ship and the likes of Sachin & Aamir, steer the ship. A country which used to Hero-worship the heroes and leave the rest to the vagaries of nature and the mercy of Darwin's Theory, has learnt to give greater significance to otherwise boring lives of millions. And it makes a good sale as well when you are catering to the bottom of the pyramid. The ever increasing financial prowess of the country has only acted as a catalyst in paradigm shift. A changing socio-economic scenario has been the facilitator, where being greedy is no more gross and aspirations have moved past 'Roti-Kapda-Makaan'. This has given people the luxury to experiment and the aspirations of living life their own way or making your way the highway.

   There is a mysterious attractiveness in being simple; being everybody's admiration and nobody's dream, and this is what makes our second fiddle so desirable. The common man is tired of the living meaningless superfluous lives, chasing one dream, all of them, all at a time. Always running at a very fast pace and reaching nowhere, and thus he finds solace in the simplicity of these second fiddles who unfailingly succeed in the end and which is as far from reality as the hero-worshiping ones. But then these seem to be true for the most part and that draws our attention. This might explain the present era of too many superstars.

   It also makes for a good climax when the unassuming and deemed to fail , makes it. The second fiddle is also aware of its gaining prowess and the ability to topple the ruling elite and is probably planning a silent revolution. This might sound as socialist ,having been undermined for times immemorial ,the second fiddle now wants to break apart (as you might have felt, had this been written on paper !).

   I am a might have fiddled with an idea which should have been expressed better but then I thought it better to practice what I digress !.Nevertheless, being the second fiddle has become fashionable and he is here to stay for quite some time. :-)

Making it Personal !

 Try recalling the last time you held grudges against someone who happened to be a beneficiary of something you were vying for.There is high probability that the time was in recent past.No matter what our values are and how rational we might pretend to be,we do not mind hitting them where it hurts. The recipient of this uncalled for 'violent hatred' which suits best to vent your anger in written form, can be anybody ranging from the not so nerd looking guy who made it to your dream college while you kept wondering whether the paper was of Greek language, seeing the omnipresence of symbols from the language. A little more evil could be the guy who not only made it to the college but also stole away your crush. But, most of the times the offence can be imaginary and the recipient 'innocent in all the charges leveled'. But no logic can be a counter-logic that "it was supposed to be a free world & the accused, hands in glove with with the system has trespassed on somebody else's dreams ", and as we all know "trespassers would be prosecuted". And thus, we take it upon ourselves to punish the intruders.

  A vigilant mind keeps looking for opportunities to 'beat them in your own game', given they fall for the trap. The optimist in them or the opportunist as you would believe them to be, would fall for the trap and thus a very good chance for you score it even. Irrespective of  the fact that the addition of  scores of  two quantities of  different systems  into one unit is mathematically unacceptable.'Irrelevant' even in your user friendly 'Tally' or 'Excel',if you want it to be more professional. But who considers maths or mathematical softwares when the mind is enjoying seductive pleasures in deriving unbalanced equations, heavily in our favor. In an attempt to prove our competence we sum up everything available on Our Hand Side equal to the one thing we considered worthy and which unfortunately ended up Their Hand Side.

   This secret desire to prove ourselves leads us to challenge 'geeks and nerds' for friendly cricket matches or 
 any other such thing where they are believed to fail. Playing victim as love to,the result of the game could be to our surprise but it still gives great satisfaction that we tried to make it even. Not only that it gives one more opportunity to hatch an even more sinister conspiracy and finally beat them in the next round of this never finishing tournament of 'us against them'. Probably this fight is as natural as the ones in the Food Chain and gives the world a reason to get up every morning and get going, mine is to win the next game and the next and the one that follows. 

 The feelings seem exaggerated in the light of the analogy and the writer be spared being branded a psychopath.  :-)

Single Digit Scores !

 'Low Scorer' has been a demeaning phrase for me as by now i have accepted it as the two words that describe me, and this is the only answer that i have ready for those word games where a guy like me who loves to make complex sentences fails miserably. These scores assume greater significance when the sums threaten not to add up to the magical number of 40, the ubiquitous pass marks. 

  The ranking system also does no good by creating an unnecessary confusion in the minds of students by the system where the highest scorer is ranked in inverse order of their scoring. Many of us figure it very late in our lives and by then get settled in our ways of low scoring. On bouncing wickets and for wide off the syllabus papers, there are likely to be single digit scores. Like in cricket, this kind of paper gives you the room to play your shots and invitingly so, with fielders manning the hitting areas. Thus, most are caught unawares.

 The whole idea of a game or exam is to provide a platform for the geniuses to excel and the averages to play strokes of geniuses and survive. However, in this scenario the probability of a genius failing is higher than the diligent who would outshine them without fail. The contest shifts from 'between the teams' and 'among the examines' to 'both the teams against the curator' & examines taking upon the role of refugees trying to cross the LAC-'Line of Attention Control', which could have been precisely the reason to set such a paper.

The CGPA system helps you become the academically worthless but mystical 'Five Point Someone' and thus a very risky stock promising high returns. Every time you get those grades and score, the wily fox in you plans a coup against the system because the CGPA system and the wickets in the subcontinent give you ample opportunity to score heavily in other papers and home series and still be bag the' highest scorer of the year'. What we gain out of it is even more phenomenal as in the MGS (Mental Grading System), a comeback is is always rated higher than being consistent. The society attaches heroic status to those who make a comeback as somewhere they get attached to the same players and secretly wish the same players to come back and simultaneously crying hoarse that youngsters are not given chance. And, its been very generous one at that, it celebrates one's fight out of the mess discounting the fact that they landed themselves and are should be equally condemned for it.

    In the tryst with pass marks, these people are bound to gain a lot of confidence ( excluding me, I had enough of it and it has started rotting my confidence !) by looking like out of the pack and having distinct advantage over others in testing times .It makes a good story and that is precisely the reason why i in my little way is utilizing it. It is like one of those misleading financial ratios and proportions where if you do not consider the base , you do not get the exact idea. So, while you are pushed to the edge and might have a fall as well, the fatal approach is dubbed as martyrdom and if not so at-least your fall is celebrated as the few moments when a man got wings. Thus, the single digit scorer scores many brownie points and loses pointers.

  I do not know how much you will grade this , most probably in single digit and rightly so as I deviated in all directions and did not reach any conclusion after making more than one 'Fresh Start'. But then it can be a very good exhibition of how one can misses the trophy for the spirit of the game & many a single digit scorer endeavours for the same, besides there are the likes of me who would let go the one in hand and beat around the bush. Not to mention the birds would fly every time as I believe your minds would have taken long back. But there is always a supplementary to establish your lost credentials and i assure of it in my next blog.

Keep Believing. :-)

Spectator's View of Love Sport !!

LOVE is probably the most    ...............   . Fill in the blank with the most appropriate word. Poets and writers across cultures have described love as an ‘Elixir of Life’ on one extreme to a ‘Drug’ on the other. Complicated & Addictive are the other adjectives associated with it. So many parallels have been drawn that the world around us seem to be made of 3-D boxes of love, separated from each other and this is what we assumed love would never do.( Spoiler Alert....the blogger has a unique distinction in drawing parallels as they always have a stream of points to refer....rather than drawing one yourself, which is tough given that  you are supposed to draw it straight and the ruler is snatched to keep it original). It seems, God has been on a holiday or probably he has turned a blind eye or worse colluded with a few of his favourite subjects to help them grab more space which is legitimated by the laws of destiny while there are others who live in cramped dwellings. The glittery and shining world of love which was carved for the destined, engulfing the surroundings to an extent that the whole literally world is painted red with some shades of black whose intensity depends upon the failure of the writer in matters of love. This manifestation is forced upon the real world as well and those who do not see eye to eye and everything in Red are deemed frustrated.

 These parallels have largely been drawn by those who had success or could not play till the end. Little has been said by those who have seen this mega sporting event from the spectators stand. Interestingly, all the spectator stand are also named after these legends of the game as Romeo-Juliet,  Soni-Mahiwal and Radha-Kishan and the spectators also love fashion themselves as one of them and thus downgrading their own Love Rating.  Its been the latter half of the last type which has created the most trouble for the aspiring debutant. These players neither fail nor retire.  Like a game, the trophy is for the taking and the best players keeps on participating in events across places and seasons for various tournaments. They keep on being selected as a Virat Kohli or MS Dhoni, but the purists of the game just have to go or act as second fiddle as Rahul Dravid. So while a helicopter shot might catch your fancy, the gracious ‘ straight from the middle of the bat’  goes unnoticed.  Excuse me for putting some of your favourite players out of the limelight and making an X-ray of their game and making it public as well.

  So much for a Saturday morning, two more parallels added to the confusing plethora of synonyms of love, what i intend to say in this piece is that love is like any other achievable things in life where there is an eligibility criteria, a cut-off, a ranking order and coaching as well. Thus, there is always an answer to every way is though subjective but objectively pre-defined. So while some of the selected nerds and geeks succumb to the pressure, the rejects might just go on to make history. Like me, the highest number belongs to none of these categories. Unlike any other selection test most of us are deemed ineligible and thereby making the selection procedure an exercise of elimination .The social circumstances and conditioning of our minds make too many guys/gals chasing too few ‘Desirables’, not to mention this is done keeping the other gender in mind and some of the times the selection is in conformance to social norms. Thus, while the ‘Desirables’ are over-worked ( and they love it !), the demand is not met for the rest of them and its because of our self-devised  licence-permit system. The cut-off can be some of the times ridiculously high, higher than 5’ 4”, so high that you think that its set on purpose just to keep you out, no matter the seats will not filled and there is historical evidence to prove this point. 

  The analogy being drawn gets better when we consider the ranking order of the qualified candidates where a SRK or a Katrina would always top your list even though you know they are unavailable.Still when they do a ramp walk, generally they extend it a bit longer than the ramp and straight into your heart. While all they had to do was walk graciously, one step at a time, we do not notice the person who might have ran a race to reach us, flowers & chocolates in hand and a hand written heartfelt letter. So, while there are some lips we can read and minds we can decode, the loud voices of some are deemed noises inconsiderate of  the person’s endeavour of trying a hand at ‘Rock’, only to impress you and ready to look like a complete idiot and knowingly so. The descending order of ranking is also faultily counselled with it being a constant process and based on accidental coincidence or put in better words serendipity. Thus we ‘Settle With’, if its a long term proposition of the proposal or ‘Settle For’ the shorter version. 

  The aptitude for such a test becomes irrelevant when we consider the two new set of cases : 
Case 1 : The weight of your wallet is very high & 

Case 2 : Some of the things are always cool and thus be copied or better borrowed as it is e.g. Ray-Ban, Converse etc.

 Thus, it can be said that love is ‘conditioned’ mostly and not ‘happens’ as it is generally believed to be. Though there are exceptions and i celebrate them every ‘Valentine’s Day’, someday  i would certainly like to break out and become an exception myself if the general rule does not change for the better.

Feeling Exaggerated to Indisproportionate Propotions !

  That phase of life where we become concerned is here and again. Placements scenario being grim because some of our friends in the western hemisphere are using a financial model that everyone in India seems to be capable of finding faults with. Both sides of the argument seem to  have merit but i have a very strong feeling that its my stars which choose to jump into inauspicious quadrants every time i am to graduate, and hence responsible for the slowdown of the economic juggernaut.

Not having   much to offer in terms of pointers  and there being  enough macro and micro economic indicators pointing  towards  a slowdown  makes  it all the more ‘anxifying’ even  though spell-check function of MS Word and my friends tell me the situation and the word do not exist. Even high priests of technology cannot refurbish that something is wrong as even MS Word has shown signs of failing us. Thus, i have a feeling that there are feelings beyond oxford dictionary which normally a guy of my age has when he falls in love.     

 The whole hoopla about excelling and scoring high is most of the times a zero sum game where you sacrifice on a lot many fronts to make sure that the pointers don’t nosedive.  So while, you proudly boasted about missing being ‘five point someone’ by a whisker, the whole picture now comes in front of you ,of course in frames ,one at a time. And you realize all the mistakes of your life, and the most heinous of them being eating chicken on a Tuesday. 

 The anxiety drives you to spirituality and thoughts of contentment like ‘At the end of the day everyone gets a job’, which is a way of putting off anxiety for the time being and reserve it for some time in future. And with it comes another set of figures, the pay check will read. In your anxiety you  try and do some additions and subtractions  ,one of them being adding your CGPA to the lowest package that would be offered and giving high five to an imaginary hand which helped you beat the nerd in reaching this number. These moments are always short lived and very soon you realize the fallacy in your calculations.  

The pessimist in you is at his best and doesn’t give in easily but then there are movies and music which would make you believe that you can move mountains. Many a table and shelf cleaning is owed to these kind of feeling .Like a mountaineer you look out for a mountain and find one sitting right in your Almira, full of dirt, a stockpile of books that would last you a lifetime when read. So you convince yourself that it requires greater determination and willpower and hence you watch all that is available and can borrowed, downloaded or rented. The reel life gets an upper hand over real life and you leave it for destiny to pick a card for you from the deck. But not so easily, it would make you work out the probability of finding an Ace in a pack of only 1’s which you had been collecting all your life with undying vigor. And ,its not the first time that people like me are face this situation and thus prepare for what they can do best....Bluff  !!

Starting Afresh !!

The human need of starting afresh after every milestone is primarily the reason for discontent with life.The urge to do something better,different and new is not only incompatible with the 'Darwinian theory of Evolution',it also defies the management concept of 'Learning Curve'. Interestingly,as in bodies so in learning and more precisely careers,curves are more 'sustainable and appealing' than obtuse angles approaching 180 which are appealing because the government seems to have reserved all the rights for championing the cause of 'Sustainable Development' .And that leaves us with the appealing part, which has gained prominence with our fast paced lives and consistently decreasing attention span and thus the 'Start Afresh'.


But then 'Start Afresh' is primarily because we choose the wrong courses in life or academics (the society being so dependent on academics to do the separation of the grain from the chaff that it does not mind creating division ,only worsening the situation) or it is more about not being credited as well as the guy in the corner room.And while doing so nobody realizes how lonely is it at the top and in the corner room,more so if the corner room is at the top floor which is the practice with companies who do not have addresses on high streets and even higher rises.Though that could have been one of the reasons they sailed through the rough years.So while most of us move in zigzag motion in the endeavor of reaching that corner room at some point of time.This motion though being geometrically the largest and hence operationally not the dynamically programmed path is also the path of least resistance.So physics and psychology supersede mathematics here.But then its once again because humans increasingly want to live in their present than keeping all eggs on the 'End of the Day' pan which can not make good omelets of rotten eggs.This 'End of the day' syndrome fuels the 'Starting Afresh'. But we still keep on defying the laws of nature and then devising complex computational methods to decode these patterns of human behavior.


Thus, while the easier path could have been to follow the signposts and drive in the lane,we drive in zigzag motion which leads to fatal accidents both on roads and in careers.Its not that we are not aware of the consequences,its probably because we have understood the concept of economics and system where due to deficiency of recognition we are willing to succumb while driving in the same direction,in zigzag manner,all at once and in the same direction.This leads to the statistical probability of losing the most competent ones and even Vicky Donor can't disagree to that.And this is probably the reason why the society is so directionless as we lose our best in those accidents.


Thus, we have the explanation for so many success stories of college dropouts who took zigzag motion and made a name for themselves which gained exponential glorification because of their zigzag trajectory.When observed from a distance we realize that all the zigzag motion when seen as a whole looks like moving around a central line which is more like a curve and thus bringing success.So,when an Engineer goes for MBA followed by a a job which is poles apart from both and might end up writing, he/she might be defying 'Darwin' & 'Learning Curve' he/she is taking the path of least resistance and getting closer.

So what is 'Starting Afresh'?.I might know the answer but then giving a final word is not good for a blogger and more so for those who just began. It certainly makes for a good climax and a theory that is a thriller only to make you wait for a sequel.Or it can be a method of confusing others and gaining admiration when you yourself din't get it. I will leave defining 'Starting Afresh' for the those who have academic bend and would cherish the fact that it gave me your attention for a full 500+ words of my writing and your reading and might increase the global average of 'Attention Span' and thus a good reason to read my blogs.

Happy Reading :-)