Self appraisal - Week 4

So, we finally arrive at the fourth week of the journey - at least by the standards here. This post was supposed to go up by Sunday night, but it got delayed cos of the fact that I started writing it only today. Silly reason I believe.

So, it's April, and it's the time of the year where everyone looks forward to - cos the INCREMENT is coming. Not for me though. This annual roller coaster I had experienced for three years in the private sector has been replaced by a more continual, sedate stream. Despite this, the process of self appraisal has not been done with.

But I'm not here to disclose my achievements for the past year. I'm trying to tie this post back to the first one in this series which was posted one month back. In that, I had mentioned that to force me to change, I am going to keep track of my reading and writing schedule by means of papers stuck to my front door - so that it can always remind me of my (lack of) progress.

Let's review shall we. In the writing panel, there are after this one, four entries. So it fits the once a week criteria - though last two weeks posts were two days late and last week's post was really written in 2014, and left in the drafts. The only reason why I'm writing this is cos I couldn't find anything coherent in the drafts.

In the reading panel, there are three entries - the last of which is 23rd March. Which means I've not only failed to meet my target of reading every other day, but also failed to read anything over the past three weeks.

In another panel, I had written all the major chores I had to complete as on 20th March - 7 in number. 3 have been completed and one has become obsolete now. So not that good of a showing again.

If you were to read the last three paragraphs, and to rate me, I'm not highly confident of achieving a high rating. But therein lies the issue with our system - terming a period as different shades of good, bad or average with respect to preconceived notions.

As far as I see, my self appraisal would term this period as "significant improvement". While in the four week prior to this, I had read nothing, written nothing and all 7 of those chores were still pending, by starting this habit, I was indeed able to register significant progress.

It depends on the apt choice of the reference. If I had chosen a four week period from my teenage, then I would have fared really bad in reading. If I had chosen a four week period from two years back, I would have had bombed in writing. If I had chosen a four week period from... wait.. I was always this bad with chores.

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Until next week.

Hopefully Sunday. ;)

What's your number?? - Week 2

The most imaginative thing that any writer can come up with has already been done. It was by the genius who came up with the notion of a writer's block. There is nothing more fictitious than that.

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What do you do, when you've nothing to do? These days this question's answer will be mostly centred around the usage of our smartphones. Our incessant craving for company is satisfied by this gadget. Please remember that I'm accepting that I'm myself indulging in this timepass.

But before our phones became smarter than us, before we had everything at our fingertips, how did you spend time when you were alone? If you can't imagine a scenario, think how you had spent your time on a journey some ten years back.

Reading of books - novels, comics and otherwise - and listening to music would be the more popular answers now. I had two peculiar pass times​ of my own. Ever since my father taught me that I could decipher the location of my presence by reading shop boards, I used to spend my time on the window seat to do just that. Almost all the nameboards of the shops have the name of the place towards the bottom left corner. It's really helpful when you're traveling to a new place.

My other hobby is to read vehicle registration numbers. The inspiration for this one comes from a quest to find out other vehicles with the same number as the one under my possession. And if you've tried doing this, you would know how hard it is.

In spite of the hundreds of vehicle registrations happening daily at the thousands of RTOs in all the states of this country throughout the year; in spite of all these vehicles moving from one point on India's map to another; in spite of all these vehicles only getting a number from 1 to 9999; you would be hard pressed to find another vehicle with the same registration number as yours. True story.

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Now, if you would allow me to use my writers liberty, I would like you to replace in the previous paragraph - vehicle registrations by childbirth, vehicles by people, registration numbers by their personalities; and many other such nuanced substitutions - at the end of which that paragraph would be the perfect analogy for a person finding another person who is just like them. That's also really hard to do and extremely tough to realize.

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And as we celebrate the second year of our marriage, and the third year of our realization that both of us have the same "registration number", I would like to thank God - for he had put me in the right place at the right time to meet the right person.

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Until next week.

Marks - Week 1

You know, I write plenty these days too. Mostly on paper. Entirely based on requests people have made towards the Bank. Poetic artistry and the drive for stroking the reader's imagination has been replaced by cliched jargon and a need for soothing of the reader's mind.

Unfortunately, while I could share with the world my earlier creations, the current batch of prose is strictly official - "for your eyes only" kind of stuff.

***

I happened to go through the earlier posts here a few weeks back. Even if words of praise are rightly held at a premium, a sculptor has the right to admire his work. Likewise, I did - and I felt both elated and deflated. Elated cos of what I had once written, deflated cos I don't write anymore.

Past glory is never enough - no matter what people say. I enjoy the thrill of throwing together words to watch it form a sentence; many such sentences join to become a paragraph; few such paragraphs together become a blog post. And in the middle of all this will be an idea that I wanted to convey.

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I happened to buy a book yesterday. The fuss is because even when I was writing every week, the amount of reading was limited to other blogs, internet and the odd piece of paper you find. I had actually stopped reading books after I reached​ College - the Harry Potter series being the last major book I read. Afterwards whatever was read was for timepass, not for the thrill of reading.

And yesterday wasn't the first time I tried buying a book to make myself read again. The complete collection of Sherlock Holmes, More William, The Indian Epics Retold, Ivory Throne and a few other books have filled my shelf, but not my mind. It's for this precise reason that I went in search of a book in the self improvement section. And I have come back with "Katha Chanakya" - stories about Chanakya and what we have to learn from them.

My first impression was negative. The stories were too short for my liking and the preachy tone of the book was irritating. I finished my reading yesterday with the chapter which has Chanakya keeping his shikha untied, until he overthrew the king who untied it.

Waking up today morning with that story fresh in mind gave me a new direction to ponder. What if I do the same. What if I make a mark - a mark I'll have to see everyday - which would remind me that I have not been reading or writing. The lack of Shikha made it hard, but I've come up with something.

Now, on the back of my front door are two pieces of paper. On one, I'm writing the last date on which I read atleast five pages of a book. On the other is the date on which I last wrote something. Let's see how good self improvement books really are.

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Until next week.

Growing up

It hard to convince people I'm still growing. At six foot one, any further physical growth would be an inconvenience to say the least. My age, as a number, has been on a continual upward trajectory since I care to remember - so there is nothing special to mention about it; other than the fact that I'm not laughing at the turning thirty jokes that much these days.

As you make the journey from a child to an adult, there will always be a part which doesn't grow up. It'll be carefully hidden under the mask of maturity, but it will still be there - an oasis of childishness in the barrenness of adulthood. And God knows we need that part. If I've learned anything over a decade of being an legal adult, it's that the world as a whole needs more childish fervour.

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Do you know how hard it is to smile at a complete stranger?? I've always found it hard to muster the courage to do so. A thousand thoughts will run through my mind - the least of which is what will that person think of me. But a good 18 months into the service industry, where I'm paid to help complete strangers, I've learned to smile at them confidently. And it has done good to them, it has been good for me.

The awkward part of any conversation with a stranger is the beginning. And that's when you need an ice-breaker. And the best way to do that is to smile.

So, you might want to know how I gathered the courage to smile at strangers with no nagging thoughts in my mind. Well, it had nothing to do with courage. For the first three seconds I meet a new person, I think of him/her as a child. And you don't need courage to smile at a child. But within those three seconds, a more comfortable ambience will be created, which will lead to a more fruitful conversation.

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It's in little ways like this that I feel I've grown over the past 18 months. I've been able to challenge myself and what I always thought I was. The only negative of all this was that I couldn't find it in me to continue challenging myself as a writer. But that's the hardest part of growing up I guess - sacrificing - the realization that you can't have it all.

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Before I leave you, I've two snippets to share.

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ONE

From a post I saw on Facebook - "Always smile at a little child, for it strengthens it's belief that the world is good."

Maybe this has something to do with the smiling at strangers thing.

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TWO

Growing up to be an adult doesn't mean showing uncalled maturity, harvesting ego and making decisions to suit your end. Growing up means showing compassion, letting go of ego and helping others at your cost. If we can all learn that, the world will be better place

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There might be an obvious incoherence in this prose, which let me assure you was purely unintentional. Even if people try to convince you that it is just like riding a bike - that it'll come back to you once you start again, you should realize it is not so. There's always going to be few wobbles.

Keeping the Change (5 things - Week 111)

Prologue:

Last post in this series was on 27-06-2015. That was almost weekly for more than two years. This one will hopefully be published on 01-11-2015. I can't guarantee it now, as I have only just started typing this out. Let's see where this takes us.

***

I can blame my absence here on a lot of things - the faulty keyboard of my laptop, which ignores many of my touches; the fact that I got married and that the responsibilities and the fun have had me distracted enough to be in a different world altogether; the closer to truth reason would be the 6 days a week of working in a service sector; or a combination of one and all.

What I used to write about were things which amused me, which surprised me - which would eventually make me think about how I would describe it - the thing or the experience - to another person. Lately, even though I still do get my fair share of amusement and surprises, the time I require to think - I prefer calling the process 'idea rumination' - has been missing. This past week or so, I carved out time from doing other stuff to do the 'idea rumination'. And the result is now before you.

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1. When would you feel proud and happy on seeing a bill of Rs.1562/-??

I found out when I would last week. The venue was the nearby supermarket and the occasion was the monthly grocery purchase. Till I was 10 or so, I used to accompany my parents for our monthly grocery purchase. Once it became hard to fit me, my brother, our parents and the ration into one two wheeler, I was the one who had to make way. And from that day, I wanted to do my own shopping.

And on the said day, as I watched the cashier take my ATM card for making the payment, I realized that I was doing my own shopping. Being part of the spoon fed generation, it takes moments like these for one to realize that he/she has grown up to what he/she always wanted to be - a grown up.

2. A lot can be said by the way you spend 100 rupees.

There was a time, some 4 years back, when I would walk to the store near our flat in Gurgaon. Then I would purchase, one packet Lays, one packet Haldirams Masala Peanuts, one Dairy Milk and one bottle of Coco Cola - all amounting to a hundred rupees. And these would be accompaniments with which I would sit down to watch the weekend football action.

Yesterday, I brought 5kg of orange for a hundred rupees. How time changes a man.

3. Wholesale or Retail

Continuing with the oranges story, it was written at the shop that Rs.100 could buy you 5 kg of Orange. So, I gave him 60 rupees and asked him to give me just 3kgs. He asked for Rs.15 more. He then went on to give me the existing rates at the shop, both retail and wholesale.

1kg - Rs.30

2kg - Rs.50

3kg - Rs.75

5kg - Rs.100

Interestingly, he refused to sell 4kg of orange. He must have some serious beef with the number 4.

4. Of Biriyanis, Momos, Shawarmas and ChiPoCus.

First of all, let me apply for a bail - I am not a foodie in any sense of it. So, my perception of food and its taste might not agree with the general opinion.

a. First up is Biriyanis. No biriyani like Hyderabadi Biriyani, and no place to have a biriyani like Hyderabad. Other than the usual goto places like Paradise, we also visited one restaurant called Dine Hill at Banjara Hills. Whatever you order will be provided in one big plate and everyone has to eat from it. They said it's the custom of the Mughals. Not recommended if you are a hygiene freak.

b. Momos occupy a soft spot in my tummy. In Gurgaon, we used to visit the local momo shop after a day's work, and would have a plate having 10 Momos, and an egg roll for 50 bucks. Here in Kochi, 5 Momos costs you a hundred bucks without the taste or appeal. Well, that was the case until we found BIG FAT MOMOS. They serve you a 10 piece delicious Momo dish with delicious accompaniments for Rs.90. And the service is endearing.

c. Shawarmas were the rage in Thiruvananthapuram, until one innocent man fell prey to cheap tactics used by some restaurant. They had used spoiled meat pieces, the person got food poisoning, he was traveling - and a host of other factors combined to result in death. The immediate effect was a total informal ban on Shawarmas in the city. After about 3 years, they are slowly making their way back in the city. And in Kochi, we have found SLICE OF SPICE, who make one of the best plate shawarmas in town - it's both delicious and filling.

d. Now, ChiPoCu is not a well known dish. That's because it was invented by my wifey to sate my peculiar taste preferences. ChiPoCu is Chilly Potato Cubes. Even though the concept and execution is simple, I am yet to find anything as tasty as that.

5. Opinions

Talking of my opinions, I wrote this piece on May 16th, 2014 - soon after the national election results were declared. I had mentioned in the post that the new government has a set of problems that it has to tackle, and a section of the society that it has to convince. 534 days later, earlier today, I took a second read of the same, and have drawn up my own verdict. I would like to know yours.

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With the declaration of 2nd and 4th Saturday as holidays for bank, my argument that I don't have a 5 day week like before has lost half of it's credibility. And I don't know if this piece is the restart, or just another blip on the cardiometer for the observers to realize that this blog hasn't given up it's ghost yet. We'll find out in the coming weeks. 

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So, that's all for this week then.

Have a great weekend!!

'til next week.