5 things I learned this week (Part 1)

I’ve tried daily blogs. And I’ve been more successful in that than I expected. But like most of my other ventures, it became spasmodic and ultimately fell at the hands of its maker. Its’ corpse is preserved – mummified - in this online pyramid that we call the internet.

Anyways, so much for that. “Let bygones be bygones” goes one of my favorite sayings.

This is a new venture. And I would like it to be successful like my recent ventures. As the blog title suggests, I’ll be making a weekly note of 5 new things that I learnt during the week that was.

So, let’s begin this week’s countdown (or countup).

Did you know…

1. that there is a difference between Learned and Learnt?

While researching (read “googling”) the title for this very blog, I was stumped as to which of the above two words I should use. After further research, it turns out that LEARNED (having knowledge) is more of an adjective – used to describe a person.  And LEARNT (gained knowledge) is, well, the past tense of learn.

2. that the distance between the two axles of wheels on a bus is to be a maximum of 6 meters?

True story. ;)

3.  that it is possible for Gabbar Singh and Phoolan Devi to have a relationship?

Gabbar Singh (fictional character from the legendary movie “Sholay”) and Phoolan (real life character from our crappy life) are well known protagonists of their own evil, wicked stories. Both are similar in most aspects of their life, are egoistic and would take any step necessary to win their own battle. This led me to think that they can’t be a couple (without having a counselor telling them to calm down every 5 minutes). Well, apparently, they can be a couple. And I’m happy for them. 

That was a personal rant, and if you didn’t understand it, please be pleased to know that the people it was meant for, understood it.

4.  that the use of reflective tiles on the floor of adjacent bathroom stalls (with stall’s walls hovering one feet above the ground as they do in the so called "modern lavatories ) shall lead to uncomfortable scenes when you trying to go?

5. that, for the present future, I don’t have a fifth point to tell you? :P

Have a great weekend!!!

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

Day 3, Time 13.00

Debilitating Depression. That’s what Google says I’m going through right now. Literally, it means being depressed to such an extent that you make yourself weak and vulnerable to further depression, which as you would have guessed, puts me again at the starting point of this vicious cycle.

I’ve read that the third day is the hardest. The day when you realize that you’ve siphoned off the last of your adrenaline juice. Oh my sweet, sweet adrenalin!!! My great warrior!! You’ve fought the battle valiantly for me. But now, I know it is just me against the monster. It taunts me into going back to my old ways, constantly reminding me of the sweet memories I’ve had in the past.

To try not to think about those memories, I tried to read articles about quitting addictions. Here are a few excerpts that caught my eye.

“…Expectations are higher than ever before. Yet the one thing you depended on to cope with stress -- the addictive behavior -- is now off limits. This is why it is so important to have other ways of coping firmly established, ideally before quitting…”

Well, that’s just great. I should have read about things like this before I stopped doing something which was second nature to me. Now, I’m here – all alone, helpless and vulnerable – and I have to try to force me away from my addiction without a specific plan.

“…Ambivalence, the mixed feelings of both wanting to continue with the addictive behavior and wanting to quit, is part of the addictive process…. Often, this is felt in terms of "right" and "wrong," a moral dilemma….”

And this moral dilemma is further compounded by the following argument…

 "I would rather live a shorter life and be happy than quit and be miserable."

Well, that sentence draws a very thin line between right and wrong, and I’m not going to try and push you onto any one side of it. All I say is that you should think for yourself, keeping in mind that it is your life and your decisions, and make a choice.

I’ve read somewhere that all choices in life can be divided into two – the Good and the Pleasant. In this case, the “shorter, happy” life would be Pleasant one, and the “quitting, miserable” life would be the good one. I chose pleasant before. I’m choosing good now.

Upon further reading, I’ve come across the various effects that can arise due to withdrawals from addictions namely - Anhedonia, paranoia, psychosis, anxiety, agitation, suicidal thoughts, and vivid, lucid nightmares etc etc.

Well, I should have expected nightmares since I’m dealing with this monster.

Day 2, Time 19.45

Not much to report from today as it was a holiday at the office, due to the festival of Holi. I would have been halfway on the highway to madness by now, if it weren’t for my juniors. Playing holi, a game of football, a game of cards, 10 hours of sleep and some friendly face-to-face banter helped me keep myself away from the monster. Even though I was enjoying myself, I was constantly reminded of its presence, which was like an unknown shadow following me, waiting for a lapse in my concentration, so that it can make me fall prey to it again.

Luckily for me, I live to see another day in this new path I’ve chosen for myself. I just hope tomorrow will be easy like today.

Day 1, Time 23.15

Office got over slow. I didn’t want it to be so slow, but it was. I still haven’t found that key which controls time yet. Maybe I could have used the years I had in between the minutes I had to pass at the office to find that key. That would be a task worthy of me right now, especially because I don’t know how to pass my time since I quit my addiction.

It wasn’t that tough to rein in my thoughts of going back. I kept hallucinating that there is this huge iron hand holding me by my hair as I try to run back to my dear old friend. That mirage of having an iron fist holding me back did nothing to actually hold me back. The real reason for that was the “new year resolution” syndrome.

You would know how that works. The guilt of going back to do something you decided not to do is really strong on the day after you make that decision. This is normally associated with the way people behave with regards to their New Year resolution - hence the name.

Day 0, Time 20.06

I think I’ve reached the watershed moment in my addiction. Either I quit, or continue living this lie of a life. I don’t know how I’ll be able to live without this, how I’ll plough through these unforgiving times I’ve planned for myself, but I know that I’ll be strong enough to face them. This small effort I’m going to make tonight might be lost into the obscurity as another one of my attempts to quit, or become the single-most influential step I’ve taken till now.

With a prayer to the one watching over me from above to make this not another false-start, I checked the box written “Deactivate” and clicked on the “Save changes” button.  With that, my dear friends, I’ve quit Facebook.

P.S. To make the transition complete, I’ve signed out of chat on Gmail, quit twitter and stopped the internet service on my mobile. From now on, no chats, no pings, no pokes, no whatsapping. If you want to talk to me, meet/call/text me. I’ll do likewise if I want to interact with you. And this blog shall remain the only online portal through which I’ll continue to spew my madness. And you are welcome to not read it, if you find it not to your taste. On the other hand, if you welcome my tirades on life, please feel free to come back another time to check if I’ve something fresh for you to read. Thank you.

POST-SCRIPT

Day 7, Time 20.06

It’s all NOT going fine, but it could have been worse. It’s been seven days and I still am to go back to my old ways. I’ve started reading again, I’m writing again, I’m calling up my friends again, I’m going out (anywhere), I’m thinking of ways to spend my time productively, which includes dusting off the cobwebs on my director’s hat, which I had left untouched since 2010.

It is for exactly these little things that I committed this virtual social suicide for.

"It's not you, it's me."

The cultural shock a conventional South Indian boy receives, when he makes the journey up north in India is something which has to be experienced to be believed. In my case, it was, for the want of a better word, exhausting. Exhausting in the sense that the journey of past three years has made me change the rules and regulations I had cultivated in myself over the 21 years before that.

I've begun to accept the erstwhile unacceptable.

• the temperature outside can be 4 degrees or 49 degrees. Deal with it.
• drinking alcohol isn't a crime.
• drinking alcohol every weekend isn't a crime.
• drinking alcohol during the week, just cos the weekend is still far away isn't a crime.
• you can have a masala dosa for 20 rupees from the roadside, or walk a 100m and have it for 200 inside the mall.
• waking up before 12pm on weekends is a crime, unless you want to catch the "cheaper by 50 bucks" show of that movie you want to watch.
• traffic signals are meant to be more of a guideline than rule.
• a monkey can come inside your apartment, eat the flour, open the fridge, drink some cold water and leave. (I've video proof for this)
• women drivers are allowed to drive on any side of the road, at any speed as they feel.
• If you are unlucky enough, the Rs.150 Tommy Hilfiger tshirt you brought from Karol Bagh, can become so famous that Pallika bazaar starts mass producing the same design in Lee Cooper.
• it's okay for girls to show skin - legs, knees, cleavages and all.
• it's actually practical to wear skin tight clothes in the summer.
• it's only natural to look at the said skin and/or skin tight bodices.

I've say to that the things I have said above is not unheard of in the south, but from where I come from, from the kind of values my family has tried to cultivate in me, alcohol, breaking of rules and provocative dressing is a big no-no. (Luckily, I haven't been given any guideline on what to do about the last point.) What I'm basically saying is that someone else coming from the south might be at ease with all of these, but I've been schooled in a different me.

Again, the underlying concept that I wanted to convey to you can be presented in the clichéd break up line "It's not you, it's me." 

I think that if instead of the national capital and the millennium city, if I had been designated to a more Indian-ized town/city, then I wouldn't have this much of a shock. But well, the shock has come and gone, and I'm still here.

I would like to believe that I've matured over the past 3 years. The friends, the situations and the public has changed me, hopefully for the better. If you don't believe me, let me give you some instances.

Once in college, one of my friends asked me to lend him my bike so that he can go and buy some "stuff" for the party he was hosting that night. I said "No, nothing of that sort is gonna come near my bike." And in the last 3 years, I've been the chauffeur for many a drunk/high individual.

Before, I would switch off my bike's engine at a red light. Now, when I'm running late for office, I have to think twice about whether to cut the light or not.

Again, in college, I noticed that some guys were passing lewd remarks about a classmate cos of the dress she was wearing. I gave her a mouthful of advice at the first chance I got (no effect from the advice though). In the past 3 years here, I've accepted that lewd remarks and provocative dressing are something that's part of life.

The experiences at workplace has been sobering. Hard work and commitment is not the path to success it seems. May be it is, but there seems to a lot of short-cuts to reach success and I'm not familiar with any.

As you can see, the naive, young, almost-stupid-enough-to-believe-anything boy, who came to Gurgaon on 29th June, 2010 is not the guy currently spamming your brain. He was the innocent and dependable guy you would see in the movies. Now, he is confused about what he is. I think I'm somewhere between the comical sidekick and the dark alter-ego.

I would like to believe that the innocent guy is still in their somewhere, but I'm not so sure anymore....

P.S. I would like dedicate this insane rant of mine to Mr. Mahavir Singh Rawat. He pinged me in the morning at office asking why I hadn't blogged in the past 6 months. The words of encouragement from him is what made me sit here and write this rant out. So now you know whom to beat up.. ;) :P

The Season - Episode 1

The following was posted in my "Pasture of Lunacy" blog on Aug 11th, 2010. More than 2 years later, I have had someone asking me, what happens after this episode. And so, I've started on episode 2. Just thought I would re-post the original here, with a few changes here and there (given in italics) for you people to read through. Expect the next post in a week.

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The way my final year at college shaped up would be of the range of the final Harry Potter book. But what made it even better than that was the way I got my job. The whole drama, stretching over a year can be compared to a comedy TV series or a year at some league for a club or a feel-good movie.

The initial setbacks, the incessant heart breaks, the half time reprieve, the loss of everything you wanted, the never say lost attitude, which was later found out to be plain ego (this being the part where the obvious truth hits you in the face just before you do the right thing), the last fight, the unbelievable luck, the happy ending. It had it all.

Maybe that’s why I decided to call it ‘The Season’. How over the course of twelve months I found out a lot of things the hard way, only to realize that I had learnt these lessons long back. Normally, you would put the moral at the end of the story, but I’m going to give it right now.

Never have an ego bigger than your shadow at noon.

How this is applicable in my life, as I’m sure it’ll be in yours, will be described below. I’m going to describe my final year in the way a manager would file his monthly reports for his football team. Hope you have fun reading it.

Pre-Season

The pre-season was pretty much a local affair. Before I go into the details, let me give you an idea of how things were. Since joining CET, my parents wanted me to keep up a ‘decent’ 8 pointer by the time I passed out. It’s not that I didn’t try. I did what I thought would be enough in the first year. Sadly, the University wanted more. And my seniors were at hand to give me this ‘valuable’ advice,

      •     It’s practically impossible to get an 8 pointer average after getting 7.5 for the first year.

      •     If you can maintain a 7.5 average, you’ll get a decent enough job.

I decided that instead of trying to do something ‘impossible’, I should better find ways to use my time at college so that I’ll have all the fun I could have there. (By the way, this is for the lazy ones among you. There are people who got an 8 pointer average after getting in the 7’s in first year, and there are people who scored a big job, even with a just above 7 average).

Luckily the ‘extra-curricular’ activities that I decided to take part in didn’t ruin me. It actually helped me in having a commendable resume by the time companies came. But it was also the basic reason for the swelling of my ego bubble.

First of all, there was the choice of career that was made by two kinds of people – the pure hearts and the self-conscious fools. The difference was in the ken of the two kinds. The pure hearts knew where they were going and what they were going to do, and most of them ended up reaching there; while the self-conscious fools thought they knew where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do, but ended up choosing and doing what they got. 

Broadly speaking there were four types of jobs on offer,

1. Core Engineering Jobs. (CGPA > 8)

2. Management Jobs. (CGPA > 7.5)

3. Embedded Systems Jobs (CGPA > 7.5)

4. Software Jobs (CGPA > 6.5)

And my order of choice was Embedded, Software, Management and Core.

Embedded first, cos I had done my fair share of robotics. We went with what looked like a scrap heap of a robot, unashamedly exhibited it at different fests, rode our luck, won a few, lost many, but still loved every bit of it.

Software second cos I've always had a knack for computers and programming. My dad brought our first computer when I was in 4th, and taught me the wonders of programming in the teen years. I've to thank him for the skills I've learned in using computers, and in programming.

Management third, cos I was remotely interested in doing an MBA at that time, and cos CORE had to come fourth.

Core takes up the last position cos I was itching to say goodbye to the subjects I was busily studying for the last three years.

Anyways, let me talk more about the job scenario. Recession was at its best during June 2009. You couldn’t ask for a worse time to look for a job. And here we were, about 500 students sitting inside the college (see, I didn’t use the word ‘class’, but the word ‘college’ ;) ), hoping someone would come, call us up and give us a job with a fat paycheck, like we used to dream about when we joined the college.

So, with a difficult environment, a bleak chance at any dream job, but with a puffed opinion of myself, I did my pre-season preparations. I went around asking seniors for ‘advice’ (I never learnt to stop doing that. :D ) And that’s when I found my first love. A 5 lakh a year worth payday, located at Bangalore, great working atmosphere, wonderful work in the field of my second choice. Words used to flow in torrents when DSK (deepak sasikumar) described his company. He hadn’t even joined then and he was having a jolly time thinking of going there. It got all those juniors who listened to him, to make THOUGHTWORKS their dream company. But before I go into the tryst I had with TW (that’s what we called it), we’ve to go through the month of July. And man was it a month to remember.

July

Sometime in the middle of July, when we were just back after another university, we started hearing rumors of it. IOC was coming to campus, 7.8L CTC, government job to top off everything great and nice about it. And, dispelling the rumors it did come. That’s when the season started for us, CET 2010. Ten people each from Electrical, Mechanical and Civil were called up based on CGPA to attend a direct interview. On the date of the interview, we had actually planned an Industrial Visit (a real one to NTPC). But since many of my friends were in the top 10, I decided to go with them later. I was planning to go to college and support them for their first interview, but I ended up playing cricket the whole day. But in the evening, I heard the happy news.

Four people from Electrical became the lucky ones to get a job first. And it included my project mate. I was happy as I could be. But that was not for long.

When I told at home about them getting the job, my parents were giving me another perspective. What if I had actually studied and got an 8 point average. I could have at least attended the interview, and maybe come home saying “I got a job.”

They didn’t actually hate me. But they hated the way I wasted my chances in life. And seeing them sad made me wish I had done things differently. Sadly, there’s always a time for everything. And now wasn’t the best time.

And with August showing no companies coming our way, we were left to our own thoughts and devices. I was preparing, for my dream company, TW which came soon enough.

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Thoughtworks came and went. So did L&T, IBM, Bosch, CTS, Deloitte, TCS, Mahindra, et al. I ended up in GS Engineering and Construction. It is where I'm still now, and I'm loving it

Sorry Shaktiman

Well, it happened.. I've finally gone mad thinking about what to do with my life..


One year into my job, I was convinced that I liked working better than studying.. So out went the norm option among my mates of going for MTech, MBA or MS.. You can't blame me.. I had such a hard time studying for BTech, that just the thought of taking up a book makes me drowsy. It's true, literally.. I took up my 1st year basic electrical text last week to "brush up" on my basics, and I was asleep within 10 mins..I had the same problem when I was in college, except for the days before exams, when the tension wouldn't let me sleep..


So, with the option of higher studies out of the way, I put in every effort I could into my job, hoping that that is the way my life is going to get better.. (In case you didn't notice till now, my life sucks.)


Well, long story short.. That didn't work out either.. Let's just say that my company and I have different views on what a "deserving reward" for work is..


And that brings us to the elephant in the room, who we have been conveniently ignoring in spite of its repeated stomps.. But I think I'll ignore it again and just move on..

Well, the whole point of all this rambling is that, it's a Sunday on yet another weekend.. I'm still cooped up in my room, lying awkwardly on my bed.. I'm down in the dumps for things I know I shouldn't care about.. And to avoid a repeat of last weeks breakdown, I'm planning on starting a new hobby.. To do the one thing I think most people would agree I do good.. A thing, for which, the expectations of the world and mine are the same.. The fact that I can write/blog averagely good enough.. Maybe even slightly better.. (Okay.. I confess.. I stole that line from somewhere)

So, I've decided to bring back to life my other blog (yeah, I've many), http://thedailylore.blogspot.in/... or as it is not-so-famously known as "bits and pieces of my day".. From now on, whenever I feel like killing myself or something there about, I'm just gonna write something, and put it up there.. I know you would be looking down upon me like dollar on rupee, but the thing is you are all I have.. And you are the only one who takes time to hear me out..

And, oh yeah.. about the title.. That's something which just popped up into my head then.. Not connected in any way to anything I said over here..

By the way, I gotta go.. The elephant seems to be really pissed off.. I need to feed it something to keep it quiet.. So bye for now, and watch out for me on the daily lore..