The Vortex

I am sitting here listening to some music thinking of what to write. I have been thinking about it for quite some time now. Days, in fact. It’s been what – a good month since I last wrote? Yet, I don’t know from where to begin. I just don’t. And further, where do I go from there?

The US Senator John McCain, after losing the 2008 US Presidential elections, had this often repeated joke when asked about his reactions to the defeat. I wish to tell you the same: that ever since the results, “I have been sleeping like a baby. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry.” But that won’t be true. Nah, for in my case, I have been sleeping a lot more than usual. My sleep cycle is actually quite disturbed. I have always been a night owl, so I am generally all good with late night prowls, but even for me this has been crazy. I am waking up at odd hours. Sometimes at the edge of the evening even, far beyond the dusk. And something about it doesn’t feel right.

I also feel somewhat numb. I am a bit lackadaisical about stuff – even with things that I deeply care about. And it’s not that I haven’t had good experiences. Indeed, I have had amazing experiences: I have beamed at my brother’s convocation, have had engaging conversations with friends, have tasted diversely delicious food, received a panoply of postcards; I have seen a live cricket match at the Wankhede (yes, the one in which South Africa went crazy!), witness a brilliant Taiwanese Opera, visited a UNESCO World Heritage Site; and a lot lot more; all in the last twenty odd days. Still, there is this blahness about me which now runs as a default.

I am unable to do stuff. I have all these ideas that I wish to work upon. Yet, I am not working on them. Even to me, they are threatening to become mere pipe dreams. And I am livid about it. Still, I am not doing anything. Nothing at all.

I find myself in this vortex of sorts. This disgustingly deplorable vortex wherein each day I promise myself to do better – to be better – and by the end of it, the promise gets postponed for the next day where the same nonsense repeats itself and then again and then again. It has to stop. Oh yes, it has to!

I figure a part of the problem is also in my desire to get things right before I begin. I don’t know what this getting it right is all about but I still want to get so. As if that is how I’ll get through this mess that I find myself in, only that I am getting deeper and deeper into it. I am now thinking that all of these whimsical ideas of procrastination and getting it right and what not are but manifestations of my being caught up in the vortex.

All of which ends today.

I think I am just going to begin. Right or not. I am sick and tired of all this moping business. I have had enough. I just can’t do it anymore. I just can’t.

See you on the other side of this vortex. Hopefully today itself. Hopefully really soon.

Many Happy Returns Of The Day

When you miss someone, what do you miss about them? Is it a moment? An experience? A thing they said or used to say? Something which reminds you of them? What is it?

And how does it come about?

The other day, on my birthday, as I was receiving calls from friends and family, and they were all wishing me the usual ‘Happy Birthday!’ or ‘Janmdin ki hardik shubkamnayein!’ and the likes, I felt the absence of a couple of statements said in their own quintessential voices. And then it hit me that I will never listen to those voices ever again. For the people who used to say them are no more. They are gone in some other realm. And I am not too certain of a life after death, and even if it does exist, whether or not I’ll meet them somewhere post it.

My Nanaji always used to wish me as, “_____ ji, many happy returns of the day!” He had this style about him which was endearingly pleasant – soft spoken, sincere and cordial. I quite liked getting wished from him. I thought it added gravitas to the occasion of my birthday. He would then pass on the phone call to my Naniji, who did what almost all nanis in the world do, pamper. The whole experience was heart warming and it always made me smile. Indeed, even just thinking about it right now, I am smiling.

Then four years ago, my Naniji passed away due to a medical complication arisen because of the mistakes made by the doctors. It’s a story in itself and you might have heard of many such tales already. Two years and two months later, my Nanaji passed away too, because of a heart attack, though we all knew he missed my Naniji terribly and cases of death after spousal demises are indeed a scientific term in themselves. And the wishes with their voices were gone forever, at least from this life of mine.

On this birthday of mine, as I was mostly alone with my thoughts, I had a profound moment when I missed those voices. I wanted someone to call me and wish me ‘Many happy returns of the day!’, but then maybe I would have missed them even more. I wondered why we miss people and I thought about death and its multiple manifestations. So well, death, the ever present inevitable reality, did mark its presence on my birthday as well. Rather circle-of-lifey, if I may so say.

I Can Be Anything That I Want To Be

You remember as kids when we were told that we could be anything that we wanted to be; that we were special and gifted and talented and smart and intelligent and what not; that the world was but our oyster – and our future was immeasurably bright and high? Yeah, some of us, including me, believed that. Some of us went even a little further and literally took the meaning of ‘anything’ to be well, anything. Not what we wanted to, heck, I didn’t even know what I really wanted to do for most of my childhood, but there was always this belief inside me that I could be anything that I so desired – that it was just there for me to take it. All I had to do was to want it enough, because once I did and realized my desires, of course, I would have been successful. Of course.

All of this loosely translated into well, everything. As time began to make me feel its progress, and as I read on a regular basis about top inventors, leaders, business persons, players, musicians, writers, lawyers, filmmakers, visionaries and others, all on the top of their games, I always felt interesting emotions within me. There was, of course, admiration for the people who were able to achieve these things, but also jealousy and pangs of regret. For I sensed that with each decision that I took, especially including the delays in taking them, instead of letting me be anything that I ever wanted to be, they ended up reducing my options, and that too considerably. I now couldn’t be that or that or even that.

Truth be told, I have been confused for a major part of my life. I know it’s a luxury with so many people struggling to make even their basic sustenance demands met. Yet, I have been confused. At times, I think it’s to do with my malcontent and melancholic temperament. At other times, I feel as if there’s actually a lot amiss. In my pursuit of being anything that I ever wanted to be, I never really figured out what that thing particularly was. And as I met and read about people with their varied lifestyles and choices, I always wondered, ‘Will I like to do something like that?’ I doubt that I have done so in its entirety, ever. Yet, I don’t mind incorporating the attributes and the attitudes of the best of people in me. I doubt any one will mind that. For we all love to compare the highlights of others lives to our own ‘behind the scenes’, don’t we? Especially if one hasn’t been as successful, like I believe I haven’t been, as of this moment, the more one reads about other people doing great things, the more this “I could be anything” transforms into “I could have done that”, and soon into “Why am I not doing that?”; a plethora of which troubles one’s mind to no end.

I think I have to make peace with the fact that I will not be a founder and a CEO of a giant enterprise affecting the lives of millions, or a top notch filmmaker creating beautiful and profound mass films, or a genius sportsperson changing the way the game is played, or an international lawyer brokering for world peace, and some of the other such magnificent roles – which I generally assumed to have been in my ‘anything’ profile. A part of me says, “Oh, but it still is in the profile. I could do that.” but well, you get the drift.

I have always been a dreamer, I still am. In my fourth class report card, they mentioned in the remarks section how I just used to dream during class. Well, yes I did and I still do. I believe dreaming is good. It’s a wonderful exercise and it creates extraordinary avenues, but so does knowing which field it is that one wishes to become something in. Essentially, I think it’s about being able to say to oneself, yes, I could have been anything but this is what I wish to be. And this is all that will make me happy.

If one can say that, one is lucky indeed. As for the rest of us, that anything, which we believed we could be, will create weird feelings within us as we navigate this world full of people all doing something or the other. We still can be anything that we so desire. Yes, it is true. Just that it needs a bit of effort and passion, and sometimes a lot of it.

Day Fifty Seven – Growing Up

It’s early in the morning and I am quite hungry. I go to the kitchen and there are packets full of biscuits kept in the drawer: cream biscuits and cookies. I used to love the lot of them when I was a kid. Oh, you just had to leave a packet unguarded and soon it will disappear. I could have guaranteed it. It didn’t matter what flavour they were. I liked everything – orange, chocolate bourbon, jam, even elaichi and pineapple. Today, however, I didn’t even pick up the packet. I am still hungry, ragingly so, but somehow I don’t quite like the taste of cream biscuits anymore. It’s a shocker to my consciousness, and I am sure the kid me will look at the present me with questioning eyes, but I think my tastes have changed a little.

When I was a kid I was often asked, “What will you like to be when you grow up?”. I used to give random answers to the question: from a fighter pilot and a tennis player to an artist and an entrepreneur, depending on the mood. I once even told a Shankaracharya on being asked the same, “I don’t know”. He simply just smiled philosophically. Well, irrespective of whether I know so or not of what I wish to become, I have been getting this nagging feeling within me that I have now grown up. And that whether I like it or not, this phase is here to stay. It can’t be undone. I must do the adult things now. Do something for the society, earn money, be a part of the economy, talk responsibly and politically correct, have a control on oneself and one’s desires, and the likes. Of which the kid me will say, ‘Ah, boring! Let’s go have fun.’

Yeah, about that.

I am reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes comic, which I earlier shared on Children’s day, that states – becoming an adult is one of the dumbest things that one can ever do.

 

Maybe and maybe not. I think it depends on what one does as an adult. Living in nostalgia and doing things which one did as a kid may not be such great ideas then. It seems to me that it’s time to actualize the realization of growing up. Nothing ever gets done on its own. The wheels of fortune and life need to be set in motion. The grass shall only be greener where it is tended to. So please my dear childlike me, please do.

The Lost Time

I am sitting at my desk staring at the screen of my computer. I am supposed to be reading opinions and analysis of current events. Well, actually I was supposed to have finished reading them by now, but I haven’t yet. Instead, the page is open and I am staring at it, lost in a myriad of thoughts. As I gaze at the white spaces of the screen, electronic impulses run through my body. It is akin to getting goosebumps but not exactly. It’s a different feeling – a feeling of fear or nervousness of a sort. I don’t know what exactly but I can sense it in almost the whole of my being. My heart’s beating a little faster. My legs are as if the shore being washed away by wave after wave of sensory movements.

Thoughts are flooding in my head. Thoughts of earlier and recent failures, thoughts of non-completion of most of the things that I wished to do, thoughts of me getting older, thoughts of me amounting to no good, thoughts of comparisons, thoughts of incomprehension, and other such thoughts generally of an overwhelming nature – I should have done this by now. I should have been that by now. Instead, here I am experiencing this, whatever this is.

This road seems a lonely one. This road makes me wonder, albeit a little too much at times. I open up a book and I am reading something, and my brain goes, ‘Why?’. I don’t know how to respond to it at times. Of course, I answer it but the series of whys can often take one into a route where one never intended to venture. The detour ends up engulfing a lot of time which would have perhaps been better utilized focusing on the book. But the detour happens nonetheless and the timelines get all messed up.

I still sit at my desk trying to read something which I should have finished reading a long time ago but haven’t yet. Thoughts flood in once again. Electrical impulses wave through once again. I still wonder.

One day, I think I’ll go search for all the lost time of mine. Maybe I’ll find something. Or maybe I won’t. Eventually, however, I hope I will figure out what it is that I’m experiencing and why. I have to. But what if I never do?

And here we go again.

Time Triumphs All

It was a gloomy day. Speedy had died. Upset and uninspired, I had only returned back after burying it, when I sat down with my computer and opened up the blog. I felt rather miserable. I was in no particular mood to write. The only idea that I had in my head, related to writing, was that of an obituary for Speedy. And although it had to be written, I wasn’t much keen to do it right then. Therefore, I went straight to the log of days section. It was already eight o’clock in the evening and I thought Speedy’s death would perhaps be the strongest memory that I’ll have for the day. I doubted that anything could top it. I, thus, wrote in the entry for the day, the only time I have ever done so before the day actually ended:

Sunday, the 12th of April – Day of Speedy’s death

I later went on to write its obituary titled ‘In Memoriam: Speedy‘.

A couple of hours later, the mains results were announced. I hadn’t qualified. I immediately went into a state of disbelief. It appeared as if nothing made sense. I searched for my roll number again and again and again on the list. But the number wasn’t there. Indeed, I even searched for it again a few days ago when the UPSC was issuing summon letters for the successful candidates to call them for the interview. This time they had an interactive input box in which one could write one’s roll number, and one’s date of birth, and enter. I was still hoping that it was all a giant mistake. It wasn’t. My roll number still wasn’t there.

I hadn’t qualified.

Nonetheless, as I took stock of my situation, the memory of Speedy’s loss was, in a way, triumphed by the later announcement of the mains results. It appeared to me as if Speedy’s death happened a long time ago and the result was a new tragedy altogether. Which, in all honesty, it was.

A few hours later, after recovering a bit from the shock, I went back to my computer and edited the day’s entry. It now read, which it still does to this day, as:

Sunday, the 12th of April – Day of Speedy’s death; and the unsuccessful mains results

As I wrote it, I learnt an important lesson – Never underestimate time. For time triumphs one and all; without fail and without exceptions. Since that day, I have never written the log of days before the day in question is long over. For who knows what time has in its mysterious and all pervading mind?!

I am reminded of a short story from the Mahabharata which I heard as a kid. Once a monk asking for alms came to visit Yudhisthira, who by then, post the war, had become a great king. It was evening. Yudhisthira had been kept busy by his state work for the whole of the day and he was quite tired because of it. He, thus, sent the monk away asking him to come back again, the following day, to receive the alms. Yudhisthira further promised that as a token of his appreciation, his gifts will far exceed the monk’s expectations. The monk obliged and left.

Bhima, Yudhisthira’s younger brother, was watching all this. After the monk left, he went to the gates of the palace and started drumming out loud. A lot of people gathered. He proclaimed to the audience that it’s a joyous occasion, one that needs celebrations and an announcement, for his brother Yudhisthira had achieved victory over time. Yudhisthira was baffled by this. He asked Bhima to explain his bizarre behaviour. Bhima, in reply, said that since Yudhisthira knows that firstly, he will be alive the next day; secondly, that he will have the requisite resources to donate the next day; and thirdly, that the monk will come back the next day; Yudhisthira has certainly achieved victory over time.

Yudhisthira got the hint. He called back the monk and felicitated him there and then.

No one achieves victory over time; not even the greatest of kings; not even mythological characters. Time triumphs us all. As I said, I learnt an important lesson that day. Never again shall I make the mistake of assuming something about time. Time demands to be respected and it should be; for it deserves so as well. It’s one of the greatest, if not ‘the’ greatest, most unpredictable and uncontrollable ding-an-sich that there is.

I leave you with a quote by a friend of mine,

“Value time, and in time you will be valued”

I personally have no expectations for the latter half of the quote; but value time, we must.

Things Left Unsaid

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

– Red (Morgan Freeman) in ‘Shawshank Redemption’
(written by Frank Darabont; based on a Stephen King novella)

These happen to be my favourite lines from the movie, Shawshank Redemption. Not only because Morgan Freeman voice helps a lot in making it so, which is a given, but because I like the idea of some things being best left unsaid. For then the listener can draw umpteen interpretations and imagine, for each, his or her own words. Which I find can be quite nice sometimes.

As I listen to music from other worlds, from groups like SigurRos or DakhaBrakha, I am tempted, given my love for the written word, to find the meaning of the songs that they sing. I wish to read their lyrics, translate them and draw interpretations from them. Yet sometimes, for the songs that I really love and adore, I don’t do that. And when I don’t, I often recount the above quote. For maybe then, I don’t want to know the artists’ intentions and interpretations of their own music. Because to me, they have become something and that something may or may not correspond to the artists’ ideas, if at all. Heck, I am not even sure whether I want them to correspond.

That’s the thing about good art. It affects each person in its own inimitable way. Not only the artists, who of course especially are moved by it, for they have after all created it, but its appreciators too. Both of whom can be, and usually are, influenced quite differently.

A part of me, however, argues for the opposite. It tells me that although I may romanticize the idea of things being better left unsaid, I don’t know what I am missing out on and I may never realize it either, if I continue to do so. It further argues, and to good effect, that if I try finding the meaning that the artists’ imply and give it a patient ear, I may end up enjoying the art a lot more than I did before. Even if I do not, why can’t I think of it as another interpretation and add it to the umpteen other interpretations that I may have drummed up. If art can truly work its inimitable magic on each separately, as I earlier mentioned, and all are more or less valid, why is it that I give more credence to the artists’ interpretation than my own. I shouldn’t. And this to the rest of me seems like quite a convincing argument.

I am, thus, torn.

Are some things better left unsaid? Or should one strive to find all possible meanings behind things and only then, if the unsaid interpretation appears best, choose it. Also, will this process, in itself, make one lose some charm for the art. I am not too sure. It can certainly. This further leads me to another question. Are we romantic about things because we don’t know better or because we do and yet choose to be romantic about it? Or both? How does romanticism actually work?

I am going to go think about it. Or maybe just leave it unsaid; for you to draw your own interpretations. Either way, I am ecstatic that music doesn’t have any language barriers. Or does it?

How to become an IAS officer

Okay. It has taken me a good part of one and a half months to recover from the absurd failure in the mains of last year and get my focus right where it should be – on qualifying and becoming a top notch IAS officer; in what will be my last attempt. But well, as they so loudly proclaim, better late than never.

Now that I am here, I am going to make a few changes in my approach. I am no longer going to assume, even in the slightest, that the UPSC civil services examination tests one’s intelligence, smartness, knowledge, innovation or creativity; or any other bizarre combination of the lot. I am, thus, not going to discuss or moot any original ideas in the paper, at all. I am also not going to touch upon anything that is even remotely controversial. Instead, I shall strive, at least in the examination papers, to be as conformist as possible. It appears as if it is the only way to actually qualify.

This examination is perhaps designed to test one’s persistence and conformism. Not anything else. It seems to me, therefore, that maybe I was looking at it from an entirely wrong perspective. It’s not about what you know or who you really are or whether or not you can be a good administrator. No. It’s about what they want to read in your answer sheets and who they want you to be as an aspirant. Well, so be it. If they want conformism, I shall give them conformism. I shall persist through till I get in.

Of course, this means that I have lost some respect for the institution and the examination process on the whole. But that’s irrelevant. What really matters is getting in through that bloody door. For I’ll be rather be inside the office and do something about things than whinge around on the outside. Becoming an IAS officer, at least as of now, seems like a gateway to that.

Thus, here’s to the next seven months wherein I master the art of becoming an IAS officer. Amen.

Do

I met my college friends after a period of three years. I had been aloof in this while. A self imposed exile, if you would be so kind, to prepare for the civil services. A lot of them, indeed it seems all of them, have done great things in the interim. There are people who have developed technological products to help solve problems. Many have started up companies. Many have even exited and started up again. Many are working in the exciting fields of e-commerce, education, mobile apps, finance and investment, oil, consultancy, travel, information technology, big data, healthcare and the likes, to name a few. I have failed the UPSC examinations twice in a row and am back to square one.

There are no easy ways of saying this and so I shall say it at the outset – if one obsesses about one’s own ego and takes to heart the countless jokes which can be made and will be made amongst a gathering of friends like this about one’s own lack of tangible and appreciable successes, something which happens especially as one prepares for the UPSC examinations, one is going to have an unbearably difficult time. Thankfully, I didn’t. Indeed I quite enjoyed myself. Not because I am that awesome or any other such ridiculously narcissistic self-serving reason but because my friends truly were, for the lack of a better word, quite interesting. For they have been up to a lot of incredible and impressive things. Just hearing to their tales, and there were a lot of them, sped away the time all relative. All I had to was pay a patient ear and learn a thing or two, which I did to good effect. Apart from cracking the joke that is, “I solemnly swear I am up to no good”.

There is something quite powerful about the idea of letting go of ego – of this ever present conscious feeling of one’s own self – that ‘what am I doing’; ‘what have I done’ nag – which when accomplished even partially relaxes one phenomenally. I am not that important, really. It’s just for me to realize and be comfortable with the idea. I do wish the deeds I do and the projects I undertake to be important. They will be at the very least to me. But even if I am doing the most important deed in the whole world – and I wonder what that will be – I will still not become important. Nor should I assume myself to be so. For it’s all about the love of the craft, isn’t it? Today one person is doing it. Tomorrow another will. All aspiring hopefully to make for a better world and a better future. Rest are all just illusions we made up to gratify ourselves and live a better life. Which ironically is lived better without them.

Talking to my friends and listening to their tales of the beautiful work they are doing, I have drawn a conclusion – it isn’t the perfect people or the best people who do great things and find out great solutions to difficult problems, it’s the one who try. The ones who strive. The ones who do. There is no perfect occasion to begin a task. No signs from heaven to tell one when to begin either. No messiah to guide what to do or where to go. One just has to get up and start. It begins then. Like it always has. Perhaps like it always will be.

Good Enough

If I were to be absolutely honest with you, I don’t think I have really worked hard for anything in my life so far. Most of the times I have gotten through by the virtue of a bizarre mix of minimum intelligence, likability and luck alone. Thus, as the poet Kipling wrote, I have never really filled the unforgiving minute, with sixty seconds worth of distance run. Also, I don’t think I am the only one with this predicament. I think there are a lot of us, especially in my generation. Probably you are one too.

You see, most of the things about life and in life, starting right from school examinations and sports matches to getting jobs and making a living, can be accomplished without going all out and trying really hard, especially if you’re a little bit brilliant and are of an intelligent disposition, which let’s face it, I think you know that you are.

Yes, you may not get the best of what you can get, or even accomplish that feat of your dreams, but you can certainly get something to satiate you enough for you to ignore the obvious.

Be it through money or comfort or the very fact that hard work is at the end of the day, well, hard – one has to put in the long hours and sacrifice on a lot of things – we have more or less convinced ourselves that well, this is alright. This is good enough for now. And strangely enough, it is. It is good enough. It perhaps isn’t what you wanted to get at the start of your journey but it is good enough. No one can doubt that. You can live a good enough life with it. Maybe even more than that. But you may still find that little voice within you promising yourself – thinking, wishing and dreaming possibly – that maybe someday in the future, you shall work harder. Not now but certainly someday in the future when the time and the mood is right. Most of the times that someday never comes. It hasn’t yet for me.

Then there is the factor of discipline. Many of us can work really hard when under the tutelage of another person directing and dictating us what to do. But when it comes to depending upon one’s own will and discipline, which is the reality in most of our lives, we don’t do that well. Not even close. Oh, how many of us have been desirous of finding that ever so kind yet strengthening coach? The Dumbledore to our Harry, the Morpheus to our Neo, the Obi-Wan Kenobi to our Luke Skywalker; you get the drift. Someone who’ll come over and tell us that we are, somehow, the chosen one and that the fate of the planet earth depends on our endeavours. And then maybe, we shall strive to the best of our abilities. Alas! No one really comes. I have already waited for a good quarter of my life. Yes, I aim to go past the century age barrier.

Life goes on and soon, we find ourselves in the entanglements of the good enoughs: comforting, easy and secure. Still promising to ourselves of that someday though, but that voice gets feebler each passing day.

There are ghosts of our past as well, which are added to this tale. I don’t wish to talk too much about them, for I am still recovering, but just quote Goethe again at you,

Each indecision brings its own delays, 
And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days,

The past is truly best kept, most of the times, in the past. We may be a sum of all our past parts, but our future won’t be. It’s critical to take that into account and make sure it remains so.

I was once questioned of the possibility of a burn out as a consequence of working too hard. I looked at the questioner and laughed. “Burn out?”, I wondered, “Here, I don’t even light up properly. Don’t even warm up.” Yes, may be those who try really hard, give it all and still don’t succeed experience stinging pains of burning out. Even if they do succeed, they still may face it and many often do. But I have a feeling that the experience of sighs merely wishing for what would have happened if you had given it all isn’t that great either. The what ifs suck too. Knowing that you didn’t try hard enough is a terrible realization. It gives birth to regrets and they eat you up from within. Still, it’s all good enough. It’s the good enough life.

I fucking hate good enoughs.