Paradox of choice

While in Standard 12th there was only one thing I wanted to do, that was to get into IIT, so I studied day and night and was thrilled when I got through. At IIT I used to live with three people in a room with sub standard infrastructure and attended classes of professors who taught in Greek. But I was very happy; IIT was a vindication of my belief in my talent and myself. But while I was applying for an MBA, I had choices. I got through 3 MBA schools and chose ISB over all others. Now whenever anything went wrong at ISB I used to ask myself if I made the right choice. It was much easier for me to regret my disappointing choice. My mind used to mentally calculate the opportunity cost of my decision and this led to the escalation of expectation that I had from a perfect choice. Thus the extra choice did no good to me, in fact it made me miserable whenever something bad happened as a consequence of the choice I made; say when I didn’t get placed on Day 1, I wondered what would have happened if I had gone to the US. Even though at IIT I didn’t get placed till into the second week of placement I was fine, as I had no choice but this institute. And worse with no choice I could blame the world for my predicament, but here I had all the choices and I was the one who was responsible.

The Dharma of Business

I was 9 at that time, very keen to start my own library. And so I did. I with two of my closest friend on the 1st Monday of May set up our very own library. Everyone was invited, all they needed to pay was an entrance fee of Rs 5/= if they didn’t rent a book, and Rs 2/= if they rented any book. As we started making money we got more and more creative. More money followed. The neighborhood guy Abhay, kept a close watch. Within a week, we were staring at his library, far fancy, and much superior. And then one day we lost everything. Just like that, our dreams shattered. The reason: Water from somewhere destroyed all our books. Five days later we came to know through some internal sources that, it was Abhay’s idea. We were heartbroken and seething with anger, we wanted justice but we had no proof. It was then that my teacher gave me the biggest lesson of my life: At the end of the day you have to do your duty, and if someone comes in between you and your duty, you deal with it through Chanakya’s four principles of Saam (Equality), Daam (Enticement), Dand (Punishment/ war), Bhed (sowing dissension). The dharma of our business was at that time to preserve its existence, in whatever way it could.
I look at a business as an end in itself. We all are cogs in that intricate machinery. Our purpose is to keep it running, because it in a big way defines who we are as owners. It gives us everything, food, clothes and a roof. If anything poses any risk to it, we should defend it. It’s a scary world we’re living in. A world where one can trust no one but oneself, the biggest dharma of our business is to keep itself running and protect itself from the world. In an ideal world everyone would play by the rule and there would be no need to play hard. But this is the real world where and I quote “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain”. The world at some point was fair and then somewhere something went wrong, terribly wrong. And then this ugliness spread until the root of corruption entangled everyone and everything. We are at a point of no return, the only way to fight is to fight hard and fight rough. So I believe it’s ok to undercut if the survival of the business is at stake. In the context of a business it’s nothing more than a creative intervention. There is always someone waiting for you to give them the first chance to destroy you. To fight them you have to think like them. That’s the only way, and that the only right ‘wrong’ way!

A marathon called life!

It was during my last few days at IIT, I was sitting atop OAT wall with two of my closest friends, Piyush and Bhan. We were fretting about how are lives were doomed to the point of no return and how there seemed no tomorrow. We had screwed CAT, the job prospects seemed bleak and our personal lives weren't going anywhere. It was then in a moment of truth Bhan mentioned "Yaar the life is a marathon where we'll live for at least 80 years. So what we've started slow. The track is too long and we can cover up". The argument seemed good but it didn't change my mood. I was still reeling in shock. My great dream was shattered and it didn't feel too good. Three years I struggled with my condition and finally now I understand what he meant. Life and its wondrous uncertainty is humbling and we can never know what it has in store for us. Luck is dynamic and it explains more variance in success that we in our moment of hubris attribute it to. I now appreciate every word of the the statement and am much more satisfied. Still a long way to go!

Coffee and conversations!

Ok, so it is confirmed. The economy is under severe recession. So what? ‘You, me and hum’ are safe. Of-course only inefficient and non-performers get fired. Nothing will happen to me. Or so I thought.

Until it happened. The axe fell. And now I am without a job. Could this really happen? I had always been the best. I attended the best of institutes, got the best grades; my boss said I was his support system; his back bone. How can one throw away his back bone with such disdain?

My brain has started conjuring scary images. What now? How do I tell my friends? What about my parents? What about my wife, my children?

This was not how it was meant to be. I was supposed to have my first car by the time I was 26. I was supposed to move into the 4 BHK South Ex flat before I completed 10,593 days on planet earth. I was supposed to direct my first movie by the time I was 33. Pray, why me?

Am I doomed to die in poverty? Was I destined to be a loser?

Suddenly it starts to rain. There is a deafening noise. An image slowly appears.

Image: My child, I am God. Why are you so upset?

Man: You are asking me this. You brought it on me. Why me. I always studied. I never did anything wrong. Why this?

Image: My son, when I conceived the world, I decided that I would let a man make his own destiny. But this was too much power in the hands of certain people who ended up making their destiny and deciding it for the others. It corrupted the world. So I introduced the concept of luck/chance. The way I distributed the luck -bucket was random and hence was fair. To make it a little more fair, I gave every human some special powers. The power of optimism, the power of hard work, the power of goodness. This way if luck eluded him; he could still redeem himself through these powers. Those who could recognize these special powers enjoyed life; a life which presented challenge, but was still a lot of fun. Those who did not choked themselves to a meaningless existence.

Recognize these powers my son. Do not despair.

The image disappears…..

Man: God, where are you. Don’t go, talk to me…..Gaaaaaawdd!

You and i in this beautiful world,
green grass....blue sky in this beautiful world

Man wakes up…..Hello. ..Yes this is him. What I got fired… (laughs) You bet I did. Don't worry, I have the power.Thank you and have a great day….!! Bye

Hangs up the phone

(To himself) Wow, I never felt better!

Almost Famous!

It’s that time of the year again. The time to evaluate the year gone by and wait in anticipation of the coming year. As I sat down to complete the meaningless exercise, I realized this was not a normal year. I just turned 25 this year, a quarter of a century, and from what I experienced this time passed in ‘no time’. It is then my mind realized the importance of the day; the frightful day.

This is a particularly frightful day that comes in the life of everyone of us. The day when we realize than potentially everyone who is famous is younger than us. It is that day it dawns upon us that life might become frightfully common for us. The acceptance speeches that we had prepared for the Grammys, the Oscar, the carefully maintained shelf we kept for all the Man of the Match awards all bite the dust, and we woefully start the preparation for a quite journey ahead. The journey where everyday would be the same, the day where the similar faces would surround us for the rest of our lives. We would get up at 7:30 in the morning, our wives would serve us coffee (which would be too hot or too cold for consumption), we would enter the bathroom only to realize that the geyser is still to be repaired and would finally ramp up the morning proceedings with a light breakfast; a breakfast full of nutrients to prolong our ‘wonderful life’ to eternity. The day would be full of files and reports; quietly laughing at us; after-all they never took themselves as seriously as we did. Finally after a day full of keyboard punches and random ramblings, we will reach home en-route cursing traffic nineteen to the dozen. Oh! I almost forgot the vegetables. Anyway once we’d reach home, we’ll look at our wife, throw a painful smile at her and before we can even sit, Mr. Sharma from the neighborhood would come and complain about our wonder kid who has slapped his son. After flipping the zillion channels endlessly for an hour, we’d head to the place where we’ll lie motionless for the last 1/3rd of the day.

Wow! I just defined the most horrible life I can ever think of living. The life, where we wait for the weekdays to speed, endlessly enduring Mondays through Fridays, just for the prized weekend. The weekend, which of-course would be spent worrying about the looming Monday.



But before I could put my pen down in frustration, my mind conjured up the images of an everyday man saving the life of 10 odd people in The Taj. Extraordinary, methinks comes in an ordinary package. Perhaps, life gives everyone a chance to break the ordinary, to perform the divine duty that we ought to perform, if only we would dig deeper into ourselves. Perhaps, we in the garb of the ‘Common-man’ can still break the shackles and redeem ourselves. May be we don’t need the media to tell us that we are extraordinary. A quarter of century can never summarize one life. Still a long journey to cover, still a long life to live.

May be there is another achievement in the pipeline. Nobel Prize anyone!

Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free!!

For some strange reasons today, this fine line from arguably one of the finest movies ever made constantly reverberates in my head. Fear it seems does strange things to you. It stifles your senses and takes away every last ounce of confidence that you have. The fear of failure, it seems is the first one to hit. Every small failure adds to its monstrous power, till we are no longer willing to take risk, till every step of ours feels like one step away from fall. We wait for life to offer us an anti-dote. We wail and wait for the defining moment when we would be able to control our lives again. And then hope sets in. We are able to see clearly again. We tell ourselves for the umpteenth time that things would be fine, we rise. We are no more afraid to fall; there is a quite confidence, a clear vision. We are no more bounded by fear; hope has just unraveled the knot. Life is good again. A reason for living, a hope for redemption.

P.S. Did you know if you type ‘reject’ on your phone in the dictionary mode, it spells ‘select’. Probably Nokia knew it better.

Is it back to square one?

So I'm back. The last few weeks have been quite eventful. Finally got to spend a lot of time with my parents.Played a lot of badminton. Took the GMAT on July 19th and am here at the crossroads again. What next? Well of course it seems easy, apply to the Best B-Schools and if I'm fortunate enough to be accepted then take the next flight. But is this as simple. No introspection, no thought, just apply. Which brings me to the more fundamental question. Why MBA, how does it relate to my career goals. Most of us have been quite clueless all our life about what do we want. We've walked the well trodden path, sleep walking through our lives. Our parents decided what subjects we chose, which was again a function of how well we did academically. It all sounded fantastic: go to IIT, then to Harvard, and then to Wall Street, drive a Merc, own a rolex,talk on a vertu blah blah.Is that being ambitious? I believe if all you want out of life is a big house and a merc, you're not ambitious. So while wanting to be loved all your life is being ambitious, wanting to be respected by one and all is ambitious, wanting pots of gold is not. How we decide our careers is by finding out what we can do well (say add,subtract or paint)and then trying to map it to the most profitable career option, if there is a fit, good and our parents clap, if there isn't then we try to fit ourselves to the other side. The most profitable career option stays and we try to fit ourselves into it. Result: Adjustment, compromise and a screwed up life with lots of money. So is MBA another adjustment for me? Thankfully not. It is something I have dreamt of, for reasons other than money. For networking with smart people, for polishing my otherwise raw personality and to reach where I want to. MBA is important to my goals and thankfully for the first time I am aware of what I am doing at every point of time, aware of the reason why I am doing it and aware of where it might take me. So it's application time folks. I hope I can be as forthright in front of my interviewers as well. All the best Shashwat. God Bless!

Life, death and other ramblings!

What is life, a journey, a celebration, a treat to savour?And what is death, the inevitable, the loss of consciousness, the destination? What if one day suddenly the fine line between life and death gets blurred to such an extent that we are not sure which side are we in. This is not another sci-fi movie in the making but an actual event in the life of a friend. So let me introduce you to the lovely Gabriela and let her relate her own story.
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She was sitting in a restaurant overlooking the Ganges, holding a glass of greenish beverage. She felt quite comfortable up there, positioning her face in gentle breeze. The drink had a rather delicate taste and was tapped with a cap of white smooth spume. Her unconscious mind was however already getting aware that the burnt-like odor she smelt was coming from the burning bodies piled at the river’s bank; and that the sweet-like aroma in that very breeze was nothing else but moldiness. Actually, the musty smell was coming from the crowded lanes right below, lanes that have been running for centuries from the Ganges’ banks, full of filth, rats and feces; and have trapped her mind already earlier in the afternoon.

Without any warning sign from above, the buried gloomy feelings at a sudden shot out, turning bottom-up her perception of life and death. Was it an explosion in her mind or somewhere in the bowels of the building? She didn’t have the answers. She had just several confused ideas, her lifeless body tossed over a bed, surrounded by extremely pink walls. Was she dead? Most probably. Was she in heaven? Certainly not.

She was not surprised that she died - or that she didn’t get to heaven. She was expecting the moment of death instinctively all her life. She was much more astonished that a part of her conscious was still alive. How could she be so silly during her lifetime to doubt the after-life? And also - and more importantly – the concept of time completely crashed in pieces. She remembered most of the facts of her life but was unable to chain them down on a time line. All of them jumbled together, arising in her mind one by one but disarranged, without any chronology. She recalled the stories about sequences of pictures from the lifetime running in the head when dying – another sign that she was just leaving this world, if not done already. Besides, she started to feel hot sensation spreading slowly from the feet up her body. Are they already burning her at the Ganges? Without her mom and dad saying good-bye to her? She remembered their lovely faces with a deep sorrow. Her heart became beating so fast that even if she still wasn’t dead, she would definitely die from a heart attack sooner or later. Her conscious was not tied in her head any longer but was floating freely in the space instead. It was like if she could grasp another dimension of the cosmos in its eternity; her mind following different system, not bounded by the limits and rules of her physique envelope.

One point was very clear to her however. She knew she couldn’t stay trapped in there, wherever she was. It had to come to an end. Where will she wake up next morning? With a scream, all covered in blood from a new birth, her mind blank again? She didn’t want to forget. There were so many great people and things worth remembering. The next day, she woke up in the same room. Just the walls weren’t that pink anymore. She felt a burnt scar on her soul, wondering what a queer corner of her mind she just visited.

Passion Inc.

Ever wondered why we lag behind so much in spite of all the talent we have? Why do in a country of over a billion people we have a few medals,a solitary world cup, a FIFA rank of 144, a tennis player ranked 31. Why is that countries irrespective of their economic condition or size continue to dazzle while we happily cheer our mediocrity? The answer is that we lack passion, the passion to perform, the passion to excel, the passion to win. We ask too less of ourselves, one moment of glory lasts us a life-time.They say that O'Eight is gonna be a big year, Sania aims at top 20 (while the Serbs and Russians of the world start at that) , Indian cricket team is finally winning overseas against major opponents, the salaries at IIMs are sky-rocketing, economy is booming. It's all hogwash .The truth is we're still the same, happy doing what we do the best, bask in the glory of our half baked achievements. So what is passion? Passion is what makes Janko Tipsarevic think he can beat Federer, passion is what India showed when it won the T20 World Cup, Passion is what helps one beat a better opponent, Passion is what flows through your veins every time you compete. If you've ever wondered why your half talented friend is at a better place then you, the answer is because he/she is more afraid of loosing than you are. Unless we do something about our innate desire to sleepwalk through our roles, to do everything just as we are expected, unless we start challenging our self a little more, we would never get where we deserve. India would continue to be a factory producing surprisingly similar people capable of random moments of glory, which will be too spaced to be remembered beyond the next failure. After all you never win a silver, you loose the gold!

Obsession!

Roughly translated obsession means a persistent idea dominating a person's mind. On closer observation we can notice it sounds like recession and borders on regression. Yet even though we know what there is to it, we still obsess. From our hair cut, to our salaries, to the colour of our undergarments, we obsess about something or the other. What drives this madness, is there any method to it? Psychologically obsession can most certainly be classified as a disease, you can't seem to get out of a particular thought, it seems to control your actions, and occupies almost every inch of your head. Though the description will be oversimplifying the emotion which is so strong that it makes you weak. Obsession can take many forms. The most common type of obsession is 'obsessive love'. This is accompanied by a negative feeling and low self esteem, where you find yourself dependent on the other. The irony is that it pushes the other person away. He/She is repelled because he/she cannot understand the love, to him/her it is madness. So how does love transform to obsession. It is when we cease to separate the other person from our self, it is when we forget that the other person has a life, an idea of living which he/she has conceptualized. It is when we think that the other person has to like us because we like ourselves, when we believe that our looks, our certificates or at least our salary can win us love. Obsession blurs love, and throws it into oblivion. What is left is madness, the madness to win, the madness to control, the madness to get everything we desire. Unfortunately this is the end, a sorry end, where so much of love is wasted, where emotions get overboard and where every one looses!!

Life and its wondrous uncertainity!!!

Have you ever felt on a particularly bad day that your life is not going in any direction, that you are traveling against the whole world, and that life officially sucks! Well like most of you, I have felt the same many a times in the short span of my existence, though I have realised that most of the time we tend to exaggerate everything and take it to a level where we feel that there is no respite. But there is an auto-correction, the day when we realise that things are not that bad . When we enjoy small inanities, a nice song, coffee with a friend, small talk with a colleague.
On a whole different level it may also happen that something so bad happens that suddenly nothing else seems bad. You laugh at what you were crying. You look at yourself and feel stupid about the days you spent cursing the traffic, howling at your neighbour, fighting with a friend when you could have laughed, called your mom or watched Casablanca. And then there is another auto-correction, you smile to yourself, and tell yourself for the millionth time that you'll be happy. That you'll fight it out, that you'll never give up.
This is life, it always comes a full circle. There is always something or someone that reminds you that there is hope. A hope for redemption, a hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better world, our own la-la land!!

Amen!

What's the point ?

Have you ever wondered "What's the point of our existence?". I know some of you would rather flip through the latest issue of Stardust or Cosmo but isn't it a point worth a thought?Everyday we follow the same routine with amazing sincerity. We wake up, eat, go to work, meet our gf/bf, kiss, talk of Shahid and Kareena, play, watch TV and sleep only to wake up again. Is there any reason why we do all this. Is there a divine duty we ought to perform or are we designed to sleep walk through our lives like this. May be this meaningless existence is the meaning of life. May be we ought to find the meaning and look for our own purpose. May be we ought not to think. Someone once said "Most of the things we do in life are insignificant but it's important that we do them!!". I guess it makes most sense of all I heard all my life.
Anyway I got to go, have to watch TV. Btw I think Saif and Kareena make a great pair!

PS Did you know Anyways is no word!!!