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.

Why we love India!

Let us admit we all love India. We love it despite all its follies, the roads, the lack of amenities, and whatever reasons any NRI can come up with. We are patriotic in our own sweet way. We believe only Indians have the right to say anything against India. It is our birth-right and no one can take that away from us. Yesterday I was having a long animated discussion with my cousin (living outside India) . Clearly he wasn't impressed with the way we Indians (notice how casually he forgot that he was an Indian)struggle for survival. He, completely on a hyperbole ride, mentioned how people in India are fire-fighting creating one invention after the other to sustain, to lead a good life. Ironically, it made me love India even more.These are a few reasons why I love India, the list is in no way exhaustive, but hopefully can get the point across:
a)Hope: We can lose our wallet, our degree, our business, our land, but we never lose hope. Hope keeps us going, hope keeps us afloat when the chips are down. The hope of a better tomorrow, the hope of redemption, the hope of having our own dreamland.
b)Parents:Given a choice an average Indian would love to stay with his/her parents, to still get his/her pocket money, to still get scolded if he/she injures himself/herself. This is our way of knowing that there is someone who cares. Someone who stands by us, no matter what, someone who would never leave us, even if we were born ugly, fat and with single hand and feet.
c)Customs & Tradition: Ever been to an Indian wedding? It's a experience that lasts for days and leaves an impression for life. Whether its the Ladies Sangeet, or the haldi or the tradition of stealing the groom's shoes, the Indian weddings are full of life, warmth and happiness. I love the Indian traditions, whether it's touching an elder's feet or welcoming guests at any hour or the family getting together on festivals.
d)IIT, IIM : The IIT and IIMs are perhaps the greatest institutes in the world, simply because they have the ability to fulfill 'The great Indian dream', in a way no institute can. One can literally see students getting transformed into future leaders. The tag is one thing that stays, even though it may precede you at times, but for whatever the institute has given you, it's worth it.
e)Siblings: In India, we do not love our siblings in an "I do because I have to" kind of way. Siblings in India share a bond which goes much deeper than can be explained. Whether you hate it or love it, blood is indeed thicker than water.
f)Indian Film Industry: No list on India can be complete without the mention of Indian film industry. They call it Bollywood, though it's clearly offensive. We have created our own niche, that is there to stay.We Indians are sucker for movies, the song and dance routine, the one Sunny Deol Vs Rest of the world fares. Rajnikanth, Mithun da, Amitabh Bachchan would be there etched in our memories forever, and no Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt can change that!

I know everyone has a lot to add to the list, probably the list can never be complete, but the fact is India rocks. A billion people can give a billion reasons for that.

A critique of critcs

The other day I was having a discussion with one of my friends about why we watch movies. Whether they serve any purpose other than entertainment? The animated discussion reached its crescendo when she suggested that OSO (Om Shanti Om for the uninitiated) was stupid and over-the-top, to which my reply was that, it was the first movie in a long time that was blatant on your face entertainment. So what really is the purpose of cinema? We hear so much banter about movies being realistic, reflecting life in all its purity. If realism is what we are looking for then why were the doordarshan documentaries boring?
If we look at movies from the eyes of critics, then we will see them using all sorts of superlatives for movies which imitate life, but are very critical in heaping praise on movies which offer nothing more than pure unadulterated entertainment.
The blog being a critique of critics, I would now like to introduce two very able (??) but very different critics. So ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Raja Sen (Rediff) and Taran Adarsh(IndiaFM)

Raja Sen: Raja Sen writes regularly for rediff, but is very selective in choosing the films he would review. Often made to eat his own words as the movies he shredded to bits become blockbuster. Over-analytical, over-critical, he has a reputation of being quite anti-bollywood. His reviews are a must read for CAT aspirants as he carefully chooses his words and logically tries to analyze every scene, every camera angle. But his predictions are woefully short. He is the second most hated critic, just falling short of a gentleman to be introduced shortly. Still I would say he knows cinema. I end up envying his knowledge, though I fail to understand that why as a critic he fails to understand his audience. Why would he mix and match a bollywood movie and a Hollywood taste. He came closest with his reviews of Jaane-tu and Singh is King, where rather than analyzing the follies, he rightly pointed that the movies do strike a chord, which is kind of the whole point. But I have to admit his reviews are a lot of fun to read, they are a bible in absolutist reviews.

A Raja Sen sample:

Movie: Jaane Tu
Rating: 4/5

Taran Adarsh: The most hated critic of this generation and beyond, his reviews are very helpful, you just have to replace all his adjectives with their antonyms to get the perfect review for the movie. So while Musafir is a 4 star movie, Swades is 1.5, DCH is 2 stars. I have yet to see a person so condescending that he feels that the audience are almost always dumb, looking for cheap titillations. To use a modified Godfather quote “he insults our collective intelligence”. Has a very very limited vocabulary, and freely uses the words/phrases hoi-polloi, old wine in a new bottle, leave your brains at home etal. His reviews, cease to be reviews but turn into futile exercise to predict a movies’ performance based on star-power, director, glitz and gloss. He is notoriously known to apologize for his negative reviews for movies which eventually turn out to be hits (case in point Chak De). Needless to mention his reviews are almost always off-track. And yes, every stars’ latest performance turns out to be the best in his career, whether it is Anil Kapoor in Musafir (now really?) or Amitabh Bachchan in Bhootnath (what can I say?). They say he is the most famous critic, this in itself is an insult to the ‘aam janta’. Let’s hope some better sense prevails and we are relieved of his stupid, inane, wannabe analysis. But I must point out I love reading his reviews, they almost always make me laugh, and as for the rating just subtract his rating from 5 to get the actual rating for the movie. It’s all about the math you see; the most useless piece becomes useful. Oh ya I almost forgot, some of his most memorable lines are “cut the gyan, cut the crap!!” Amazing way to start a review!

Taran Adarsh samples:

Movie: Dhoom 2
Rating: 4.5/5

Movie: DCH
Rating:2/5

I now finally get back to the same basic question. What purpose does cinema serve? My view is simple, if a movie is able to make even one person forget his/her worries and make him/her laugh, cry or dance then it has achieved its purpose. So personally I may hate a movie but if makes my grandmother laugh for even half an hour it is praise-worthy cinema, because it is not about you or me, it is about whoever can appreciate it.
So let us all laugh, cry and dance and enjoy the wonderful medium of cinema to enter into the make-belief world, where we can dance under traffic lights, where good always wins over evil, where the movie never ends till everyone is happy. Let us all decide for our own-selves what suits us the best. A review after all is just a personal opinion and no more.

Go Roger!

The world needs its champion. Men need greater men to resurrect them. The world needs Roger Federer. There is a strange, almost divine connection I feel with him. Somewhere he motivates me to stand up and deliver, to maintain a dignified silence when cynics question me. There isn't another champion quite like him. One can see a Zen like calmness to his demeanor. So while we have the world writing him off after a dreadful season (really??)(2 finals, 1 semi-finals, 1 Olympic gold), he quite effortlessly scripts history with a win at the US Open. The way he does it, makes him special. As he himself mentioned he has created a demon for himself, where he is expected to win every tournament. It's quite cruel, how the world eagerly waits to see a champion fall. It’s the ideal blockbuster movie, meteoric rise and a great fall. It's easy to see great men crumble under such pressure, and then some men, rise like phoenix. The world cheers again for it's something they never expected, it's a story they've never seen. Naysayers have their pens out, waiting for a fresh new fall. It is then Roger Federer arrives forcing people to eat their own words, not because he has a point to prove, not because he his competing against anyone, but because he competes against himself. Because for him success is not defined by numbers but by commitment to one’s craft, by tenacity and by the ability to surprise everyone but HIMSELF with his achievements.
The short blog is my salute to a great champion, a great player and a fabulous human-being. Go Roger, the world is your oyster!

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!

26 Heart Wrenching Facts!

I call myself an incorrigible optimist. But there are a lot of things that frustrate even the most positive of us. You feel stupid, dejected, disappointed and sometimes just quietly laugh at God’s sense of humor. It is said that ‘If fate doesn’t make you laugh then you just don’t get the joke’. I just happen to be in a mood where I feel like collating what I have over the years observed and felt helpless at. Today I have a sense of humor to laugh at these. I am sure we all have a lot to add to this, I just kept it to 26, because it’s like the A-Z of what I wanted to say. You might be inclined to call me a whiner and generally insane to come up with a list like this. But I liked my effort; it helped me know what I really hated. So here I go:

A) No matter how hard you try people never change
B) The only person you can change is you; all the elements in you are against this change
C) The more successful you become, the lesser friends you have
D) You are where you deserve to be; otherwise you would have been in a better place.
E) No matter what people say, you are judged by your looks
F) The more fun you are having the faster the clock ticks
G) There is always a trade-off to be made
H) Nobody really wants to listen to your problems, and nobody is not a person.
I) No matter how hard you try, you will be misunderstood
J) Things will never be just perfect; all your attempts towards making it perfect will fail.
K) You will never be happy with your current state
L) No matter how well you earn, you will always think that your past was better.
M) Your mind and heart will never concur on anything.
N) No matter how easy the job, you will make mistakes
O) You ego will almost always dominate your senses.
P) You are being observed, watched for all your mistakes.
Q) Nobody really cares if you are in trouble.
R) The traffic always moves faster on the other side of the road.
S) You are slowly becoming the person you’ve always hated.
T) One relation always dominates all the current relationships at any point in time.
U) In the bigger picture, nothing really matters.
V) The only acceptable answer to “How are you?” is I am good.
W) A friend’s phone is always switched off or not reachable when you need him/her the most.
X) You never express your love to the person you love the most
Y) We are increasingly becoming unaware of what we are doing
Z) We never realize when we are living our happiest moment.