“bird’s nest jise chidiyon ka ghosla kaha jaata hai kal se itna bhara hua nahin rahega”

“yeh ek aitihasik olympics hai duniya ke liye kyonki india ne apna first gold medal jeeta hai individual category mein”

“olympic ki shama ab bujhne jaa rahi hai….aakhri baar yeh shama jwalit hai….isse dekhkar ek pankti yaad aa rahi hai….” you won’t believe what came next….he started singing “shama hai suhana suhana….” dont miss the play on the word “sama”

Thanks to a friend [Link] of a friend [Link] for capturing this though her orkut scraps! If anyone has captured it on video then please let me know. I missed it! No not the ceremony, the commentary! :)

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.

1st June, 2008, Sunday, 4PM

Friend calls up BSNL Broadband helpline number 1800 424 1600. A tech support person by name ‘Hemanth’ picks the phone up.

Friend: Hello, my internet has been up only intermittently for the past 3 days. And even when it is up I am recieving speeds of 3 kbps.
Hemanth: Ok Sir. Please give me a minute. I will make a note of your complaint. May I put you on hold while I do this?
Friend: Yes.

After what seemed to be an eternity, a voice comes up on the other end.
Hemanth: Sir your complaint number is 1061280.
And he was about to disconnect apparently. My friend chipped in just in time.
Friend: By when can I have my internet up?
Hemanth: Within 24 hours we will have someone come to your house and set this right Sir. Thanks. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Friend: No, that’s it. Thanks.
Hemanth: Thanks for calling BSNL Broadband. Have a nice day.

3rd June, 2008, Tuesday, 10AM
No action. No ‘someone’ turned up at his house. Internet is still fluctuating between 0kbps and 3kbps. So he calls up again. This time he forgets the name of the technician once the conversation is over. Read on to find out why.

Friend: Hello, my complaint number is 1061280 and I was told that my internet would be up within 24 hours when I called on Sunday. Today is Tuesday. It has been over one and a half days now.
Tech Support: Sir BSNL works for 8 hours a day. And going by that you can only expect someone to come to your house before Wednesday 4PM because 8 X 3 = 24 hrs that means 3 days since….

Friend: #$%^&

This was on Headlines Today. It should be called Headless today!

First scroller:
SALMAN KHAN IS TRAVELING IN JET AIRWAYS 9W… IN SEAT NUMBER 3C

Second scroller:
OUR JOURNALIST IS SITTING NEXT TO HIM

Third scroller:
SALMAN IS SENDING MESSAGES TO HIS NEAR AND DEAR

Fourth scroller:
SALMAN APPEARS COOL AND COMPOSED

—————–

From the CNN IBN website:

SRK flaunts six-pack look, charms Sania Mirza
(and they had an interview with Sania mirza for about 3 minutes on NDTV)

Did anyone bother what the news was about?
—————–

Headlines Today’s coverage of this event:

With these scrollers running,

First scroller:
SANIA MIRZA SPOTTED IN A POLKA DOTTED DRESS WITH A SHRUG

Second scroller:
SANIA MIRZA’S ATTIRE ON COURT HAS ALWAYS BEEN CONSERVATIVE

the news channel had Mr. Dilip Cherian and somebody else on the studio to discuss the whole thing out. Is anyone channel bothered about what the event was? It was supposed to be a promotional event for the Sunfeast Open.
—————–

Katrina Kaif had once been to Jaipur to visit Salman Khan in jail. HT’s coverage with visuals of the jail entrance for over 5 minutes. The scrollers again:

First scroller:
KATRINA KAIF IS VISITING SALMAN KHAN IN JAIL

Second scroller:
SHE IS WEARING A WHITE KURTA AND BLUE JEANS TO SEE HIM

Third scroller:
ALONG WITH HER ARE SOHAIL KHAN AND SALMAN’S SISTER

I am sure you have seen funnier news. Comments section is open! :)

I was searching the net for some tips on flying with infants and found this incident that cracked me up totally:

Our first trip with baby coinsided with several major diaper blow-outs enroute. Pack at least one change of clothes for baby and an extra t-shirt for one of the adults, just in case. We had such a bad blow-out on one trip that I had to strip the baby and bathe him in a bathroom sink during a layover. He hated it and screamed bloody murder and there was poop everywhere – sink, his clothing, his shoes, his hair, etc. If it was a hurricane it would have been a category 5, if you know what I mean. Since there was no “family restroom” my husband could only stand outside the ladies room listening to the screams as I mopped up. So, bring the extra diapers and don’t count on the airline to pack diapers or kid’s meals (we’ve never received the kids’ meals on any of the flights we took and my son made silver elite this year…..)

Overall the tips, for those who might need them, are:

Tip #1 relax, travel is supposed to be fun!

2. buy a seat for the baby to guarantee that you can use your infant safety seat on the plane – securing the child in one will make the trip easier for you and safer the your baby

3. have a bottle available for take-off/landing to keep the baby swallowing – helps lessen pressure in the ears

4. pack at least 50% more diapers than you think you’ll need, and extra wipes – air travel has a way of clearing out little guts

5. get to the airport early – allow at least an extra 45 to 60 minutes for last minutes feeds and diaper changes pre-boarding, and getting through security is a time-consuming nuisance, especially with a baby.

6. remember that despite what a few FT members think, infants screaming on planes is neither criminal or fatal. We’d all prefer to minimize it, but sometimes it is just gonna happen. And when it does, probably most parents on the plane are more in sympathy with you than angry (and secretly glad it’s not their baby this time! :D )

Your turn now. Tell me which one you think is not true!

Terman’s Law of Innovation:
If you want a team to win the high jump, you find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot each.

O’brien’s Variation:
If you change queues, the one you have left will start to move faster than the one you are in now.

Conway’s Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.

The Peter Principle:
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level of incompetence.

H.L.Mencken’s Law:
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.

Martin’s Extension:
Those who can’t teach, administer.

Belani’s Extrapolation:
Those who cannot even administer, become consultants.

Lieberman’s Law:
Everbody lies; but it doesn’t matter since nobody listens.

Kovac’s Conundrum:
When you dial a wrong number, you never get an engaged one.

Bell’s Theorem:
When the body is immersed in water, the telephone rings.

Ruby’s Principle of Close Encounters:
The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don’t want to be seen with.

Young’s Law:
Great discoveries are made by mistake.

Kin Hubbard’s Law:
A good listener is usually thinking about something else.

One Anonymous Great Seer’s Law:
Money can’t buy love, but it sure gets you a great bargaining position.

The Lifebuoy Swastha Chetna City Meter has rated Chennai the cleanliest city among top six metros of the country. Bangalore and Kolkata have finished a close second and third respectively in the overall cleanliness perception ranking.

LOL!

And according to this:

The major determining factors of the study included greenery and plantations, clean roads, availability of dustbins in public places and efficiency of the garbage disposal system.

ROTFL!

Hadn’t laughed so much in quite sometime! Phew!
Btw, The Lifebuoy Swastha Chetna City Meter – who?

A common scene in the legislative assemblies as well as Parliament of India. Unfortunately holds true for generation over generation.

This is not the age for do-gooders! When has it ever been?!

Garib hatao!

Mysore is undergoing a serious Water Famine now. I hope the problem gets sorted out.

Wait for the UP election results to come and then you will see rapid defections from various parties to BSP. And this story is going to repeat itself forever too.

How true!

This happens in a few non-government organizations also. yes. I know.

ROTFL! Now we know how money comes, but we still don’t know where it goes! ;)

PS: RK Laxman was a Mysorean. Probably one of the most famous ones.

As long as things don’t affect me I am not bothered because those are their beliefs and they are entitled to have them. Like my friend Anand Balaji once said (A Voltairian quote), “I might not agree with what you have to say. But I will die for your right to say it”, I extend the same logic to “beliefs”. “I might not believe in what you believe. But I will die for your right to believe in what you want. Kindly keep those beliefs to yourself and don’t affect lives around you”

Here is a list of popular things I came across that clash with normal sensibility. And before I proceed, I must apologize to my friend Shastri, for once fighting with him on my sensible assumption that “there are a few of these things that actually have scientific basis”.    

1. My tata had passed away a few hours ago. We were in deep grief. My brother and I decided we get some dinner for those who want to eat. You are not supposed to light the stove when someone passes away in your house (#1). So, we had to go outside and get something packed for the people. We had just started eating (each one was in the mood to have a max of 2 idlis or something, that’s all) and the phone rang. It was one of my relatives. I told them that we were having dinner and that she could call later. Instantly a few elders pounced on me. You are not supposed to say you are having dinner when someone passes away in your house (#2).
2. My wife was having pains in the morning of April 3rd. We visited a doctor who asked us to get her admitted in the hospital, but did not specify when the delivery would happen. So, an elder suggested that we go home and just freshen up and leave. It was 8.45AM then. If she had stopped with that I would have been really impressed with her ability to think practically. But she added the next sentence which really tested my patience. “From 9:00AM to 10.30AM is rahukaalam. We shall leave home only after that”. You are not supposed to step out of your house during rahukaalam. (#3) I was surprised I didn’t shout. Here, we have a lady suffering from pain and was on the brink of delivery and we have someone telling me about rahukaalam. I haven’t yet come across anything more ridiculously impractical way of looking at life. But somehow we convinced the elder to take my wife to hospital before 9.00AM itself without freshening up. My wife was in the labour room at 10.45AM!  
3. Once a baby is born in your house, you are not supposed to visit anyone’s house for 20 days from date of birth! (#4) Take that!
4. If you go to some place on Day 1, you are not supposed to leave from that place on Day 9. (#5) Day 8 is great, Day 10 is also fine. Day 9 committed some murder I guess!
5. If my wife goes to her parents’ place and stays overnight on Monday night or Friday night (I aint sure if this is Thursday or Friday! As if it matters! To me that is! ), she is not allowed to come back home on Tuesday and Saturday (#6). Bad days, can’t you figure that out?! Poor you! :(  
6. The train was at 6.10PM. The station was a half an hour’s drive from home – 45 minutes at peak traffic. So, when will you leave? 5PM earliest? 4.45PM? Ok. But what if raahukalam is from 4.30PM to 6.00PM? You leave at 4.15PM, reach station at 4.35PM and count the number of doors and windows on the trains in the adjacent platform because your train wouldn’t have yet arrived on your platform! So much for being early! 

There are many more such things. I will keep updating this list as and when I come across more such stuff. If you have anything, please let me know. Will be great to discuss.  

My problem is not that people believe in such inane things. My problem is when it starts affecting the life you are living and the way you want to live it. Let people go to hell with their beliefs. I may be insensitive as that shows but the brandname “arrogant” that you get when you try telling people what you think about it is worse!

It is mainly fear that drives people who live by such superstitions. It’s a pity that even well-educated people fall into such traps. I will say it again to end this post, “I might not believe in what you believe. But I will die for your right to believe in what you want. Kindly keep those beliefs to yourself and don’t affect lives around you”

PS: This doesn’t mean I disrespect my elders and all that. Just that sometimes they transcend my idea of sense and sensibility and I disagree with them.