Mysorean

My wife complained of pains early in the morning today. The doctor advised us to admit her to the hospital.

She has been taken into the labour room and before going in we were told the delivery could happen anytime.

I was asked to go out and wait. This post is from the rear seat of the car in the parking lot!

Having mixed feelings right now. I am tense and feeling extremely wretched to make my wife go through these pains while waitiing to get back to be with her! And my cute little child! :)  

Thanks for all the wishes in the previous post. I shall reply when time and feelings permit.

I have written about the first one here.

And now here comes the second one.

Situation:

Husband is in Bangalore leaving his 9-month pregnant wife behind at Chennai with her parents. Husband is sitting with his “bhabhi” (elder brother’s sister) in the verandah of their grandfather’s house. They are having a conversation about the usual, have you decided the name? etc. etc. Then comes the question from the bhabhi.

Question:

“Ninge tension aagta illva?” (Aren’t you tense about it?)

Result:

You are checkmated. Because neither ”yes” nor “no” is going to help you out. And that answer that was taught during your MBA “It depends…” doesn’t fit in here. So you are dead meat! :)  

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On a usual Sunday morning, my sister-in-law and I proceeded to the Chennai airport in a state of drowsiness after having watched the drubbing India received at the hands of the so-called “minnows” Bangladesh. We were to take the Indian Airlines flight to Hyderabad. Our agendas were different though. I was going to Hyderabad to see my tata who was quite ill for sometime and she was there on some academic pursuit. The flight was delayed by ten minutes or so, as usual.

As usual, my brother was outside the airport doing a taxi with our car outside the airport to avoid the exorbitant parking fees. I gave him a missed call to signal that we were outside the airport and he could move towards the “Arrivals” gate. As usual, he came and we boarded amidst loud music orchestrated by the synchronised sounding of horns by the drivers of the cars behind us. As usual, we left the airport and reached home.

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After lunch together I went back to office. Preethi and Goddi decided to watch a movie. So, I suggested Sathyam complex and helped them into an auto to that place. Without knowledge of tamil, it’s really tough to aviod getting fleeced by these rogues I tell you! We had agreed to meet again (this time for dinner) by around 7.00PM before their train left for Bangarpet (Preethi’s hometown).

How can work allow me to go there on time? Something or the other would come up till the last moment and finally I was able to leave at 7PM. To reach the hotel where they were staying would take me 10 mins in case of zero traffic and now it was still peak hour.

Reached the hotel at 7.45PM and they were ready to proceed for dinner. We walked across to the Saravana Bhavan inside the Shanti theatre complex and seated ourselves for a typical Tamil dinner – idli, vada, dosa. Just then I got a call from a colleague, and we got involved in our conversation. But I was determined to spend some quality time with Goddi and Preethi.

As soon as I returned to the table, we began discussing how their friendship bloomed into love and finally into marriage. They were telling me how Goddi proposed and how scared Preethi was about the whole issue. She didn’t want to get into a relationship knowing that it wouldn’t get the approval of her parents. Caste issues! She initially said no and later agreed. There was a time gap of 1 week in the turnaround and I can imagine what went through Goddi during that period. From there till today, it has been 7 years. And they have been together through thick and thin. Faced their parents with resolve and love. For some strange reason, parents tend to think you are not capable of making the right choice when it comes to choosing your lifepartner. Especially true if you have chosen one from another caste!

It was not so much of the love story that interested me. It was the great chemistry that the two share that made me so happy. They looked so happy together. And happiness is contagious! These guys are not looking outward for happiness. They find their happiness in each other. Togetherness is happiness for them. They are not bothered about conformance from others as much as they are about acceptance from each other. That’s true love. Take a bow Preethi and Goddi! May God bless you with a life of happiness! I will also pray to Him that you come to India and live at a distance where we can meet up whenever we want to!

After meeting them, I went back to office and had to work till late in the night. I never felt the physical strain affect my mind because it had just been infected with so much happiness that it became my state of mind too. It gives me so much happiness that I am close to such people who spread happiness by just being there. Better still, they infect you with it! That’s Preethi and Goddi for you!

Another post today on: Mysore goes Wi-Fi

Sometimes you are having a very busy day. Work is keeping you busy from morning to late nights. You are jetting around the city at a mad pace to get things done. Just then, there’s a call from a friend (Gowtham, and since we are friends since school, we call him Goddi) whose marriage you didn’t attend because of this same work. Feeling good that he actually didn’t take your absence (despite being friends since schooldays to engineering days!) from his marriage to heart, you answer the call. If the first sentence you hear is, “I am in Chennai”, trust me, your joy will know no bounds!

I almost jumped on hearing that. It was 9.30AM in the morning and I was starting my Independence Week with a great surprise. I was supposed to be in Office by 9.30AM, but I was still lazily stuffing myself with breakfast. We agreed to meet for lunch. He was here for a visa interview for his wife. (Preethi, is a fellow batchmate from NIE Mysore. We knew that these two were going around since the time they became friends. Yes! It’s a crime to miss their wedding!)

It was 12.15PM and I was in Higginbothams trying to figure out what books to gift the newly-weds. Finally I chose to give them three books: ‘Ramayana’ and ‘Mahabharata’ by C. Rajagopalachari and ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Paramahamsa Yogananda. Goddi isn’t much into reading. Neither was I till a few months back! ;-) So, hope it helps Preethi and later Goddi can learn from her!

We had lunch together at Sangeetha’s on Ethiraj Salai. I don’t remember the last time Goddi and I had lunch together! Not that we cried over lunch! But we were very happy we were able to meet before they left for the US. We first fought over the Linux – Windows topic as both the three of us were into computers either by profession or interest. They are both electronics and communications engineers, so they know their computers bloody well! Goddi is a Linux freak and I have become one after getting into my present job. Ok. I am not digressing into my Linux Love!

The best part about having lunch with a friend is that you can talk and talk and talk to your heart’s content and eat to the same scale! ;-) Nobody is bothered about etiquette. Of course, we are not going to spit food around and laugh with our mouths full! At times, it’s tough to control even that, but we manage to do it! The college jokes are too irresistible to just enjoy by giving a corporate smile (the kinds we give to a supposed joke by bosses!) We were just laughing our way through the lunch. It was one of the most light-hearted lunches I have had in a while!

During schooldays, Goddi and I and six more of us from our gang would have lunch together. We would share whenever possible and have a generally jolly lunch. During college, we used to hang out in the canteen with a by-two tea and a samosa or whatever! All those days come running back to me now, when I recall our lunch together! Probably, the last one for years to come! Some people call me stupidly emotional. Maybe this is the reason! I drag too many things into the present from the past. I like it, I do it! These moist eyes that I have at present give me a recall of those happy and carefree days.

But, (Preethi and) Goddi, you made my day yar! It was such a hectic day on the work-end and I never felt the load even for a minute on my mind. My body slept only for 4 hrs that night and worked for 36 hrs with that 4 hrs sleep (not a nap because it was from 1.30AM to 5.30AM!).

Old friends are better than Gold. If I was asked to choose from a kg of gold or 8 hrs of sleep on that day, I would have chosen sleep. Yeah, now you know I am lazy to what extent? But now I know that God chooses to give you something that you and your brain can’t think of. From the next time, I will choose to have a friend over for a day at Chennai than anything else to rejuvenate me!

Thanks for being such a great friend, Goddi!

Tomorrow:

1. Old friends are better than gold – Part II
2. Mysore goes Wi-Fi

I still remember the hostel days during my undergrad when I used to walk upto an STD booth and wait in a queue to call up home for the customary once per week call. It’s wierd that most of the times I would not call home and be comfortable with myself. Anyway, that’s a different topic altogether. The point is there was something called an STD booth that was an integral part of my weekly routine. The presence of a routine is highly questionable you say? I agree unconditionally!

We were a gang of four as you have gangs during your student days. We always lived in our own world. Never bothered about what was happening to other gangs, or rather I should say that we were not even aware of who the other gangs were made up of! It was not arrogance, it was just a sign of how beautifully we complemented each other. We didn’t need to look beyond the four of us for anything.

It was the flower of friendship that bloomed and has now grown into a well-nurtured plant of eight years old. I shall write in detail about our friendship some other time. Just to give an idea: Our autograph books (we never signed for each other) are filled by various people. There was one comment that has stayed in my mind very strongly. “It’s surprising to see such pure friendship in today’s world of opportunistic connections. Sometimes, I have felt envious of your gang and wanted to be a part of it. Such was the bond that you guys shared”.

Yesterday, we had a conference call that kp (Krishnaprasad) enabled. Sam (Sameer, IITB) and I joined in. The other guy (Shastri) was on his way to his native. So, we couldn’t get him into the call. We talked for about an hour. Needless to say, it went off as if it was 10 minutes. At the end of it, Sam wished us happy anniversary. This guy has this knack of remembering all kinds of dates. (One example: October 11th 1997, Sam and Adi met for the second time in the CET counselling cell, Bangalore! Of course, I don’t remember the right date!) Both of were as usual waiting in silence for him to announce the Red Letter Day! But this time, Sam had a date that would hit the right emotional chord!August 14th was the day that our final sem exams had begun! Our last exam together.

After a lot of emotional discussion we arrived at one question. Did we ever think that we will be conversing over a conference call with each of us on our cell phones in the three metros? It was definitely out of our imagination at that point of time. As even cell phones were quite a technological fantasy for us. Today, merely 4 years from that day (only from the technological point of view please! We feel we have been away from each other for decades!), see where we are in terms of technology? We have cell phones. We are talking from our respective homes in our cities through a conference call! ?Undreamt of when we started our engineering!

Since, I was talking about the ‘last mile‘ syndrome that India is affected with. Here is a standing example of how we can overcome the problem. The cellphone industry overtook the number of landlines in the country within 5 years of their entry into the market. As a market, we have totally skipped the landline lifecycle and have directly entered the cellphone or the mobile industry as we calll it.

BSNL, Airtel and Hutch are the primary players in the GSM arena. While Reliance and Tata Indicom are the prime movers in the CDMA sector. The combined coverage is astounding. The call rates is one of the lowest in the World. With Hutch introducing the STD Hutch to Hutch at Re. 1, the price war has now entered new ground. To even think where this will lead to is just so exciting. We are at 58 million handsets (I remember reading this somewhere. I am not good with numbers. Please do confirm if you have the right figures). The potential is estimated to be atleast 200 million more. With price points falling (of handsets and call rates) with increasing volumes, the Indian Mobile Industry is a space to watch out for! All of us stand to be benefitted.

Tomorrow: Gold! Ahoy!

Two incidents, strikingly similar in nature, occured recently. Lets have a look.

First one: We (I stay in a flat with 3 of my ex-batchmates from BIM) hired a cook for breakfast and dinner. She worked properly for about a month. Came on time. Cooked well. Washed all the utensils and kept up her quality of interaction with us. One day, she asked Prabhakar (one of my roomies) for Rs. 2000/- since her son was admitted to the hospital. Prabhakar gave her Rs. 1000/- and told her that the remaining amount will be given after discussion with us. Inspite of various points of view, the most practical and good natured option appeared to be giving her the remaining Rs. 1000/-. But the rider was that, we will recover it from here salary spread over a period of 4 months.

Second one: My colleague has hired a baby-sitter for the past few months to look after her 18 month old son – Adi (It’s a good name you know!). Everything was going fine. The baby-sitter belongs to a place nearby Salem. Adi began warming up to her very well. One fine day, the baby-sitter tells my colleague that she needs to go home over the weekend as somebody (I don’t remember who) was ill. Apart from leaving my colleague in the lurch for the weekend she also had the audacity (I am so cruel na?!) to ask for money to pay the hospital bills. My colleage pretty moved by the story, paid her an all-expenses borne trip to her place.

Now, what is the similarity between the two incidents? It’s the distinction between the employer and the human being within us. An excerpt from a mail I wrote to my roomies during the decision-making summarises the situation best:

“We have hired the lady for cooking. By hiring her we have agreed to bear the risks that come with her being a cook. If as a parent/ wife/ sister she is facing a problem, I don’t think as her employers we have any stake in that. But as benevolent people, we feel it’s our duty to help her out. In which case, we should do that as good human beings and not as her employers. We are paying her for being our cook and (morally) that salary should not be reduced in order to payback the goodness that we are bestowing upon her.”

However possible the idealistic thought may be, we didn’t want to donate the Rs. 500/- per head that it would work out to for the well-being of our maid servant’s son. There were many reasons. I will summarise the two best ones that I heard in defense of this argument. #2 is that she will never realise the value of money if we just give it away as donation. #1 is that we are not sure if the reason she is giving is fake or real. This is similar to what my colleague did. She also paid her baby-sitter a certain amount and began recovering the amount from her salary.

She is asking you for the money because she knows the value of it. You don’t have to teach her it’s value. Her son is in the hospital, somebody is ill, and the money you give will relieve her of her problems. Who knows the value of that money better than the person experiencing the situation? We. We know. We just want our money back. It’s hard-earned. I can’t throw it away on donation to our maid, whom I don’t trust! (If you trust, don’t expect the money back, you have done something good. If you don’t trust, don’t give her money.)

We are not ready to invest our time and energy in finding out if the reason is genuine. We just want to wash our hands off the situation by giving the money and putting a clause that she has to return it. By adding the clause, even her problem is solved and you also get the hope that your money will be returned. Of course, you are also doing her value system a great help by making her realise the value of money. It’s definitely a practical way of living in today’s circumstances. But is it the right way?

Tomorrow: Mumbai – Is it all worth it?

Swami Harshananda quotes in his book on “An introduction to Hindu culture”:

A human being is the conglomeration of several parts, apparently different from one another, but acting cohesively for a common purpose, that of a jivatman or the individual soul (a conscious entity) inhabiting them. They are: the physical body including the sense organs, the faculty of speech, the mind and the spirit. A proper training in culture has to tackle each one of these singly, but in a way that it does not interfere or overshadow the natural faculties of the others.

Such a training as envisaged by a holistic attitude towards the development
of the human personality can be on the following lines:

1. Meticulously observing the rules of health and sanitation. Physical culture
   including yogasanas. I need to start learning Yoga.
2. Cultivating the faculty of speech through the study of languages and grammar
   of those languages. Practising the art of speaking the truth at the right time and place, including the knack of presenting even unpleasant truths in a manner that is gracefully accepted.
3. Training the mind in developing discretion and discrimination so that the right decision can be taken at the right time within the limitations imposed by the circumstances. Exercising the intellect by the study of science, philosophy and logic.
4. Trying to develop a taste or interest in some of the arts such as classical music and dance, good and elevating literature, drawing and painting, drama and other theatrical arts that can rouse our finer sentiments and so on.
5. Faith in God and a regular habit of prayer.

Tomorrow: Definition of culture

An excerpt from a reply [Courtesy: Mr. Adinarayanan. V, Coimbatore] I recieved to my post on the blog:

“Dreams are an integral part to a creative and successful life. By dreams, i mean day-dreaming, as children we dream, but as we grow we forget how it is to dream. We will of course indulge in dreams but sadly they are no longer the liberating dreams of our childhood years. We get bogged down managing within the constraints of our self-imposed day-to-day living.

Yet I dont mean to say that we should indulge in childish dreams. When we have walked this earth for a number of years and become mature, yet we retain a childlike innocent quality about ourselves. Without contracting the bitterness that you find in the world of today. That’s when life becomes a blessing and you just dont dream but start living your dream. Dreaming more dreams. Beautiful dreams!”

The contradiction seems to set in when we talk about maturity and dreams in the same sentence. Everybody has a dream. Dream of the kind of person we want to be. Dream of the society we want to live in. Dream of the sort of life we want to live. Are all these dreams a potrayal of the future that we are going to see? Or are they just some vague thoughts that you remember because they made you feel so damn good while you were thinking of them? If dreams are not achieved, are you sad that you weren’t able to live your dreams?

If we measured success of our lives by the dreams we saw, then the probability of branding ourselves as a failure increases. This is true if we are confident about our potential. There are a few people who are so self-critical (that’s their way of living, so be it!) that they are of the opinion “Dream is a crime”. They first want to assure themselves they can handle the day-to-day things before going in for those “dreams”!

Dreams, if seen in the true spirit of a dream, offer only a direction to life. Seldom do they assure a destination. By trying to follow our dreams, we are stretching ourselves beyond those boundaries that we never thought was possible. This helps in enhancing the quality of day-to-day life. This is the only place I want to connect dreams with day-to-day life. Lot of replies I recieved to my previous post launched into explanations of how they felt dreams made them sadder because they never achieved them. Trying to achieve your dreams is as fulfilling as the final destination. You meet so many wonderful people and get in and out of so many situations that make you a better person. So, instead of concentrating on whether you achieve your destination or not, make the most of the search to get there. As A R Rahman, the Legendary Indian Musician said, “The search is more important than the destination”.

Today, I am working in a company called Novatium. It’s a high-technology start-up. 100+ people. It’s part of an ambitious vision of a person named Mr. Rajesh Jain, ex-IndiaWorld and MD, Netcore Solutions. I am proud to be a part of this company, not because it pays me obscene amounts as salary and has a gym and a superb canteen and all that. (rather, none of this is true). But because of two reasons:

1. Wonderful people. I believe we can achieve our vision with such people around.
2. It is my dream to make India a better place to live in. Novatium’s vision gels completely with mine.

I am certain we can achieve our vision (shall we call it a dream for sake of easier conversation?). But let me tell you one thing, whether or not we achieve our vision, we are all very happy to be working for Novatium. It’s not only an experience of a start-up, it’s an experience of setting up a corporate atmosphere and interacting with great people like Rajesh Jain.

I have grown as a person and as a professional since joining Novatium. The growth has been immense and surely better than what any other company could have offered. I am still searching for the best way to achieve our vision. The relationships that I have built here will last lifelong.

Our Vision is to take technology to the emerging markets. Whether we succeed or not through Novatium, we are confident of making it one day. The coming generations will live a superior quality of life. If Novatium doesn’t succeed then some other idea should. That idea must be a dream again! If not of Rajesh Jain, then maybe of Mr. X. India will be a developed country within the next 25 years!

Finally, we are satisfied we did what we wanted to do. Followed our dream. Rewarded suitably by God either way. I have seen this saying at my school as the thought for the day often, “God helps those who help themselves”. I can’t but appreciate the person who coined this proverb! Looking at it from the Free your dreams and follow it lens I can tell you how true that is! And to all the people who become sad because they dreamt, did and still are nowhere near realising their dreams, lets remember the quote from Bhagwad Gita: “You shall treat victory and defeat, pleasure and pain, loss and gain similarly. Do your duty without having any desire for its reward. No sin can come to you. Do your work with the evenness of mind”.

Blogging enables us to put our thoughts into words for the World to see. I was wondering if our thoughts are born out of a process free of unnecessary constraints. I recognize the fact that we need certain constraints in our thinking or else distance from insanity would decrease.

I was discussing my favourite topic of how to choose a spouse with a good friend of mine. Upto the point I broached the particular topic she was explaining in great detail how things were moving and what she felt with each horoscope and photo being sent. I felt like I had hit a dead-end when I asked, “What kind of a life partner are you looking at?”.

“Adi, I haven’t thought about it”

“What? You are going to get married in a few days from now and you have not even thought of what kind of a life partner you want is it?”

“No Adi, it’s not like that…” Silence.

I am waiting for the remaining part of the response. There’s nothing. It’s just tapered off into nothing.

So I begin my quest again not knowing whether I was making her comfortable or not. My purpose was to find out if she had an idea and was not willing to share with me or was it that she had no idea at all. Very soon, I was to find out that she had no idea at all!

“What happened? Did I ask something wrong? You don’t want to tell me is it?”

“No Adi, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it”

“Come on! You have completed your engg and are now working for the past one year. You must have seen many guys who must have inspired the thought ‘He-could-be-my-lifepartner’, haven’t you? Hasn’t this occured to you?”

“Adi, what you are saying is right. But when I tell this to my parents, they ask me, “Are you Queen Cleopatra for guys to stand in queue for you?”

Finally, there was atleast a recognition that she underwent what all human beings do. An intuitive way of living life. And according to something I read somewhere, women have better intuition. But this intuition was being killed by people around her.

“That’s okay. What you get may finally not be what you wanted. But you still have the freedom to dream Geeta*. Let your mind free and dream of what you want. When you are dreaming don’t think about whether you will get it or not. That’s not how you dream. For example, I want a girl who looks like Madhuri Dixit, has Rekha’s sensuality, but Nayantara’s homeliness, speaks like Barkha Dutt, exudes the confidence of Kiran Bedi, treats my children like Mother Teresa, cooks like my mom, etc etc. But will I get such a girl? With due regards to my future lifepartner, I don’t know is my answer. But I have a dream. More importantly I made use of my freedom to dream, that’s all!”

(*Name has been changed to protect her identity)

After that, Geeta started explaining what kind of a lifepartner she was looking at. And how nice it would be to have a life with him. She had begun on a journey towards an uncertain destination for the first time in her 21 years of life. She was dreaming.

All of us have the fundamental freedom to dream. If you don’t make use of that freedom you would be living a very one-dimensional life. Taking each day as it comes and not really expecting anything at all out of life. I meet tons of such people with this kind of a predisposition towards life. And they are not even aware they are living life that way. A very sad way, indeed! I cannot go on preaching my theories to everybody, Can I?

But I have been trying to fathom the reason as to why individuals turn out to be this way? Why are their wings of freedom clipped? Who does it? Do we do it ourselves consciously? Or is it the effect of some external force that makes us do this at an unconscious level?

One of the key reasons I found, across a sample of 5 people (all females, please note), is the pressure of getting you married off to somebody as quickly as possible. The idea is to shrug off the burden as soon as possible. “Are you Queen Cleopatra” is a classic example of how big a burden you have become! I was told that to every mother on this planet her kid looks like the moon! But here, the equation changes. We are living in the 21st century folks! Change those old dumb sayings! Don’t teach them to your kids!

The other reasons being, maybe the person is not good looking. For the record, Geeta is decent on those counts! And we are also taught that ‘Beauty is skin deep’! But where are we now? Take my example, I want my lifepartner to look like Madhuri Dixit. I don’t understand that there’s only one Dr. Nene who is there on this earth and I don’t believe in divorce. I don’t know what, but just because a person is not good-looking doesn’t mean “freedom of thought” is thrown out of the window. The person is still eligible to think or in this case, dream.

Dreaming is fundamental to the nature of a human being. Everybody has the freedom to dream. Don’t kill the freedom. You have nothing to lose if somebody has a dream. Dreams enhance the quality of life. You want to achieve your dreams and you strive harder towards living a better life. Dreams don’t have constraints. Dreams are free. Let them be free.