What do you mean?

The meanings, especially not so obvious ones, in songs are my favourite pastime. I always concentrate more on words than music. Rhythm of course wins you over – but even if it’s not good, I can do with simply some good lines. While listening to a song, i will always focus on the lines and try to make myself fit in the description. On other occasions, some turn of phrase just catches me with a surprise as I discover a deeper meaning in them. Here are few of those –

1. Huzur Is Kadar (Masoom) – there’s a line that goes by ‘agar dil bhi hota to kya baat hoti’ while appreciating one’s lover. The hero condems his lover to be a heartless person and just wonders what would it be like having a lover with a heart to match the grace.

2. Saigal Blues (Delhi Belly) – well this is not the most famous song of this movie. But the line when it says “Is dard ki na hai dawai, Majnu hai ya tu hai kasai”, makes it clear that the only way you can heal the pain of love is by turning into a butcher...either buther yourself or preferably (the meaning that is implied here) your lover.

I am sure I am coming back to this post in future and add more of these. I am by no means done yet.

Go ogle!

Why ogling is considered bad? I am all for personal freedom especially when it comes to personal space. I like the western convention of considering a stare something inappropriate. And when you accidentally get an eye contact, you give a formal smile. Extending this idea, the personal space of ladies shouldn’t be violated. And same goes for stares, especially when you try to make eye contact. But an ogle otherwise seems very natural to me. The sexual instinct in me feels that I need to gaze at a sight that gives me pleasure. It’s a natural feeling and it’s not hurting anyone. So how can this be a negative thing? There is of course a different kind of connotation – many a times I have heard women complaining that their looks are being judged. It sort of obligates them to put in extra effort to look good. The look becomes a deeper part of their identity than in case of man. But ogling a girl doesn’t obligate all other girls to become ogle-able at least not the only reason of obligation. If the girl feels good about herself by looking her best and getting all the attention then so be it. I think it’s incorrect to blame the male gaze for this. In case of men, there are similar instance. A good looking guy or a rich guy is stared more and given more attention. And a lot of men try to look their best. But it doesn’t change the identity part. But yes, it does create some confusion about identity when you are trying to be something which you are not naturally. But that’s a different topic altogether.

I remember reading about masturbation as a kid and how it was considered bad. The first reason of justification that article gave to masturbation is that simply everyone does it. Well, not everyone but a very high percentage indeed. Same goes for the male gaze – but yes, it shouldn’t border onto the infringement of individual freedom. In that respect – an undesirable eye contact is absolutely wrong and can’t be justified at all. I wonder if women hate male gaze and then how would they expect a man to express his liking in sexual way. Would they have us rather sniff them around like the dogs they love so much – or hate in other cases.

Another thing that comes in here is what is acceptable as per cultural norm. We need to constantly evaluate it as we have seen in the cases ranging from sati to gay. Besides, we also have a different attitude towards one of us and others. If you see a guy killing mosquitoes and deriving some pleasure from it, you wouldn’t react differently. But if same thing is done with a few human subjects we have a different ball game altogether.

In India there’s a different ball game altogether. With deep-rooted gender segregation, a lot of thing which are normal elsewhere is considered immoral here. For example there’s this whole physical contact business. If you get in physical contact with someone of opposite sex in public place either intentionally or unintentionally, it’s considered improper. The less interaction also means that there’s an inherent curiosity about bodies of other sex and gives rise to a whole set of problems. Then there’s communication. It just makes the whole business very tricky.

Of course there’s a limit to the gaze and there’s a way to do it – sometime you stare them and they know you’re being appreciated for looking pleasing. At other times, it’s simply creepy. Though the perception of gazer in female’s mind plays a large role in differentiation creepy from the natural flirts, there’s a limit I think which will mark overdoing it. You see many a times that a girl is being made conscious of her body. That I think would be sheer wrong – an invasion of privacy. The thumb rule is you can’t bother anyone just for your own pleasure. So if your gaze is making someone uncomfortable, then you’re being creepy. Else, just ogle on.

A Hypothetical Question - at least for now

I love kids. Have always loved them. Found so much joy with them over the years. And in a way found great acceptance from them as well. I have found kids to be attracted to me as well; perhaps they felt my natural warmth which is so rarely exhibited. But, lately it hasn’t been so. I have become twisted. I see my bro for example, who also loves kids. And the kids still come to him like they used to come to me. I have lost some of my warmth. Or perhaps, too long under wraps it got spoiled.

Anyway, the point is I still love kids. Love noticing them in market place, streets, and buses as they go about making each moment their own, deriving maximum from each of them. I am envious of the people who have such kids. But a kid of myself is still a bit strange. First my marriage comes in and then comes the responsibility part. Still I guess if I overcome first, I will easily overcome second. And this takes to me the point I was wondering about. What about the kid that I will bring in the world. I will have time of my life bringing him up. I see the way my parents are still attached to me and I wonder if the joys from offspring ever wane. But I also know myself and I know how messed up I am. Will it not be same for that kid? He will have a wonderful childhood – though there are question marks over that as well given all the uncertainties of time. Then an angry teenager followed by anxious twenties. Should I just be selfish and bring him because I feel like. I feel like it will also give me a purpose. I remember the last scene of beautiful movie – “up in the air” – when everybody was talking of his motivation for getting up in morning and going through the day to find a job, to find the money. All of them were asked what for and they reply was for their kids. I can see myself so easily fit in that crowd. I am sure I will love my kid, will be anxious for him and work myself harder to make it alright. I can see a chance of it driving me more depressed as I will always think that I am not being good enough. But then the child grows and finds this world full of shit, full of doubletalk and backstabbing and very apparent purposelessness. Will he come back to me and ask me, as I recall Big B asked his father, why did you bring me? I will not be able to compose a poem to answer him.

The question is – is it worth it? Should I have kid just because I love one? Just because I need someone to share my love with.

Look where are you going, mister!

So, finally decided to go to NUS - National University of Singapore – for my MBA. I am still little diffident regarding the minute details not working in my favour. Something like loan or visa or something else quite simple but quite important missing from my preparation. But for the moment it’s the end of three days of deliberation.

I am still not sure that I want to do an MBA. I hate hectic schedules. I am very comfortable with back office jobs where you could be laid back at times and where your skills are self-evident compared to the other part of the building where you have to pretend to be doing something and highlight every time you didn’t take a coffee break within two hours as a hallmark of dedicated worker. But almost 7 years in an organisation such as TCS Kolkata and I feel the lethargy seeping into my bones. It looks like I am getting dumber by each passing second and losing my interest in the work. Suddenly almost everything is at cross with me. To add to this all, there’s a kind of ignorance on part of my organisation or the people who led me in recent times about my situation. And when my efforts to get out of this organisation failed I realised that MBA can save my day here. Contemplating on my failure to land a job with other companies, I guess I was too cosy in my current job – with hardly any work pressure and a reputation based on things I supposedly did ages ago. And it was not failure all the way. I was successful in impressing one of the guys who agreed to pay more then – around a year and half back – than what I am earning right now. But, of course it was too much for me to get out of the couch. I felt kind of scared about this whole shifting to another city business. But there were other truths as well. For example I realised that I don’t really have any great marketable skills, that I am still a very diffident interviewee, that industry has a few square holes and I as a fluffy round mass will not fit into any of those.

So here I am – in pursuit of making myself marketable, acquiring some confidence, some finesse and hopefully gain some respect in my own eyes. Coming to today, I talked to these two alumni – one from both schools. One of them, Rajeev, sort of surprised me when he asked me to list down the three positions I would like to see myself in. I don’t know anything about that. and frankly, I never expected that discussion to be so precise. But I managed to mumble something, which as far as I think, didn’t make me sound unprepared and insincere. But he also mentioned that having such fixed goals is not the best way to negotiate b-schools, where one should have an open mind as much as possible at least in initial days when there’s a lot of new stuff to tackled and internalised. And one never knows if one of these new stuff might the just the right thing for me.

I believe this has been a general contradiction of sort with whole MBA application and admission business. On one hand they expect you to have a fairly reasonable career plan and on the other hand an open mind where you can unlearn and learn many thing over and over again. The role of b schools in facilitating a change of field has been considerable. But that hasn’t always been as per plan. It’s natural for students to fall for something else altogether, getting hooked onto it and then make it their bread and butter. So, not really sure if I understand the emphasis of having a clear-cut defined role.

Alternate Culture & Hypocrisies

Saw a lot of post about nathuram godse being hero and true patriot – one who died for undivided India. I see this as kind of mindless promotion of alternate culture, which is being promoted just to show a differentiator. And in some cases, for promotion of local identity, namely Marathi identity. I still can’t believe that they have no issues with Veer Sawarakar – who was the first man to propose two-nation-theory and yet they hate Jinnah. Sawarkar along with RSS is as much responsible for partition as Muslim league is.
Another height of hypocrisy was no support for M F Husain when his exhibitions were vandalized because he drew goddesses in nude. These RSS and Bajrang Dal wallah should also ban kalidas’s kumarshambhav. I am sure none of them read it; otherwise the sensuous description of another goddess should deserve similar treatment.
On similar line, the Indian government’s support for shariat law of Muslim, which is as per Quran, is also ridiculous. By the same right Hindu should be able to derive their law from various Hindu religious works. Taking manusmriti for example, we should legalise untouchability. And as per Ramayana, the dowry system.

There is no real-you. The more I try to get hold of my identity, my existence, more elusive it becomes. I am sure too fluid to be given a name of shape. And this always reminds of the Milan Kundera quote about the self as we perceive ourselves being very elusive and the only real truth is how others perceive you.

You are always right unless proven otherwise

-“why do you think you are always right?”

- “that’s the only way to be.”

Of course it didn’t dawn on the questioner that I was helping him with his identity. Once he chooses a position for himself and starts doubting that folks with other positions might also be correct, he simply goes back to point where he hasn’t made a position at all. That is not to say that choosing a position is important. It’s not. Choosing a position is empty task – you need actions to back up your position. But this is purely academic exercise. The questioner was under the assumption that if he doesn’t allow this kind latitude to his thought process, he will be considered narrow-minded and rigid. He will not be able to see other’s viewpoint, which might be better than his.

Of course there might be viewpoints better than yours. That’s why I am open to debating – a real exchange of ideas. But when you enter a debate, you enter with the thought that you’ll be rational and it was your rationality that made you choose a certain position. So you’re basically entering with assumption that you are right and you will be able to convince the other guy of misconceptions the poor bloke has. When you debate you criticise the person in front of you to not be able to think it through and somehow be inferior to you in intellectual prowess. But then you hear him and you again let your ego slide aside and consider what he has said in fully rational angle. If he has made any mistake is your first concern. And it’s only second step when you realise that you might have missed something yourself. Voila, it’s time to re-do the thinking. But if it’s the opposite then you are where you were. The other person missed something. Of course there’s a dignity to the whole process which asks the smugness to be left behind before you jump in. But over the years, the tactics of argumentation has inculcated a number of weapons, which include satire and reduction-ad-absurdum. So a little bit of smugness do creep in. however no matter how imperfect things are, we should always strive to keep the ideal in sight.

If you’re not doing this, then you are simply closing yourself from every exchange of ideas. You live in some kind of utopia, where everyone is right. Thinking that all who differ from you might be right, you are actually saying that you might be right (and, not that you are right). In a way it undermines the whole rational framework which has been basis of your existence as it takes out conviction from each of your move. It also takes away from you the right to criticise. The right to criticise is so important to team workings.

A team performs better than individual not because everyone respects each other’s view. No of course not. The world will not go far if everyone started doing that. In an ideal team, all team members should first consider the point put forward by anyone in a rational way and then try to criticise it. If the idea withstands the criticism, it will have necessary immunity to survive. If this sounds too negative approach, then you just need to add a couple of more scenarios as I for sake of my point used only one. In the other scenarios you might hear someone who has been supporting your point of view and found some more evidences of your idea being good that you hadn’t considered till then. Or, you heard such a brilliant idea that you have made up your mind to give up your own position and jump on his bandwagon – of course keep your rationality floating during the jump. So if you’re not doing this in a team and being a little bit too respectful of ideas floating around, you’re actually being a weaker link in the team.

This whole thing occurred to me when I was an agnostic. But that’s like answering a question with I don’t know. I would have left myself in that bracket had religion not bothered me so much. But it did and did a lot. So, it became sort of important for myself to find a corner to stand in. I can’t stand in the middle of field and say I don’t know when so many were looking for answer. Of course there are loads of things I am agnostic about. I am agnostic about them because I have never thought of them. Even if I have thought of them, either the easily accessible information in this digital age has overwhelmed me or there was too little of it. Do I think that everyone with different point of views about those is right? No. I don’t know. I don’t even know the different positions. And debates – I don’t have any point-of-view so no question of debate. In case I meet someone who knows a great deal about it then I just listen to him and try to make sense. A one-way exchange of information and sometimes ideas.