Corporate sellout? Escapist? Coward?

I haven't written anything at all for a while now. The habit has been sadly lost and its scary to get back to it. I sit here, a cosmology of thoughts whirling through my head, each urging an audience and an empty sheet to fill; unnerving. Thoughts that keep arising, but don't trigger the urge to translate them to something tangible on a sheet of digitized paper. Thoughts that I keep compressing, to a corner, behind layers of monotonous garbage that I don't really understand, lost in a clutter.

So, life has changed a lot over the past year or so. I am not a college going kid anymore. Mark-sheets have been renamed Perf ratings, the study table has been replaced with a swanky new desk, vada pavs have been replaced with more expensive snacks, college has been replaced with another college of sorts(Google); just that this time its not college. It apparently is the real world where the fittest, most efficient survive.

Since childhood, at every stage, our parents, elders, the experienced folks have warned us about how things are going to change for us in the next few years. 'You are not going to do be able to do this or that anymore. You have to get serious in life.' It kept happening, be it the transition from junior school to high school, from high school to college or from college to the life of a working professional.

Yes, things change but why does it have to be an either or situation? The idea of what every stage should be like bogs us down, I think, even before that stage of life arrives. And more often than not, you think that once I will start doing this, how will I do that other thing that I love so much now? It has always been this way. It is because those  people have lived life this way and thus they feel that its a pattern. You will have to quit sports in that crucial board exam year, you will have to quit a hobby once you start working.

A couple of years ago, I aspired to be a photographer/writer/travel journalist/cricketer (okay this last one was always a long shot :P)...... Then, as I went on I started crossing out stuff from my list - the first to go was journalism. As the end of college neared, the first company I was interviewed for was Google. At that time, I gave the interview just to have an experience, without having an idea about what I really wanted to do in life.

Once I had an offer in hand, from the best company to work for on the planet, it was very hard to refuse. I didn't know if I wanted to do the job they offered or whether I'd be any good at it; to be frank I didn't even understand clearly what I would be doing. It was just that it was Google!

What it meant for me, in the immediate sense, at the time, was firstly, moving to the city of Hyderabad, the third city I would be living in at just the age of 21. Then, slowly as time went on I started thinking of what I would miss about Bombay, college life and being broke all the time (this hasn't changed).

But, slowly I started accepting the fact that I wasn't going to be a writer/photographer/something else without even looking for an opportunity to maybe try and do a bit of everything once 'work' per se starts. I had already started feeling like a corporate sellout who did not have the courage to chase what he really wanted. Don't we all do that? Just look for an excuse to not do something and somehow blame time, situations, the people around you, blame everybody but yourself. While the easiest thing to do, especially in times like today, is to look for that opportunity -- an opportunity that maybe does not change your life, but at least periodically takes you away from your life that you may have grown tired of.

Why do most of us do that? Why does it always have to be an either or situation? It doesn't, not anymore. And, that's why, from now on, more and more of these sheets will be filled. :)

Check out this video of Hitler's reaction when he finds out that Disney bought Star Wars

Why does God need a procession?

Come September, for a period of three months or so, the Indian landscape buzzes even more than it does during the rest of the year. Tell that to a foreigner in Mumbai or Delhi or Kolkata dealing with the nauseous traffic struggling to make it across the road, and he would tell you that you're crazy!



But, one God after another, representing someone or the other does the rounds of this vast country; one procession after the next. Some Gods are bigger in some parts, others rule the roost elsewhere; everyone has marked territories, all 330 million of them!


You see similar scenes, you hear similar songs, you watch similar people in a trance like celebration -- having their moment -- through the three months. But, each one tells you that his God is different from the one that just visited, I wonder how?

But, what every God brings for me and many others is long queues and longer hours; on roads, at ticket counters, in buses. As I observe everyday from the snailing traffic, looking at one festival after another, one blaring loudspeaker after another, one dancing crowd after another, the question that keeps striking me is why does God need a procession?


God is something that makes you believe, gives you strength, keeps the faith even when it seems as though all is lost. Well, God simply is a higher power.

The higher power could be anything you look up to and anything that keeps driving you; your father, your teacher, your icon, your passion. But, religion, mankind and evolution has forced a form, a face, a name onto this higher power -- Jesus, Durga, Ganesh.....

If God in such a form is such a necessary and fearful concept in today's times, what was it like millions of years ago? What combined those specific pieces disseminating from the big bang to form the Earth, with such a beautiful balance which none of the other pieces could replicate; the balance mankind wakes up to everyday and tries its best to destroy? Yet, it can't because somehow that original system does enough to keep the balance intact!

I am not a believer in God, but am a firm believer in a higher power; a higher power that keeps every system stable. And, eventually the Universe is the super system and everything else -- the Earth, all of us individuals -- are sub systems each having their own higher power. Science can't explain this higher power, it never will and many would say it doesn't even exist. But, how does this super system, any system function without it?

So, if God is something that is so powerful, something that is so calming, something that is so necessary in everyone's life according to modern religions, then why has it become a commodity that is being marketed in different forms by different sets of people? Why does every God need its own procession?

Random rambling.....competition

It’s a competitive world with competition everywhere. There is competition for a hospital bed to deliver a baby, competition to get into school, competition to go to college, competition in markets, competition in getting a funeral pyre too!

In this competitive world driven by capitalism and a zest for continuously redrawing boundaries, the lesson of the tortoise is no longer heeded. The world is much more impatient today and everything is fast – communication, food etc.

They say humans perform better under the stress of competition. Economists have dedicated their lives proving this – must be true. Well, competition and a constant awareness of others being better than you does definitely induce self doubt; especially in a country like India where the ‘others’ are in such preposterous numbers.

Well, with more competition, it seems people are getting more and more ruthless, more driven, but also maybe more and more insecure. Maybe, people and nations alike are more aware of their own inabilities today than in any generation before us. With opened up economies and borders never as liquid as before maybe competition has forced us to be a generation which is more susceptible, self doubting and sceptical than any before.

Even though we have are a high-tech race with one leap in technology after another taking place in crazily quick time, maybe competition is one thing which is still keeping us human. Otherwise, with all this technology and facebook enabling us to have 300 people for company at all times wouldn’t we just be robots? Self doubt keeps one in touch with oneself and the more the competition the more the doubt and the more the humans! :)

Saying goodbye.....Rahul Dravid

They say change is good. They also say that change is the only thing that is constant in life. Who are they?

For me, as for most people I believe that change is uncomfortable, awkward, painful. But, things change. People in companies, teams, in life itself are replaced and indeed life goes on. Well, people themselves change.

But, then these once in a generation people come along and touch the lives of millions by what they were put on this planet to do; A Muhammad Ali, A Sachin Tendulkar, A Leonardo Da Vinci. Their names are etched forever in history and everyone else after them, however good they might be shall be allowed to own a little lesser piece of history than the immortals.

Well, such thoughts triggered by what? By Mr. Rahul Dravid, the wall of Indian Cricket for the past fifteen years. Even though his rude exit from the shorter format a few years back was beginning to feel like a goodbye, there was hope that you might indeed get the chance to say another goodbye; a proper goodbye; a goodbye that he deserved.

Well, most unexpectedly that has happened. Against all odds, an old, wrinkled, slow man from Bangalore was called upon to carry out that emergency surgical procedure the Indian batting line up needed, a procedure he carried out so wonderfully in the debacle before.

But, the final goodbye is the toughest one to say; that realization that this is it, the end of the hope you so desperately held on to. But, the old is replaced with the new; rule of life. But, the only consolation could be that the last hurrah leaves a memory of a lifetime.

Rain permitting, come on Rahul Dravid, show the general masses why they should have respected you more after you gave them 10,000 plus runs in both formats, a feat established by few before and in all likelihood very few long after you're gone. Give me and millions others that consolation that will make the goodbye just a bit more easier........

That face in the crowd

Two eyes, a nose, a set of ears -- the usual furniture. It is often difficult to have a moment of isolation in this cramped, crazy world of ours; always surrounded, always hounded, always competing; competing with those faces around you. Those faces you see on the train, on the bike next to you at the traffic light; faces as sad, happy, loved as yours is from time to time.

There is a face you relate to on a particular day; the same face you might have ignored earlier. Every face tells you a story, a perception you build around that unique piece of furniture fitted on the same frame all humanity shares. But, doesn't every face has a perception behind it; some perceptions we build, most we ignore. We just don't have the time.

Well, the ones that do have the time become the writers, the directors, the creative nutty guys. Whatever the disclaimer at the start of a movie or a novel tells you, events in the story are definitely out of some real life story or perception.

Why don't we have the time to relate to that face who might just be a mirror to your own consciousness, your own frailties, your own wrongs, your own rights? Isn't society built on connection? Or have we left that to a phenomenon called the internet where a billion robots on a trillion keys in some digital form or another hammer out matter that is always there?

Well, maybe I am just an analogue, old fashioned guy in this digital world!

Why is justice considered so extraordinary?

In our country as in many others, justice is often delayed. Yet, that is not the part that worries most. The judiciary in our country today is a thorough and repeatedly tested system doing what it was totally designed not to. It is a tool for the rich and powerful and just something that the common man – who it is supposed to protect -- has to bear with.

Through my formative years, as I started to slowly understand the world around me as I am still doing....the Government, the Parliament, the Judiciary etc. all that sticks in the head are scams or petty politics. These have never been fresher as 2010 was the year of scams. Maybe, it is a culturally part of our society to be petty or it is a legacy inherited after being ruled for centuries by invaders who came, ruled/looted and left.

Whatever it maybe, sometimes I feel that as a country, we do not hold an eye for something big – we like to be lead. What else would explain the desperation of having us endorsed by the bigger countries for the Security Council? It has become more of an ego issue now. If we know that we have arrived and that the future is ours then why are we looking for every second country to tell us that?

Those issues aside, the judiciary has become apathetic or it may have always been. The belief has collapsed to a point that justice is almost expected to be denied whenever a high profile case comes up and that is what is worrying; there is no hope amongst the commoners. Justice, whenever delivered in such cases, even after the mandatory delay is considered extraordinary.

And, this is the feeling that the media, whether films or the news media industry look to exploit. I do not know if exploit is the right term to use but that is the first word that comes to mind. Media trials have become a fad and all the news channels are in a race to break the next big media trial and there are plenty of examples that they find. In a way, it is good that it creates public opinion but at the same time it evaporates the last few rays of faith that the common man may have.
The stimulant for this particular article has been ‘No One Killed Jessica’, the movie based on the famous Jessica Lall case that stretched over a decade but justice was finally delivered after huge protests throughout the country. There are numerous other examples – Aarushi Talwar, Priyadarshini Matoo, Nitish Katara – piling evidences of a failed judiciary and administration.

In movies, be it Rang De Basanti or No One Killed Jessica or innumerable others (especially through the 90s), justice when eventually achieved has been portrayed in such a glorified way. Maybe, it is the truth but sending a message to 1/7th of humanity saying that you can only get justice if you are powerful or else be ready to be another iconic case! That too in a glorified, dressed up way with heart wrenching background scores. Haven’t the cases been glorified enough by the media themselves?

I do not know what the solution is. I probably don’t even know where the problem lies because it so deep rooted and complex. Maybe, corruption, apathy, bowing down to the powerful are traits that are culturally embedded in us and hence in our system too. But, looking at the crippled state of the judiciary; a wing of democracy that is supposed to define its strength is rather defining its weakness in the Indian case. In our country justice delayed is not justice denied, justice delivered however delayed is extraordinary!

When just a picture doesn’t tell the story

Mumbai, or for that matter, even India, is a vast land of travesties which has intrigued generations from the West and ignited the minds of people with a creative twist; photographers, filmmakers, writers, painters.



If there exists a mini India; a place that combines the good and the bad of the country; it is Mumbai city, its financial capital. Ending up here as a teenager has proved to be something that has left my feelings blowing both hot and cold, much like the city itself. It definitely has ignited my mind in my journey towards a substantiality of some sort.

Last week, reading through the DNA in the packed early morning Local, I read an advertisement of a photography competition – Mumbai thru your lens. Ideas started pacing through my head. There was so much that could have been done!

The first few ideas were the obvious choices – VT, Dhobi Ghat, Marine Drive etc. As ideas ran through my head, I saw a twenty something guy trying to escort his girlfriend/sister through the rush of the morning at Andheri Station. He probably unknowingly got into that compartment, a story that unfolds during any normal rush hour.

As I reached Bandra, the crowd in the slow train had become bearable to the point that people could easily stand. In came a five year old kid – tattered clothes, a blue plastic bag in hand, his skin dark with the accumulated dirt. “Paanch rupaiya mein solid cheez...” he went on shouting squeakily like any normal five year old. Ironically, he was selling toys.

After Dadar, wanting some fresh air, I moved to the door. Meanwhile, the kid still went on selling his booty. As the train chugged along, I noticed the person standing next to me. He was in a black suit with a Blackberry in hand, going through some documents. The kid passed by him, both ignorant towards each other’s existence, yet that picture definitely said 1000 words about Mumbai.

Meanwhile, outside as the breeze cooled my sweaty brow; we had reached Mahalaxmi, the race course visible, a symbol of Mumbai’s riches. Beyond that, the Mumbai skyline, the best of its buildings, the escalating bubble of our inflationary real estate, symbols of our 9% GDP growth rate.

I walked out of Churchgate Station onto Marine Drive, the 11 A.M. sun baking down on the concrete. A lonely beggar stared into the sea, a dog sitting next to him. Twenty metres down, a couple snuggled into each other’s arms, ignorant of the heat, the beggar, the world.

Each of these pictures said a 1000 words about life in this bustling, saturated metropolis. Yet, sometimes, for special cases, no word limit is enough.