If..

If you can lose your head as all around you  

    Are losing theirs and jamming in on you,  

If you can t(h)rust the wheel when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their cussing too;  

If you can tailgate and not be tired by "corner-cutting"

    Or being honked about, indulge in a quick brawl,

Or being hated, don’t ever give way to those who're following

    And yet don’t look too rude, nor talk too foul:

If you can be reckless—and not make traffic lights your master,

    If you can dodge potholes —and not make sticking-to-lanes your aim;  

If you can ignore indicators and zebra crossings

    And treat those two distractors just the same;   

If you can bear to see lorries sauntering

    And avoid speed-breakers created as traps for fools,

Or watch footpaths being encroached, dividers being broken,

    And stoop lower to disregard all rules:

If you can finally find enough space to squeeze-in

    And risk it on one unpredictable sharp turn of the city-bus,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And just swear a word or two about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To take the unauthorized U-turn well before traffic police are gone,  

And so don't hold on when they confront you

    Just wear your mischievous smile :), wink ;) and speed on..

If you can hustle with other cars with pedal on the metal

    Or bustle with bikes — nor mind as those mirrors touch,

If neither auto-drivers nor taxi-drivers can hurt you,

    If men in your car count on you, but none too much;

If you can utilize that rare empty stretch

    at hundred kmph worth of distance run,  

Coz yours is the road and everything that’s on it,  

    And—which is more—you’ll be home, my son!

Advisory Creeps..

It must have been Australian Open 2016. As players were warming up with their rallies and the camera panned on Federer’s box, the commentator argued if Ivan Ljubicic has the easiest job in the world. "Does Ivan", he said, "have anything to do as coach after all, when it’s The Great Roger Federer as his student?"

At one of these nondescript conferences I attended last year, I got into an informal discussion with students from prestigious engineering colleges of Bengaluru.. I am totally amazed by the mind-boggling clarity kids from today’s metros have, apart from that unmistakable street-smart quality. One of them came to me later and said: “I feel so inspired just talking to you. Could you please give me some career advice?” My very first instinct was to slap her. NOT kidding.

A couple of months ago, I was summoned to mediate an argument between a married couple. I am, normally, perfectly capable of a flat-out, in-your-face refusal in such matters but the situation came across as quite grim. Now, asking me relationship/marriage advice is like asking sex advice to a virgin. But for some weird reason best known to them, they trusted my ability to resolve the conflict in an unbiased manner. Did I say “resolve"? Because this wasn’t my first time doing such thing and I knew what I was signing up for.. These matters typically don’t have a beginning or an end. I was called up just after an early dinner and must have been there till wee hours of the morning.. But as I was sitting there, trying to hear out both sides, I felt like seasons changed outside the window. There were moments of deafening cries, shouts and even more deafening silences.. In the heat of those moments, things were said, that were not meant. And everything just kept getting worse and worse. Where/why/how it began had become irrelevant few minutes into the fight -  all graveyards of all towns around the world were dug - repeatedly.
So many issues started coming to the fore, I lost track of how to reconcile and process this incomplete and asymmetric information. I say so — because (though getting into too many specifics would be wrong) as it turns out, the wife is a trained lawyer - particularly fierce, emotionally charged, brutally argumentative, also gifted with extraordinary memory and an innate ability to attend to minutest of details.. and the husband - an awkward, intuitive, shy, easy-going software engineer (a lot more to be read between just those two words: boring and easily bored, lazy.. you know this list.). It was quite a struggle to navigate his frame of mind and understand his side in the matter and then it was about connecting too many dots to make it a consistent, sensible view. And did I mention that — all this while, it all just felt WRONG on so many levels. I had no right to be there, in the first place. The wife definitely had a “case” but then - she is a closer friend of mine and more mature of the two. I knew I was being harsh on her while giving out my.. well, so-called "advice".

I couldn’t easily come to terms with what I did. I was a sleep-deprived zombie for the next few days.

Quite clearly, then -- Gone are my manipulative (yet coming from a genuine and caring place) ways of proactively discouraging people from inviting what seemed like a disaster for them.  Not that I don’t care about near and dear ones anymore. I guess I must just be growing up from those days of blurting out unsolicited opinions with an easy air of overconfidence.

These days, on the contrary, I prefer the cozy warmth of my shell. But then people force me to come out of hibernation in an advisory capacity. And then it’s just plain grueling -- I doubt if I am not doing enough or doing too much. I wonder if I am helping the subjects involved or unknowingly harming them. If it all works out, I don’t feel like the credit belongs to me but if it doesn’t, the blame somehow feels all mine. I am constantly second-guessing myself and so an imposed responsibility with an unfounded and powerful trust like this is just a bit too burdensome. Call me selfish all you want, but taking part in a battle that isn’t yours is taxing, to say the least. You are pretty much handicapped and yet expected to pull off a win. I don’t know how people do it.

So, as he sits in that player’s box, Ivan would be thinking if he could, rather, enter the arena and face Djokovic all by himself.
My “advice" to him, you ask?: "Take up commentating."
Now, there, in fact, we have a real contender for the easiest job in the world.

By Miss Take..

Read an article a few months ago. I think it was Deccan Herald (has been my favourite for an uncharacteristically long time now). Apparently, some schools in UK have decided to ban erasers in classrooms, deeming them “Instruments of the devil". That's because they want students to own their mistakes and correct them. Not hide them or shy away from them!

Have you watched this movie called “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”? (Uff! What are you doing, reading this stupid blog?!) I will take the liberty of spoiling it for you (the way it suits my narrative): There's this couple, madly in love with each other, they get together..  Reality hits: things don't work out; they decide to go their separate ways. But it’s all so tempestuous they just can't move on. Both of them undergo a procedure to artificially erase each other from memory.. And as it eventually turns out, they fall in love with each other all over again.

I am often guilty of relishing in textbook romance but the claim here is not surrender-to-your-destiny or meant-to-be-will-be or everything-happens-for-a-reason. I would think most of us would strongly, firmly advocate against divine intervention. So let’s, at least for an argument’s sake, go with — you made/let things happen. When you have different outcomes than what you wished for — with benefit of hindsight and a supposedly uncluttered brain, it’s easy to objectify, internalize and see an irrational, fallible self in your past. It’s recommended to acknowledge your mistakes and derive some insight, learning and if possible, even a bit of detached amusement.

The problem is: somewhere in the process, we get into this vicious phase of self-deprecation, anguish, and repentance. Looking back at things, we tend to judge our actions alone but we lose perspective a little bit. We forget the contexts in which we chose the actions.  Imagine yourself caught in a Tsunami struggling to find your way off the shore and then later, sitting on clean banks looking over serene, turquoise waters and tell me your "perspectives" are the same, both literally (Engineering-Graphics-101 sense :P) and figuratively! My take is: if you were to transport yourself back to the exact same situation, the script is most likely to replay itself; and all this -- not attributing to any other exogenous factor, but to your own self.

It could not, should not, would not have been any different.

So, here’s to no regrets. Here’s to not being too hard on yourself. 
But most importantly, here’s a lame justification for all your mistakes. :)

Frère Jacques..

You tend to appreciate anything after bearing with weeks of American TV channels, which, admittedly, can get exquisitely brilliant but run utter load of crap for 95% of the time. (Alright, you have Netflix, we get it!) Let me not even get started on the endorsements. They are so brain-dead and unimaginative; half of them feel like high-school skits and have absolutely no entertainment value.. And the informative ones are just completely beyond me: I mean, why have pharmaceutical ads that spend more time making serious disclaims than claims?

That could clearly be another post.. Anyhow, effectively, to-and-fro plane journey is often the best entertainment you get to have on the trip. And something that strikes a chord or touches your raw nerves is an instant hit! Like this particular ad:

[Video Courtesy: https://www.behance.net/gallery/29529685/Take-a-tour-through-the-Museum-of-Procrastination]

Long ago, Calvin told us to enjoy the deadlines just whooshing by. Come to think of it, however, it’s so much better when others set deadlines for you.. I mean, if my experience is anything to go by -- in academic life, you would either copy the assignment from your first-bencher buddy or just make something up between 11th and 12th hour. And in professional life, you seem to.. well, manage.

What this ad really talks about is the other kind of procrastination. The one that pertains to not meeting deadlines and goals of your own. Lack of persistent self-motivation is nothing short of a life-crisis!

Fortunately (or unfortunately), though, this does not seem to have affected the indomitable (and shameless) spirit of me from creating more goals. :P

So, while innumerable unread books, a kindle, sketchbooks, canvases, charcoals, watercolors, poster-colors, tennis racquet, badminton racquets, TT racquets, inline skates, a yoga mat, swimming costumes, a chess-board, a camera (A side tip: Never get frazzled by your baby sister and let her spoil your Thanksgivings door-bursting experience if she forbids you from taking that DSLR+lens combo), a harmonica, a calligraphy kit seem to be gathering layers of dust — I think it’s time for me to order a.... Convection Microwave. ;)

Allow me to put forth my case. Let me start by saying: Honesty is the best policy; and modesty, the worst. So if - a) hard-core South Indians can’t stop praising Chutney and Sambar by yours truly and b) my mom is not the only one to go gaga over my knife skills (It’s got nothing to do with motherly affection… just that she wants me to chop every single thing when I am around. Well, who’s complaining? Chopping to sub-centimeter precision is just so therapeutic!) and so on.. I think I deserve this plunge to get into a new phase of culinary adventures.. I mean, it would be just stupid to wait for an Italian to appreciate my Pasta or a Thai to admire my Green Curry! ;)

2016 might just be the year of baking for me. I can TOTALLY feel it. :P It’s still January and making resolutions never gets old-fashioned. I see you mocking me already! You know what, I am SO going to do it.. Julie-&-Julia style! :)

Hollow-scope?

Data scientists and economists exist to make astrologers feel better, they say. That planets  and palms and positions and patterns have some influence on human affairs and terrestrial events may not actually be too far-fetched from the other predictive disciplines -- if only, you want to believe.

Belief. That’s all it comes down to then, isn’t it?

Well, what?!

Is it the upbringing of a typical marathi middle-class brahmin family? Or is it that both my grandpas were purohits/astrologers by profession? I remember one incident vividly - a couple coming to our doorsteps, absolutely helpless, having lost their beloved cow. And my grandpa would ask some trivial information, look at the panchaang and say something like ”Search in North-west direction.. She is not more than 80 km away” as I sat besides, absolutely fascinated. The enchantment changed to skepticism to rude disbelief over time— as should be the course for a Science student. And if you stayed less than a kilometer away from Narendra Dabholkar’s place for most part of your formative years, there was never a question about it, was there?

Alright, they were no psychics. What they did, though, is tried to hold on to a legacy, in a very diligent, mechanical way.

Still respectable, IMO. Especially since this must be the profession marred the most by pretense, buffoonery and mediocracy. Honestly speaking, (much contrary to my current mythological reading spree) I find the concept of God as preposterous as I do narratives around Astrology, if not more. Because there's potential evidence to suggest that the latter might have been originally envisioned as something highly data-driven with at least some backing of statistics and probability theory.  How do  you, then,  tolerate a few "Messengers" of God but not those of Astrology?

(To sound like "Ancient Aliens”, the History Channel show) Is it possible that the fountainheads of this arguable “science” put an unjustified and intentional veneer and crypt around it?—  As Freemasons would potray themselves: “We are not a secret society but a society with secrets”. Should we blame it to exclusivity and selective passdown? Is it something that always did not make sense or something lost in translation? Or are we doing it a disfavor by not exploring it the right way?

Coincidences are too powerful and randomness, too beautiful. Truly, as you get to know more, you also know it better that there’s more unknown.  So while this branch may deserve your complete disregard, what it may not deserve is your arrogant censure, especially if it’s just some harmless entertainment.
You never know --  if some genuine flag-bearers of the questionable science dig it up some more, it all might turn out like magic.. To the person unaware of the sleight of hand or its existence, everything seems illogical. So till the revelation presents itself - just sit back, relax and enjoy an occasional show.

I guess what I am saying is: If you are anything like me and Bejan Daruwalla doesn’t exactly seem a very respectable "name" to go with, just try somebody else and have a good laugh about what 2016 might have in store for you.