How much and how much not to love

Why has this concept of love (whatever...) gained so much importance in a society - does it not cause more pain than pleasure? You are essentially two different individuals with different behaviour and characteristics and no matter how similar you may be, you two can never be the same. That is to say one can never love anyone else more than self and if one sets out to do so, one meets with dissapointments due to expectations mis-match and a strong possibility that the other person loves self more than loving you. This leads to heart break and has happened so many times in almost every such relationship.The advice therefore would be to continue loving yourself more than the other unless you don't mind being hurt - again and again. Care for the other person, fulfill your duties but don't make that person powerful enough to hurt you - retain that power with yourself.
By doing so you may not become the happiest soul in the world but you definitely won't be the gloomiest.

Now I might be going wrong here... it's possible, I may be very very wrong and these could be transient thoughts but someone needs to prove that to me.

See ya!

Mixed feelings (biased towards the negative)

Marriage might be a very happy occassion for family, friends, relatives etc. but it is as fun for the people getting married?
Here is a potential groom perspective
1. Putting salt in the hostel mess drinking water tank
2. Waking up all night pretending to study when you actually looked forward to was the lovely plain dosa and chutney breakfast in the mess
3. Chatting with friends and recording the same on tapes only to send it to the girls' hostel to let your special friend know what it's like in a boys' hostel
4. Running out of money during the end of a semester and making do with a 5 rs rice served with plain gravy free of cost
5. Failing in 4 exams in one semester and clearing all of those subjects in the next semester along with scoring a distinction in the regular ones
6. Calling up girls' hostel late at night and pretending to be a handsome smart stranger guy
7. Doing an MBA in Goa... GOA!!! for God's sake
8. Making the most intelligent girl in the campus fall in love with you
9. Spending 4 months of the MBA programme in Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Luxembour etc... All those places!!! for God's sake
10. Sipping beer... and rum and whisky and vodka and whatever a 12rs/peg cost can get you by the side of the Mandovi river in a full moon light
11. Going back to the same place again and sipping beer... and rum and whisky and vodka and whatever 12rs can get you
12. And when you are fed up of that (fed up of what???) going to the beach getting knee deep in waters and sipping beer... and rum and..... and this at 1 AM at night
13. After all of this getting a great job in a TATA company with a nice salary
14. Living in the baap of all Indian cities - Mumbai...
15. Going on an official trip to Bangkok and doing what people do in Bangkok (and Pattaya ;)
16. Staying at a sexy flat in Mumbai with a fridge, TV and friends...
17. Getting beer pints to flat, inviting friends over, filling the entire living room with empty beer bottles
18. Not sleeping after all that fun and going for a breakfast of Nalli Nahari in Mohammad Ali Road at 4 am
19. Meeting an old college friend at 8 PM in Leopold's in Colaba and carrying on the party till 7 AM next morning with breakfast
20. All the while playing part launching new products, selling them in the market, designing ad campaigns, frequent flying across the country...

So, in a nutshell life has been the stuff dreams are made of .. am more than happily giving up all of that by getting married with a hope that the sacrifice is worth it- fortunately or unfortunately I won't be the only person ensuring it.

Dissapointments = Learnings

Every incident is a learning. When you face a setback you start feeling gloomy but there’s another way to handle it – take it as a learning. Extract lessons out of the episode and grow as an individual unless of course you want to feel gloomy because you derive pleasure out of it.. yes there are people who like to be sad because they enjoy being sad.
I really like this famous quote by Socrates – “By all means marry. If you get a good wife you’ll be happy, if you get a bad one you’ll become a philosopher.” What amazing way to look at negatives – in fact what amazing way to make the negative glossier, exciting and the positive a boring existence.

Boring existence? This brings us to another point – when you are always happy, always fine do you get bored of it. Do negatives/setbacks/failures create excitement, enthusiasm in an otherwise mundane existence which if true again tells us why it is actually nice if you encounter failures… does it not spice up your life!

So today, which coincidentally is also my birthday, may have had the worst possible beginning (which I will not disclose) and has left me with a very bad impression of relationships in general but it’s up to me to sit and crib about it or to take learnings out of it, apply it in future and encounter similar recurrence with stoicism and tolerance, isn’t that the best birthday gift I can give myself?

Here’s wishing myself a very Happy Birthday and hope I keep learning more and more out of this amazing life God has given me!

Attitude change

An organization is a personality and this organization has slowly and gradually changed into a completely different and new persona. The persona of an organization reflects in its "unofficial" as against the official, complex and high-level mission statement; the unofficial mission statement comes from the general attitude within employees of an organization.

Taking about the org in question; even the unofficial MS of VSNL was something like ...to extend the reach of customers...blah..blah... with cost-effective... blah blah... high quality solutions... blah blah...

After the gradual change to Tata Communications however this (the unofficial MS) has become, to kick AT&T's ass, to kick BT's ass and to destroy Bharti, destroy Reliance

And this sure gives goose pimples to us!

The wall

In one of my previous posts I felt that a solution to keep relationships going great is to stop expecting and keep giving, giving more than the other expects and going on doing so. But just realised that somewhere, no matter how tough you may be, one hits the wall. One just can't keep giving without being reciprocated atleast 1/10th; somewhere you just can't keep on not-expecting - somewhere self-respect kicks in and that is when you've had enough of it. If the other party doesn't realise this he/she/they is/are plain uncaring, a big-time snob or just dumb!
What do in such a situation then? Just give up and throw the towel?... um.. may be..

The art and craft of Managing

Management happens of three things
1. Business
2. People
3. Relationships
in the order of their complexity.

Managing a business is the least complex of all - there are principles, rules, scientific theories which over time with experience is enough to ward of most serious of challenges. You have clear goals, forecasting is easier and previous knowledge always helps in laying out a plan and ensuring least deviations from it.
Managing people brings in another layer of complexity because of different inherent characterisitics of different individuals. You need far more experience in knowing how a particlar trait of personality would react to a particular situation and how you can have them behave in a way you want to - there are predictable patterns that one learns albeit over a long period of time. Managing people also has some text book rules which when used skilfully can be beneficial.

Managing relationships however is a entirely different ball game. Relationships are managed without a conscious thought.
One would then think why do relationships have to be managed anyway? Don't they just happen and evolve by themselves over a period of time?
My answer would be No. Relationships cannot be allowed to get static - to be successful a relationship must continually develop and grow. It's upon us to give direction - clear, proper, suitable direction - to ensure the relationship is going the intended way. The best way to manage a relationship that one is dedicated to is to give. Yes, give. Give more than they expect. Keep adding something the other person doesn't expect. Create a positive impact with each such surplus contribution. And to do this you may first want to find out what the person wants in a relationship in the first place.
Results however will not come quick. Relatioships take a long time to build. The worst stage will be the one in which you have no idea of what the other person thinks, feels about you. At this point you feel helpless and very often disinterested. Can someone tell how to handle this phase?

Expectations = Dissapointments

Woh bhi kya din the ke har waham yaqeen hota tha,
Ab haqeeqat nazar aaye to usey kya samjhoon
-Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi

Don't quite remember where I heard these lines but they are just so apt with us. We expect and then we get dissapointed. We dream and then we wake up to pursue it and more than often, fail. Life would be more pleasurable if we start finding happiness in smaller things, if we find happiness in present rather than setting goals for the future, the non-accomplishment of which will shatter the future along with the already worry-filled present. Increased expectations can make us cynics. We start by believeing in the possibilities of many a things - trouble comes when we start seeing these possibilities as certainities. And when these "certainities" are not met we tend to treat even the actual certainities with skepticism.




Someone (or I don't know where I heard this again) said that the past is glorious, present is uncertain and future scary - a very common feeling. But let's question this - why is past always glorious? Were we richer in the past than we are today? Did we possess more in the past than we do today? Did we have more loved ones in the past than we do today?

In all likelihood we are richer today, we posses more today and definitely must have added on to our friends and relations. Why then do we still consider past glorious? Because we have filled our present with desires and expectations and filled our future with the fear of not meeting them.

This brings us to another important set of questions - Do we then stop working for the future? Do we stop pursuing education/career growth? Do we stop putting in efforts and be happy with the status quo? Do we stop growing altogether?

Answer: No. Growth is natural, but along with putting in the efforts we probably must stop expecting results and take anything that comes in our stride. Let's see if that keeps us happy - I think it should!

As for the pictures, they are there just for the heck of it