Confessions of a woman lover

Calling

2009-07-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

Long time no see. Some quick updates: I recently joined bharatmatrimony.com whichis obviously a matrimonial site. And you must be wondering why, after paying for shaadi.com two times without any success why am I doing it again? I guess hope floats. So on it I met an amazing woman. She's a year older than me, but she took the first step and contacted me, and initially I was like, she seems to be a cool babe. She was slim, good features, articulate, intelligent, overall a good package and I responded, and then the next morning, I googled her name and I discovered a TV interview of hers, it seems that she was one of the lawyers who argued the case for repealing section 377 to give freedom to gays. I was blown away! And I have been desperately waiting for her to answer my mails for the last two days. I don't know why, but this babe seems too good to be true. She's passionate, driven, wants to do something big with her life, and besides that she is beautiful and intelligent, and at the same time she also seems vulnerable to me. But I think I am just getting too carried away right now. I think I am writing this post in the hope that she will read it and come to know how deeply she has affected me.

Why am I getting so desperate? Where has my equanimity and Mr. cool guy image gone? Why am I not able to take this thing as casually as I do with most other things? Hell, I am ot so desperate for a college contract, and I actually need that more badly in my life right now than marriage, but I guess I am more desperate to get married.

I really wish and hope that she is the one. I so badly want to be with someone who is driven by a desire to do more than just make money nad live comfortably. Someone who values my drive to do more. Someone socially consciouss, someone who is not dead to the world around us. She calls herself a movie fanatic, and that also excites me a lot. Oh I can already imagine life with her.

Damn, I need to get out of this desperation. I know it for a fact that as long as I am needy for love, I will never get it. As long as I am looking for a woman to complete me, I will always be incomplete. And the worst thing is that some day this post might be read by another woman who is not she, and then how would she feel?

And one last thing, why did I cal th posting the calling. Its because I was wondering, did she choose human rights as her calling? and that got me thinking, did I choose English training as my calling? And to be honest, I didn't. It was more a case of it chooosing me rather than the other way around. And I think that is the case in most cases. Our calling chooses us rather than we choosing it. Was it the case with MK Gandhi also?

The beggar Girl

2009-04-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

As I stopped my car at a red light, I was inevitably surrounded by beggars and peddlers. While the peddlers were easy enough to get rid off, there was one girl who was particularly tenacious and eagle eyed. She had immediately spotted the oranges next to my seat and was begging for them.

As a principal, I never give money or objects to beggars, even children because I know that they have been put there by adults who push them to get what they can and then take it from them. So each time I give money to a beggar, I make it lucrative for an adult to push a child into begging. And so with this water-tight logic in mind, I am able to be impervious to most beggars. And yet, for some reason, I can’t forget her asking for the orange.

Why didn’t I give the orange? I later justified to myself that she would probably have had to give it to the guy who had pushed her into begging, and would not have had it herself. But I can’t forget this incident. I wish there was something more I could do for them than just theorising and blogging about it.

I wish I had given that beggar girl the orange irrespective of my principals.

Where do u holiday when u already live in paradise?

2009-03-29T11:34:00.001-07:00

My life is beautiful. I find so much beauty in my life, I just want to celebrate it. I want to just get lost in it. In the morning when I step out of my flat and start cycling towards office, the first thing I see as I am exiting my society is a lush green field, or sometimes it is of a wheatish color with green behind it. Yes, there is a farm just opposite my society, and it is pure heaven to be greeted by it sight every morning. I cycle parallel to the farm. In the morning these days it is a bit chilly and sometimes cloudy. The sky is beautiful. But five minutes into my cycling, I am cycling furiously and focusing on breathing rhythmically. By the time I reach office I have cycled for 5 kms and my body is well pumped with the blood flowing throughout like an efficient machine. I then eat a few bananas to give fuel to my body.

Around one-thirtey, I am again cycling back to my home. But at this time the sun is high and sharp, though sometimes I might get lucky and it is a cloudy day with a nip in the wind. Once at home, I cook myself some dal and subji, and I personally feel that my dal is amongst the best I have ever tasted. It is simply divine. After finishing the meal, I just sit for a few minutes in awe and satisfaction and gratefulness for eating such a wonderful meal. I feel well nourished and then I nap for about 30 minutes. By the time I head back for office again, it is time for the sun to set. And I see the sun going lower and lower in the horizon, and the sky changes hues from blue to a purple to orange, and I see the sun hiding behind tall building and I see half constructed building through which the sun shines through. And I am lost in the beauty of the setting sun and of greater noida. After reaching office I again take classes.

I get free around 8.30, and if it is a bit chilly, then I will walk home. It’s a 5 km walk, and I put on some music and walk with a song in my step and a state of thoughtlessness in my mind. Of course I do think while walking, but I can never remember what I was thinking about when I finish walking. On the days when it is hot, I will cycle home at top speed and then change and go out for running. I run for 3-5 kms, and at the end of the run I feel exhilarated. My whole body feels like a machine working to perfection, my heart pumping away strongly, sending blood to all my body parts, especially my legs. And the muscles of my legs contracting and expanding perfectly, my breath following a rhythm, and it is almost a trance like state of being. I run with music, and as the music speeds and fades, so do I.

On some other days I will go to the gym and workout my upper body. Initially I never used to go to the gym, but after I started going, I look much better in terms of an overall look, it feels nice to have some firmness in my muscles. And finally there will be days when I will do none of the above, and I will find it hard to sleep at night and I will wake up next morning and feel fat the whole of next day. This also happens about once a week.

So now my question is that when u are already living such a perfect life, and the place where you live seems as good as aparadise, then where do you holiday? You either meet some family member or friend, or go out and explore new cultures in the hope of expanding your horizons and growing. And I always feel so good coming back home after a holiday. Sometimes being away for a while can help one renew the love for a loved one.

The cyclist

2009-03-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

Once I was a bike-user. I used to own a bullet (a 350 cc monster). I was an MBA from MDi Gurgaon. I was well qualified, I was young, I was well paid. One night as I was driving home after dinner with some friends, I cyclist came out of nowhere and I braked hard and yet ended up hitting him and I fell off my bike and got bruised. I cursed the cyclist and muttered to myself – these godamn cyclists are so rash and lawless, they ought to be forbidden from using the roads.

Then I became an entrepreneur. Then I became poor. Then I became desperate. Then I sold my bullet and bought a cycle and became a cyclist. And one night, I was cycling home, I took the usual route to my home which involved going on the wrong side of the road, and there out of nowhere a speeding biker came and the inevitable happened and he hit me. And I picked myself up, and he picked himself up and after a few minutes of dispute and contention, we parted ways. And I was limping home, I muttered to myself - these godamn bikers are so rash and callous, they ought to be forbidden from using the roads

~Inspired by Kahlil Gibran.

Change of perspective

2009-02-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

I recently graduated from owning a cycle to owning a car. Of course I still own a cycle and will continue to do so life long, but there's a big difference between cycling to office despite having a car at home and cycling to office because a cycle is all u have. And the car I shifted to is a honda City.

To start with, let me say what a pleasure it is to drive a honda city. It is such a comfortable car, I can now understand why people get to hung up on their cars. Of course I can't say I have a love affair with my car, but suffice to say that I depend on it and care about it and want it to continue giving me trouble free performance.

Now the funny thing I have noticed after I started using a car is how people's attitudes towards me has changed. I am suddenly a big car owner. People have started giving me more respect. More people come up to me to say hi or generally make conversation. People stare at me when I drive my car into the parking lot, its like they can't believe I have shifted from riding a cycle to driving a big car. My maid asked me for money for sweets. My landlord commented - I've heard that you drive a big car now! The college I go to for teaching, I get more respect from the other teachers there. It is so amazing! The amount of difference that your mode of transport can make on the amount of respect you get.

I am however grateful to whoever/whatever is up there for the experience of being without any motorised form of transport. If I had just graduated to owning a car from owning a bike without being vehicle-less in between, I would have never had the strong urge in me of helping other people who are vehicle-less. I used to stand in bus stops and try to hitch rides from people who would be travelling in their cars all alone, I used to vow to myself that I would never waste the space available in my car like that and I would give a lift to other people whenever I could. And I feel happy that today I am able to give lifts to people waiting in bus stops like I used to wait once. I read in an article somewhere that doing a random act of kindness daily significantly boosts your hapiness level. And it is true!

Confession: I just could not write this peice from my heart. All the while I was writing this, I was imagining some young eligible girl reading it and hence there was a subtle effort at showing myself in a positive light. But this peice has been going on in my mind for many days, I really wanted to explore the change in perspective in my life after getting a car. There has of course been a change in other's attitudes towards me, but what about my own change in perspective? Well, for one thing, I can no longer imagine travelling by buses. It just seems like such a waste of time and effort. Right now, I can transport myself from greater noida to delhi in almost the same money I used to spend on busses and autos earlier. Does this mean I am getting soft? Maybe, but it definitely means I am getting older - more demanding of luxuries and not so willing to rough it out anymore. More on other changes in me soon.

Learning by Crisis

2008-12-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

Every year like clockwork my business goes through a period of crisis and I emerge from it a changed man, and hopefully wiser and stronger than before, though sometimes I think I also emerge more jaded and cynical from it. The first year my business had a crisis, I ended up selling my bike and switching to a cycle. A bullet was too expensive to run, and I needed the cash for paying rent and salaries. So bad was my cash situation that I was on the verge of closure. I did not have money to pay salaries and rent. So my kind and sweet little brother who was working in an MNC with a decent salary at that time decided to buy it from me (at a much higher than market price). That was a life changing decesion for me, and it made me a slim 30" waist atheletic man from an obese 40" wiast fatso. Maybe what I learned from that episode was the importance of being lean and self sufficient. I learnt to manage very well with just a cycle as my means of transport.

Then the second crisis hit a year later and I learned how wasteful I was being and how I was being overly idealistic in my expenses. I was spending money on a guard (for safety of my employees) an office boy (for cleaning etc.) and was paying a very high rent for a spacious office. I was so badly hit by those expenses that I thought I was going to have to shut shop. I was overdue in my payment by more than 2 months, but luckily for me my core employees stood by me and supported me and encouraged me and I came out of it wiser about controlling costs and having learned the value of frugality.

The third crisis is hitting me currently. I am two months overdue on salaries and am not able to see any way out of it. I am again thinking that I am on the verge of closure, or maybe changing my business model to shut down our retail centre which is sucking in a lot of money. I don't know how I will emerge out of this crisis. I do hope for the best, but at the same time I am constantly worried. Am not able to relax. Have all but stopped watching movies, have cut back on all leisure activities that require me to spend money. Have stopped coming home in the afternoon for a leisurly lunch and an afternoon nap. I instead work through lunch and take a nap in the office itself. I am worried, but I now as I write down my past experiences, I also feel a calmer. I've survived similar crisis before, I'll survive this one too. And hopefully will come out of it wiser.

But will I come out of it older? with more of my innocence lost? With some more cycnisism in me? With less of my youthfulness? I do feel significantly older since this crisis started. I feel like I've aged 5 years in just 5 weeks. I've not been able to exercise as much as I would like to because I am spending all my spare time on work. Maybe that is also making me feel less youthful. But I do hope that these crisis' change me for the better and not for the worse.

The Last Trek

2008-12-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

I normally like to travel during Diwali time. I hate the smoke and pollution in the city and normally it is easy to take holidays at that time as business is slow. In the diwali of probably 2004 or 05 when I was running a business with my friends, I decided to get away from the city and home and friends for a holiday alone. I was travelling alone probably because I had no significant other in my life, and because I was running my business with friends, so I wanted to a break from them too. I had no destination in mind except for a desire to go trekking. I had heard that there was trekking around rishikesh, so without any firm plans in my mind, I just boarded a bus for rishikesh at night and at 5am in the morning, I was at rishikesh. There after some enquiries, some people told me to go to uttarkashi for trekking. And I again took the next available transport to uttarkashi which was a shared sumo. On reaching uttarkashi, I roamed around a bit, asked around about trekking and received some vague answers. Then I decided to take up a room in a lodge there for the day as it was around afternoon by that time. But I did not want to stay in the main town, so I started walking on the main road going out of town.

After walking a while I came across a forest dept outpost. There I again asked about trekking and he told me about a village where I could stay for the night and start trekking the next day. I again took a shared jeep to the point where the proper road ended and the way ahead was through a kachchi road winding through the mountains. By this time it was almost 5pm. I asked some people the way to village and how much walking was required etc. They told me that I should be able to make it to the village before it becomes dark (of course they were assuming I could walk as fast as a pahari) and I started off on the path. It was a rocky path going up and down the mountainside. There was a fork in the path somewhere in first half and I took a chance on which path to follow. Soon it became darker and darker till I could see the stars and the moon in the sky, but I could not see the village at all. At this stage I really stared panicking and it was one of the few times in my life I talked to god and asked him to help me. I was not even sure I was on the right path. what if I had taken the wrong path? This thought kept going on in my mind. initially I could see some lights in the distance and the path seemed to be going towards those lights, but then the path turned away and that was when I really started panicking. Of course in the back of my mind was this thought that "its ok, in a worst case scenario I will spend the night somewhere here in the path. I have a shawl to keep me warm." But naturally I was afraid.

I was also afraid that what if I fall or something due to the darkness. But in the end I saw some lights in the distance and as they came closer I realised that I was nearing civilisation and I felt so relieved. The first person I saw, I asked him if this was a village and if I could stay the night here. He told me yes and I was so relieved.

So anyways I slept there that night and the next day I set out on the trek. The trek was everything I had imagined it to be, high peaks, dense forest, a waterfall on the way, complete silence. Undoubtedly beautiful. I spent that night in a camp in a place so high that the water had frozen overnight. I naturally hadn't planned for anything that cold, and I was shivering all through the night in a sleeping bag the trek guide had provided to me. It was a really uncomfortable night and I was really glad to see the sun rise the next day. And to make things worse, sleeping bag had bed bugs and I had to visit the doctor when I came back to delhi.

The journey back to delhi was no less interesting. I had almost run out of money at the end of the trek and this was the time when ATMs were not so freely available and I was anyway out of a job and hence was living on limited means. I was again afraid that if I don't find a way to get back to delhi, how will I stay the night here because I had just about enough money for the journey back. But by some stroke of luck I managed. The last cab out of Uttarkashi was supposed to be at 5, and I reached there at 5:30. Luckily for me there was an oppertunistic driver who was willing to make the late trip at a higher cost, though he agreed to charge less from me after I told him I couldn't pay him so much cos I was out of cash. Once in Delhi, the bus cunducter for the bus from station to home also agreed to take only Rs.6 instead of usual fare of 10, and that was the last 6 rupees in my pocket. I literally arrived home with empty pockets! But it felt great to have reached home under such circumstances. It gave me a sense of confidence that I can survive even in the toughest of conditions with almost no money.

That was a learning experience for me in many other ways too. The most important learning I had was when I was climbing the kucha road in the mountain at night without any hope of ever reaching civilisation. I was scared shitless and didn't what would happen. I even prayed to God for helping me out of the situation in the back of my mind, even though I don't believe in praying to God. But when I finally reached civilisation, I realised that when one is facing tough times, the thing to do is to just keep on going and eventually you will see the light :) And I always think of this whenever I am going through a tough time - that this too will eventually pass. I also learned the importance of following the flow of the universe. I just went from one place to the next without any definite plan and eventually ended up where I wanted to go and learned the things I needed to learn. And although the trek was beautiful, what I really felt the most during the trek was not peace but loneliness. I wanted to be with that someone special with whom I could share the beauty and the peace of that place. I have not been on a trek since. I also realised that I no longer want to rough it out so much and I prefer some creature comforts like a clean bed and a bathroom at the very least! So now although I still love to travel, I travel more to places where my friends are staying so that I can meet up and stay with old friends in comfort while also getting the experience of travelling at the same time.

Is there a God?

2008-12-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time long long ago I used to believe in God, though not very strongly. At that time my prayer used to be" Thank you for everything God, help me help myself"

Then as I grew physically and mentally, I began to question religion and God and declared myself an atheist by the time I entered college. During my MBA that belief was only reinforced by reading Ayan Rand. Though I also started believing strongly in spirituality thanks to Richard Bach, and I wrote about my beliefs on God when I first started writing this blog (http://woman-lover.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_archive.html)

But now it seems that my beliefs about God are still undergoing changes. I am going through a very tough time in my business. I am literally with my back to the wall. I can so easily end up shutting shop, I am so precariously close to the edge of darkness. And in this time of difficulty I find myself calling out to God to help me. I don't do it consciously, but I know that somewhere in the back of my mind I feel helpless and am asking God for help. But I also feel like I shouldn't be asking him for help. It is a sign of weakness. It means that I don't have enough faith on my own abilities. I also criticise myself for double standards. When I am successful, I do not remember God and attribute my success only to my own abilities. And when I am in need, then I change track and start believing in God. I really don't know, maybe the hard times I am going through is God's way of reminding me of his presence? But then, didn't I chose these hard times myself? I knew what I was in for when I quit a stable job for starting business.

Is there any use of praying? if I am destined to succeed, then I will. No amount of praying can change the inevitable. But still, I pray when I feel particularly terrified. Why?

Is there a God? And the answer is I don't know. But more importantly - should I believe in the presence of a God? Is it a belief that will make me feel stronger? Or is it a crutch to help me face the storms of life. Is it true what Karl Marx famously said - religion is the opium of the masses. I don't know. But I do know that I am no longer disdainful of people who are religious. There was a time when I used to pity the poor fools who delude themselves into believing that there is a kind and just God and everything that happens in this world is due to his will. But I can empathise better with them. I can understand where this desire to believe in a God stems from.

Where are you?

2008-08-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

In a sense, everything I have done in my life till now has been for you. For your love, my perfect soulmate. Every change that happened in me was triggered by you. For your love, I strived to be a better man again and again. I strived to grow and develop to be worthy of you. But I am so tired of striving alone. I want to keep growing, I don’t want to become secure and stop growing. But I also feel so lonely. I feel an acute sense of loss, like I have lost a loved one. Except you were never with me to start with, but still your memory has been with me since forever. I remember you, and have remembered you ever since I became mature.

And yet you remain so elusive. I wonder if I am destined to feel this way forever. Forever trying to find an elusive soulmate. Forever lonely, living in your memory. I have a theory – the thing that you desire the most is the thing that will elude you the most. The moment it stops mattering, it will fall into your lap on its own. So the question is how to get over the feeling of loneliness on my own. I think as long as I am lonely for a soulmate, I will never find her. I will imagine her in every girl I get on talking terms with her, and will hence not be able to really be just good friends to start with.

Hopeless love

2008-08-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

While the last piece was a scholarly write-up on love, this one is a very personal experience of love.

I’ve been going to dance classes for more than 4 months now. A girl whom I found very attractive offered me a lift on her own. She saw me walking, and stopped to ask me if I wanted a lift. I was hoping that she would, and I was really quite kicked when she did. She’s an airhostess, and was driving a ford ikon rather confidently. I pretended that I had forgotten her name, and asked her for her name again. Mostly I guess as a comfortable conversation starter. We chit chatted a bit, she went a bit out of her way to drop me. And ever since, I’ve been doing nothing but thinking about her.

I feel like such a dumb immature teenager sometimes. All she did was to offer me a lift, and here I am already thinking of how for our honeymoon she can probably get us air tickets to any place in the world. I’ve been working out detailed scenarios of how I will show her my world, expand her horizons. I’ve been going over scenarios of me cooking lunch for her, showing her my house.

And this is exactly the reason why the thing that I desire the most remains so elusive. Now that I have charted out our whole future together, how can I possibly look at her as just another girl and first try to be just friends. I will never be able to ask her just as a casual friend if she wants to hang out with me. I will just feel too shy and hesitant around her because I have made it into such a big deal. I will read too much into her every move. I will start acting cool so that she doesn’t suspect I feel this way about her, I will feel guilty of having such thoughts about her, overall a pathetic mess.

I have got to get out of this vicious circle!

Detached Love

2008-08-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

When I was in my final year of MBA in my final semester, we had a course on personality growth through psychometric instruments. Needless to say, it was a very intellectual course, and yet at the same time it helped us to look at our emotions through the prism of our mind. Most of us have a whole range of emotions which we accept as our unique personality, something that defines us and to a large extent these emotions happen on their own without any conscious choice on our part. But we can choose what type of emotions we want to have.

One example of this that I have is strategic anger. What is the point of getting angry if it is not going to change anything. But if getting angry serves a purpose - say if a shopkeeper is trying to cheat you, and you want to scare him into giving in - then it is most beneficial to get angry.

But to come back to the point, the instructor told us about detached love. He said that every time he does this course, what he feels for his students is detached love. The love he feels for his students helps him to be closer to them, to empathize better with them and to intuit their emotional states and help them in their emotional well-being. And yet the love is detached in the sense that he is able to leave it behind him when he goes home to his family. He is able to let it go when the course ends and he is able to feel it again for the next batch that comes in. This love does not rule his mind and allows him to empathize with the emotions of the students and yet remain unaffected by it.

This is really a very powerful concept if one can apply this in real life. I feel this same type of detached love for my employees, for my students, for my vendors for everyone whom I am in close contact with. There may be a few I deal with whom I don’t like, but by and large I consciously try to develop this detached love with at least my students. This is what makes me an unbeatable teacher. I can not only make a small group of students feel my love, but I can do it even with a large group and with many groups. I think this is the hallmark of great spiritual gurus like shri shri ravi shankar, They can make tens of thousands of people feel their love and hence they have such a large and devoted following.

How did I develop this capacity of detached love? Well, it came from a basic realization that love is really the most important thing in life. It is the memory of love that we cherish the most, not memories of money and other worldly pleasures. Love is what causes us to grow and expand our boundaries. The more we love, the more we learn and grow. I was inspired by two authors to develop this type of thinking – Richard Bach and M. Scott Peck.

beauty

2008-07-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

Every dance is meant to be performed to an audience, every peice of writing is meant to be read by somebody. Possibily what I am searching for is the reader for my works, the one who listens to my stories and reads my ideas and more importantly hears the unspoken.

There is so much beauty in this world. Everytime I cycle past the road to my house, I am reminded of the natural beauty this world contains, and also the marvells of human ingenuity. every good movie I watch makes me feel glad to be alive and to have the faculties to be able to watch and appreciate that movie. Every good book I read makes me thankful to God for giving me the chance to read that book. There have been extraordinary moments of realization in my life,when I have been just stunned by the beauty of the moment and have totally forgotten everything else and just immmersed myself in the moment. I recall a moment in the winter cycling down to my home in the warm winter sun with some pink floyd playing in my headphones. I don't know why, but that moment has stayed with me, it was just such a trance like moment. I used to have a lot more of these types of moments. I used to be a lot more introspective. I used to read a lot more books. I have almost stopped reading these days. Just this friday I picked up a book after almost 6 months, and that too because my newspaper supply had been stopped and I didn't have anything intersting to read.

In my quest for business success I have had to leave behind the simpler pleasures of day to day life. But is this bad thing? The reason why I am so driven towards business success is because I was missing a woman during those moments of day to day pleasures to share my pleasures with. And the search for a woman brought me to this point where I realised that business success is paramount for marrying and settlying down. I just hope that by the time I get business success, I do not forget these small pleasures and forgot who I was.

coming home

2008-07-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

There's a beautiful don McLean song called crying which has the lines "I thought that I was over you, but its true, oh so trueI love you even more than I did beforebut darling, what can I do?" and I guess its the same with me and my women lover phase. I though I was over it, but the last few days I've been feeling like someone's missing. While cycling home, I feel like talking to someone, feel like calling up someone. But no matter whom I call, I never get any satisfaction. After just two minutes I want to hang up, but of course I can't.

Who is it or what is it that I am missing? I feel some sort of emptyness, but I am not sure if only the presence of a girlfriend would fill it. The more I think about it, the more I feel that a lot of my loves would have to remain solitary loves. The road I love to come home by for instance, is a really inspiring one and one of the best experiences of my day. Especially nowadays in the monsoon. It is surrounded by trees on both sides, and there is vast expanse of farmland on side of it which is completely green at this time of the year. But the road also serves as a toilet for the people of a nearby village and one can frequently encounter people squatting next to the road. I imagine this would be a turnoff for any girl, though for some reason it doesn't bother me. The way I see it, at least they're not throwing plastic and other non-biodegradable items and permanently polluting the place. What they're doing will only add to the greenery eventually.

My other love is travelling light. When I say travelling light, I mean travelling without the encumberances of a car/bike etc. I love to travel like that. Just go where my heart desires without having to worry about parking space, traffic, the exertion of driving etc. I love to travel on the mercy of the world at large. Hitching lifts, running after busses, using the occasional rickshaw. Don't think any girl will find this too appealing either.

Though a lot of my other loves could probably be shared like good movies, good food, music, exercising, cycling, exploring new places etc.

The paradox of choice

2007-12-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

We are who we choose to be. But at the same time, we are also enslaved by our past choices. If I chose to do robbery, then I cannot choose to be free of its consequences. The choices we make today restrict our choices of tomorrow. My father chose to concentrate more on career than family, and today he is stuck with a dysfunctional family and he cannot escape the consequence of that choice.

This is a thought that recently struck me, and its been getting stronger and stronger. I saw my grandma, almost a cripple, and unable to be self reliant, and at the same time unwilling to be more independent. She hates being dependent, and yet is unable to break out of it. She is not even willing to phone the chemist to order a medicine for herself. Not willing to phone a restaurant to order some snacks for herself. Always depending on others, and grumbling that others do not care for her. I think who she is today is the result of a pile-up of so many choices of the past, that she just can no longer chose to be any other way. She is bound by the choices of her past.

In the same way I am glad that I did not enter into a matrimonial alliance in a hurry. One might think that it is ok to marry anyone you like, if things don’t turn out well later, then u can always undo it and marry another, but I don’t think it is possible to go back to the same level of choices. A divorced man just cannot have the range of choices that an unmarried man has.

Now that I put it down on paper, it seems like a fairly obvious thing, though when I first thought of it, it seemed like a profound learning. It made me realize that I cannot make choices frivolously, and chose something else later on. A man is bound by the choices he makes. What do you think of the profoundness of it?

False Alarm

2007-12-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

I am so upset. Just when I had thought that I was finally going to find some companionship, it turned out to be a false alarm. I met this girl in B’lore through shaadi.com. we had not exchanged any emails her profile write-up was just a two liner with no photos of her, so it was truly a blind date. And I ended up really liking her. And in part, the reason why I liked her so much was cos I seemed to be getting so much positive vibes from her. She was smiling a lot, and had a very pretty smile too. She sounded excited and we had quite a few things in common. She spent 2 hours with me when she’d told me that she could only spend an hour. In the end, we decided to exchange emails and blog ids, and would see how things went from there.

My first thoughts after meeting her – Yes! Yes! I finally found her!

But unfortunately it seems that she was not really that interested in me as I thought. And I just don’t get it. She smiled a lot, I asked her for feedback, and she overall seemed to like me. Her body language was so positive, I was sure things would move forward between us. There was an issue of height, she was more or less as tall as me, and most girls prefer a guy who is taller than them. But damn it she seemed as excited about meeting me as I felt about meeting her!

She has just not answered my emails, and I’ve sent two of em by now. And what’s more, her two line profile on shaadi.com is now a 6-8 liner. Damn!

I think what I need is a paradigm change in my outlook towards women. Just like the paradigm change I had in my outlook towards business, and that paradigm change is helping me to have a better settled business now. I need to change my thoughts about women and life partners and girlfriends. There is obviously something wrong that I am doing. I am not bad looking, and personally I find myself quite good looking. I am considerate, sensitive, loyal, believe in equality of sexes, and what’s more – I even have mother (mere paas maa hai!). Then why am I single despite my best efforts? Its again quite similar to the problem I was facing in business. Despite my intelligence and MBA and focus on quality, my business was still a loss making one. I needed a change in orientation to make it a profit making one. So I wonder what kind of change of orientation in need in this, and more importantly when will I get it? I am so fuckin tired of being alone, of sleeping alone in my bed every night.

A later addition: Well, the second mail had not gone to her, and I sent her a third mail thinking the second had gone. She replied this time, but my tone was all wrong in the mail I’d sent and net net, the relationship has ended.

?

2007-10-02T11:21:00.001-07:00

I don't know what I am going to write about. I am trying to write after a long time, as you can make out from the difference in dates from previous blog. Why did I stop writing? I think I have undergone another transformation. It has come in terms of business. I have become a businessman from an entrepreneur. The word entrepreneur has a lot of charm and sex appeal attached to it. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, no one wants to be a business man, but I am rambling now...

So anyways, coming back to point, I was once an entrepreneur. Proud that I had given up a cushy corporate life for a life of hardship as an entrepreneur. I had this arrogance in me that I did not give up a shitty job to do shit in my own business. So I rejected doing anything that gave me any of sort of mental discomfort, or took away from my daily pleasures. For ex. - I didn't want to do anything that would not give me time to read, to cook, to chill in the afternoon etc. I also had a point to prove to people who told me I was crazy to give up a job and start a business. I wanted to show them.

But now my philisophy in life has changed. Right now my philosophy can be best encapsulated by China's ex-premier Deng Xiapong's statement "to be rich is glorious" when China first started moving towards capitalism.

I want Unnati to be rich. I want to financially comfortable. I have now realised that the purpose of starting a business is not to make a point. The purpose of starting a business is to make money. A business above all else must be done for a profit motive, otherwise there is no point in doing the business.

So that is the major change in my life. But somethings have still not changed, and that will be hopefully the subject of my next blog.

What a compliment!

2007-03-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up late and so instead of walking the 3.5km route to my office, I decided to try for some public transport, and as luck would have it, the moment I reached the bus stand, the bus came. I was dressed in a blue jeans, a well fitting white tee and a sporty looking jacket on top, and was wearing my usual running shoes. After I sat down, another fairly pretty woman came and sat next to me. And the normal response for me would be to fantasize about talking to that woman, or if we in some way managed to connect or something like that, and the normal situation would be that nothing would happen cos I would not really start a conversation. But today something different happened - she started a convo with me! At first I could not believe it, I mean come on, this is India. Women do not start conversations in busses. But this one for some reason decided to start a convo with me, and that was such an amazing compliment for me.

She asked me if was going to the sports club (my sporty look paid off!). I asked her about her destination. We exchanged professions, backgrounds, where we stay etc, and then my stop came. I may never see her again, or I may run into her again cos she lives nearby. Maybe I should've given her my card, but it didn't strike me at all then. Its not that I found her to be terribily attractive or something, but well, she was a single woman who started a conversation with me on her own, and for that reason alone I had a smile on my face for the next 4 hours :)

Now there's something for me to be learned from this experience. I didn't start a convo with her, I did not do anything to encourage her to start a convo, and yet when she actually did, I felt really happy about that. And this is exactly what I need to be doing with woman I find attractive. The fact that she does not initiate contact does not mean that she does not want me to initiate contact. Maybe from within she's hoping that I will initiate contact. What do I have to lose but my izzat. Which is the whole blody problem. My izzat. That is what I am afraid to lose despite all the show that I put up about not caring about what the world thinks, I do care. Why else would I not be more free in initiating contact with women I find attractive?

Catharsis

2007-03-16T11:13:00.001-07:00

I think I’m going through a process of catharsis forced by my condition as an entrepreneur.

I met Satya on Monday, and that man has always been a sort of a role model. He told me that I need to face up to my desires. I need to be able to choose. He told me somethings about having a choice. I did not understand that fully, but I did understand that he was trying to say something profound to me. He told me something like how entrepreneurship strips us down to the bare bone, how it forces us to look into the mirror and forces us to recognize and acknowledge who we are.

But man o man. If I survive this phase somehow, man o man, I’ve got it made. I’ve learned my lesson many times over. I need to give feedback more openly to my faculty. I can’t extract my money’s worth out of them without that feedback. I need to give feedback to all my employees. I need to stop being afraid of giving feedback. If it hurts them, then it has to hurt them, there’s nothing I can do about that. And like a fool I still haven’t spoken to all my faculty till now.

I hope I can make it out of this somehow. I hope I can make it out.

Guilt

2007-03-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

This is something that’s been writing itself in my mind for some time now, but just haven’t had the timwe to sit down and write it. Its been a terribily busy week, my business was on the verge of shutdown on Monday, and it came back to life yesterday (Thursday). One more week. That’s pretty much how the business is surviving – one more week after another. But I’m quite upbeat about sustainability now.

Now coming to the topic, recently M called me her hero and I was instantly reminded of this.

I was probably in class 2nd or 3rd or 4th. We were assigned seats by the teacher where we had to sit everyday. Her name was Ali. She used to sit next to me. We were good buddies, the way a boy and a girl can be buddies without any attraction coming in between. Of course we were probably too young to know better. If I try to visualise her, I see someone with a darkish complexion, and a mature face. Not a looker or anything. I remember we used to share stuff like pencils sharpners etc, and also we probably helped each other in studies, though I honestly do not remember much of her except for that incident.

As was bound to happen, our friendship started getting teased by our neighbours. I don’t know if they teased her or only the boys teased me, but I do remember feeling embarrassed. And that day, after the school had ended and we were boarding our buses back home, I remember walking alone to the bus back home. I think I must’ve been mostly a loner at that time too. And then I saw Ali sitting in her bus. It was not the normal big sized bus, but a smaller size one. She was sitting on the window seat. And I don’t know why, but I picked up a stone and hurled it towards her. I was some distance away from her bus, and for a second or two nothing happened. And then I heard the sound of glass shattering, and she screamed and a couple of other children also screamed. I don’t remember what happened next, but it seemed that I had thrown the stone quite accurately and she narrowly escaped getting hurt. Ali was not the type to get hysterical or take something like this lying down. She immediately complained and accused another person in our class – NB. NB apparently had threatened her and had been troubling her for a while and she assumed that it must’ve been her. She could not even think that it might have been me. And finally as the buses were pulling away, I saw that NB was being dragged screaming and kicking and crying to the principal’s office. His parents were called, and he didn’t come to school for a day or two. I think his parents were of the cruel variety and would not have believed his protests of innocence and he must’ve been terribily punished.

Later that evening, as I was watching TV, there was an interview of a Cop, I think it was Kiran Bedi, and I got terrified. I thought that she knew about my crime and she would come to arrest me tonight. I think I have been a bit afraid of cops ever since. From what I remember, our seats were changed a few days later, and I never maintained any sort of friendship with Ali. And Ever since I’ve also been carrying this guilt over what I had done, and have always felt bad because of it

Companionship.

2007-03-10T12:54:00.000-08:00

I discovered the pleasure of companionship thanks to my sister. My sister Priyanca (isn’t that a beautiful name?) was in town during my holi vacations, and it was my good fortune that there was no one else to spend time with her and so me and her went around Delhi like a bunch of typical tourists. And I had such a good time, and more importantly I discovered what I would like in my companion for life – my jeevan sathi so to say. Here some things that I liked about Priyanca and I would like in my life partner.

We started out with doing some clothes shopping together and that’s where the connection began. She gave me really good feedback on what looked good on me and what did not, while at the same time weighing practical aspects (difficult to maintain etc). But she was not pushy about her views at all. If I was attracted to something, she encouraged me to go for it telling me the pluses of it. That was something I really liked.

What I really liked about her was her willingness to rough it out, to experience things fully without any cushionification. She had no objection to travelling by autos, to walking around rather than going by car etc. And she was game to try anything. She walked around the crowded streets of chandni chowk, she even got wet when some kids threw some balloons at us, but she took it quite sportingly.

I also liked the fact that she was quite a physical sort of a person. We were almost constantly maintaining physical contact – our shoulders touching, arms rubbing, at times she would hold on to my arm when she was very excited or nervous. And yet at the same time it was not over the top the way you would see two lovers with interlocked hands etc. I liked that.

She was great to talk to. She was really curious about India, wanted to learn and get more knowledge about stuff. She was a good listener, while at the same time was also interesting to listen to. She was genuinely interested in getting to know my thoughts and views about different things. She had a great sense of humor and an easy laugh. I really like that – women who laugh easily.

And last but not the least – she was also fitness conscious. She liked to eat healthy and get good exercise. This part is really important, because it is really difficult to eat healthy or take out time for exercising if your partner is not into all that stuff. You feel like you are not being a good team player if you suggest doing things that your partner does not like. And you somehow lose motivation if you have to exercise by yourself while your partner is sitting and watching TV. It’s a different matter when I am alone – then I can exercise with dedication. But I can’t exercise vigorously when I go visit my family because of this reason.

my neediness!

2007-02-09T11:38:00.000-08:00

I need a woman so bad! Today again I was hugged by M, and she felt so amazing in my arms – her curvy fleshy body against my chest, her arms around me, my arms around her, needless to say I got a hard-on!

But damn it I miss the physical intimacy of being with a woman so much. Why can’t I get a woman? I’ve become fairly attractive now, what more do I need to do? Why can’t life be simple like it was when I met P – we just met, spark flew, and on first night itself we were holding and rubbing and caressing each other. I somehow think that the only way I am ever gonna be able to get a woman will be in a similar situation. But the question is how do I end up in a situation like that? I hate going to parties, and I don’t have the money to spend on going out to pubs discos etc, and I fucking can’t even afford a shaadi.com membership. I’ve gotta do something or I’ll go crazy. I think a paid shaadi membership seems like a good way forward. Lemme see how I can manage that.

Why I cannot be your friend.

2007-02-03T20:32:00.000-08:00

Every time I hug a woman or have physical contact with her, I get a hard on. And that, my dear friends, sums up the reason why at least at this stage of life I cannot be friends with a woman. I remember once when I was probably just entering puberty (class 11/12) a large family gathering (including NRI relatives) had gone out to eat. There was of course not enough space in the car and an NRI cousin (female obviously!) sat on my lap for the duration of the trip, and well, wouldn’t you know it – I got a hard on. At that time I thought that that NRI cousin also had a similar reaction cos she wanted the same seating arrangement on the way back, but that was probably my overactive imagination thinking that.

And then there’s ‘I’. We haven’t been friends for some time now, but when we were, we used to hug a lot and generally were quite comfortable physically. Though I did not get as many hard ons with her, cos a lot of my time with her was spent when I was already in a relationship, so I think at that stage it was under control. But even with her I remember the time we spent together pre-relationship, and I do remember quite a few hard ons.

Then there was the farewell given to me by ‘M’. She’d been living with us for 2 months, and that was her last day there. She hugged me for almost 2-3 minutes, and at the end of the hug I was woozy n light headed, and u guessed it, I had a hard on too! Of course at that stage I was also in love with M, so the hard on is more understandable.

The only exception I can think of this rule is B. She’s a woman I’ve always been good friends with without any sexual thoughts entering the relationship at all. Maybe that could be because I don’t find her sexually attractive. If she was a sexy woman, chances are that the same thing would’ve happened there also. These days C has also crossed over to a place of friends only. I cannot under any circumstances think of her in a sexual way now, even though I was once head over heels in love with her. I think that is probably cos she’s married, and well, there’s a finality to marriage. It means no more hope for you, you can only be a friend or nothing at all now. So maybe that could be the reason. But then she’s also managed our friendship with so much honesty and commitment that she has managed to bring me up to this level.

My whole point of writing this rather boring piece is basically to convey to any woman I might be friendly with currently, that I cannot be your friend. I don’t have it in me right now to be a true friend. You are for me a woman I want to sleep with, and obviously that won’t work in a friendship.

Mysterious Girl

2007-01-18T00:22:00.000-08:00

Its darkest just before dawn.

2007-01-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

Three diwali’s ago I went on an adventure trip to Uttranchal. I was free for Diwali, and I did not want to spend it at home in meaningless parties and drinking sessions. This was during a time in life when I did not have much work to do, business was in a limbo with no way out visible in the near future. I was only teaching for two hours a day, and god knows how I would while away the rest of the day. But basically I was fed up of this no work lifestyle, and I wanted a physically exerting outing. So I decided to go trekking in Uttranchal. Now I really had no idea where to go for trekking, but I recalled seeing many tour guides advertising trekking in rishikesh. So I got on the bus to rishikesh at night and started my journey. I spent the night in getting there, and was there at 5 am in the morning. Once I got there I asked around for where I could go for trekking, and was told by some people there that most people go to uttarkashi for trekking. So I boarded a sumo going to uttarkashi, and I was there by lunchtime. But here also I didn’t get any definite information about trekking, and not wanting to spend the night at town I decided to start walking on the road leading our of town in the hope of finding something interesting on my way. After about an hour of walking I reached the forrest department outpost, and I asked the person on duty for advice on how I could trek. He told me a place where I could go, and also got me a transport for getting there. I reached what you could call a base camp. Basically it was a place with a few shops, and the tarred road ended there. The rest of the way to the start of the trek was on foot. By this time it was probably 5 in the evening. I asked people, and they told me to walk up to the village through the kachha route, and stay there for the night, and the next day I could start the trek first thing in the morning. I then started walking on the path to the village.

The path was all uphill, and it was basically a narrow road made of stones that was winding around the hill. When I started it was still light, but within half hour it started to become dark. I was following some locals also going to the village, though their speed was much faster so they left me behind in no time. At this time I reached a fork in the road. Not knowing which way lead to the village, I decided to gamble on one route, which I intuitively felt would be the likely route. Soon it was totally dark, and though I was slightly worried, but not overly so. In the distance I could see some lights and I assumed that was the village and I would eventually reach it. And so I kept walking. But then after an hour of walking, I realised I was going away from the lights, and the lights were probably in the next hill. Then I got scared. I started walkling faster, cos I did not want to get lost in the middle of nowhere. There was no sign of civilisation anywhere on that hill except for at one place there seemed to be some sort of low shelter made of tarpaulin and wood. I made a note of that thinking that I must be ready to sleep here for the night in the worst case scenario. Now I turned on my mobile to illuminate the path ahead. I had started tripping probably because I was scared and walking fast. And all the time there were these conflicting thoughts going on in my mind.

One series of thoughts was visualising myself lost in the middle of nowhere with no food, a little water and no one around to hear me. I was terrified about what I would do if I didn’t come across the village soon. I would hear an occasional rustling in the bushes and that made me even more scared. I even started shouting “koi hai” and “hello” after every minute or so in the hope of finding some civilisation.

Another series of thoughts was telling me to not worry. So what if no one finds me at night, I have a shawl with me in my bag. I will go back to that shelter, wear the shawl and sleep there for night. Someone will surely find me in the morning.

And finally there was a third thought in which I was actually praying to God to get me out of this situation. Now those of you who know me, will know that I am close to being an atheist in this matter. For me god is not an external force, but it is a force inside me which will make my destiny happen. So I never pray to a God because I feel that my God is within me making things happen to lead me to my destiny. But such was the level of my helplessness and fear that I was actually praying to a God up there to help me out of this situation. That was a truly unique experience for me cos it had never happened before.

Shortly after that I saw some signs of civilisation – farmed slopes, and soon I reached houses and I realised that I had reached the village. The rest of the story was as expected. I slept there the night, went trekking to a lake the next day. It was around 16km to the lake, and around 13km to a camp. I managed to reach camp by evening, and stayed there for the night. That was the coldest night of my life. It got so cold there that I could not sleep all night, was just shivering all night long. In the morning I was that all the water in the puddles had become ice overnight. We started back, and that evening I was back in the town looking for a way to reach Rishikesh. By that time I had run short of money, and people helped out time and again by letting me pay less than normal rate etc. I finally reached home that night at around 3-4am.

But that trip was eventful for two reasons. The first was that I discovered that no matter how bleak things look, if you keep going, you will reach the light. I was so scared of never reaching civilisation, of getting lost etc etc, but in the end I kept going and reached my destination. The other thing I discovered was that at the peak of the trip, i.e. when I was trekking towards the lake – safely with a guide, and having survived the scare of the previous day, I felt empty. I had no one to share it with, that made the accomplishment seem less than what it was. I realised that I needed somebody to share my life with for me to enjoy my accomplishments fully.

Now why I was reminded of this trip was because the last few weeks have been like the last half hour of that journey towards the village. I have been terrified that I will not be able to sustain the business, that I will have to shut shop, that this whole venture will have been a failure, and though I keep telling myself that it is not the end of life for me, I can still get a good job and have a good career, but still the prospect of failure has been looming large, and really scares me. I have also started praying to God in most desperate moments. I ask God to help me weather this storm, to let me take the business through this rough patch. And again, I have never prayed to God since that one time in Uttranchal. Does this mean I am becoming a believer? Or does it mean that I become a believer when I am shit scared and helpless? I would probably remember God again if something happened to my future wife, child, and I was helpless to do anything about it.

Well, I think I will spend my whole answering this question – is there a God?

Note to reader:
Please give feedback if the starting is too lengthy. I wasn’t sure if I should put in so many details about how how I landed up at Uttarkashi.

Who is Barack Obama?

2007-01-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Who is Barack Obama? I don’t know myself, but America seems to be gripped by Obama hysteria. And for some reason I’ve been stunned and excited at the same time. Stunned that America could even think of electing a black president, and excited at seeing what he represents. This man might just become the most powerful man in the world, and he seems to be such an enlightened soul. He has written two bestsellers, both of which seem to be semi autobiographical inspirational books. He openly admits to have smoked marijuana in college. He is a religious man, but not of the George Bush overly Christian kinda religious. Perhaps like Gandhi was religious. His father was born in Kenya, and his mother was a white woman. He seems to be a humble soul. He quit a lucrative career to get into public service. I don’t know much about him, but just his name by itself seems to send me vibes.

I think there is a possibility that great men are all born of dark skin. Krishna is famous as being dark skinned, and he is painted blue in most painting. Jesus was supposed to be brown rather white, though none of the Christian paintings show it. I think its probably cause that religion was taken over by the followers. Mohammad was a brown man. Buddha also must have been brown, being an Indian, though he is also generally shown to be quite fair. Gandhi, Martin Luther King…so many others. I guess I must start browning my skin more to achieve the greatness that I aspire for ;-)

Audience Factor

2006-12-30T10:29:00.000-08:00

One day me and sandy came

Testing testing
Warming up
U know, its funny, but I need to warm up before I can write my heart out.
I cannot sit down to write something, the writing needs to flow out naturally.

Right now, I am slightly high on ganja, though to be honest, it is not much right now, and I’m attempting to write. I started writing quite vociferously, a few days back with T. But she is backpacking in some distant country right now, and I’m trying to keep up the writing tempo I was in. I really wanted to talk about my audience factor concept. That’s where this piece started from – one day me and sandy came up with this concept of audience factor. And I think what I’m trying to do here is build rapport with the audience before I start writing on the main topic. This is what audience factor is – everything we do is done for an audience. Well, not everything. For example I normally don’t dig my nose for an audience, but other than that just about everything we do is done for an audience. I know, you’re going to say - no, that’s not true, I care for poor unprivileged children and I do it only for my own satisfaction, and not for anyone – well, you’re wrong. Things like that are especially done for an audience. I’m not saying that we are all attention junkies, but there’s always an invisible audience to whom we are playing up. It’s a different matter that whether we are aware of them or not. Who is the audience depends on you. It can be a parent, it can be your future soulmate (my most regular audience member), it can be God for the religious, hell! it can even be you yourself if you have mild schizophrenia (which I think most of us do!).

Now the memory of the articulation of this concept is becoming clearer to me. I remember me and sandy discussing the fact that we quit our well paying jobs to start a new venture would be such a great story for the audience. And how, at times, we actually do things to play up to that unseen audience. For example my decision to sell my bike during a particularly bad cash crunch was again partly done for the audience factor. While on the whole it was something I wanted to do – I knew it would force me into fitness, but the decision was made all the more attractive by the audience factor. This act of selling my bike allowed me to convey to all my audience members (in this case primarily my family) that I was determined to make this venture work.

For most of my personal activities, my future soulmate is my audience. I don’t know who that will be, but I imagine her looking on as I scale personal heights. I remember going on a crazy adventure trip to Uttranchal – no plans, just got on a bus to Uttranchal and let fate take me forward, and during that whole trip I could feel my future soulmate would be an audience to this in the future, but I was acutely missing her in the present.

In business life, I imagine the students of MDI as one type of audience. I envision being called back to college to address the students on my experiences as an entrepreneurs, and teaching them the lessons that business taught me. I also envision myself getting interviewed by someone like Vir Sanghvi or some CNBC type of interview where I talk about how I built up my business and what were the lessons that I learnt on the way.

back home...

2006-11-06T08:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I am finally settled back into delhi after a rather tense and hectic week. Both my counsellors left, had to hire two new ones with no one to train em. One of the new ones got so intimidated by the work that she said she wants to leave. Luckily she hasn't left yet. Didn't have any money to pay salaries or rent, finally got cash from dad to pay ‘em. Now I have vowed to start saving so that I am prepared for a bad month. This living on the edge business is no longer as much fun as it used to be. I want stability now. Am I getting old? I'm even looking at finding someone to invest in my business, and become a sleeping partner, primarily so that I get some stability and I can grow peacefully. Wonder if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

In fact even my desire to marry is cos I want stability and peace. I want stable regular sex and companionship. I wonder if that is the right reason to marry. I told my dad to start looking for a girl for me. He in his wisdom suggested I settle my business first and become financially secure before thinking of marriage, which I think is a good piece of advice. You know, any woman I meet, I start picturing her as my wife. My American cousin came down here with an American friend – a blonde from Texas, and we spent some time together and bonded over dinner and ganja, and yesterday I found myself thinking of her as my future wife, that how would she cope living in India, and would she be a good wife, and how I would make her learn good hindi, and how the heads would turn everywhere we went…. Crazy shit! I gotta get a grip on this desperation.

barefoot in bombay

2006-10-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

Notice how using the same alphabets in the title make the title suddenly so much sexier. egs - sleepless in seattle, bookless in baghdad...

So that’s pretty much how I landed in Mumbai – barefoot. Incidentally, the renaming of Bombay to Mumbai has been quite a success. Calling it Mumbai comes naturally to the tongue. Maybe cos that was the real Indian name of this city, so it was already on the tongue of local people. Coming back the point, someone stole my as good as new Rs3600 running shoes from the train. That really hurt me. I mean this is simply the worst time for such a thing to happen to me. My back is literally to the wall. I don’t even know how I will pay next month’s rent, or for that matter how I will fund this trip to Mumbai, and then this goes and adds on to my woes. Makes me think that I am being sorely tested. Well, nothing to do but to face it head on.

Tried to get an FIR written for the shoes. One guy just dismissed me straight away – we don’t write FIRs for stolen shoes. Another said go there. Third said go to the police station outside the station. I mean how much running around can I do barefoot? Most people didn’t even notice that I was walking barefoot among them. I felt a bit funny to start with, but got used to it soon enough. Then I got on an auto to go to sandy’s home. The auto guy was a nice helpful chap – took me to a place for me to buy new sandals. Chatted away throughout the ride – his father had come here from Gujrat, and he settled here. He could even speak a smattering of English. Told me he preffered to drive an auto rather than do a business or a job. Said it was honest work – earn as much as you work. No credit. And more freedom.

Well, here are some observations about the city so far.

The Buzz: that is always the thing that I notice about Mumbai each time I come here. Sure delhi also has a lot of activity and hustle bustle, but there is just some kind of buzz, some kind of energy vibe that this city gives off. People working hard, and enjoying working hard. People out at the end of a hard day’s work. Out to enjoy, to have a good time, to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Mumbai works hard, and parties harder.

The street food: Mumbai has undoubtly the best street food of anyplace that I’ve visited till date. In most other places street food is food for the lower income category, for the manual labour, and the rickshaw puller etc etc. And they don’t seem to be very quality conscious, going by what is sold at such places. But in Mumbai the street food is equally for the quality conscious consumer. You get the healthiest of foods at amazing prices. I just had a kind of desi sundae for 15 bucks. Before that I had puchkas/golgappas filled with steaming hot boiled chana dipped in sweet and spicy water. Again the boiled chana makes it an almost oil free food snack – very healthy. Even the ubiquitious Mumbai snack – vada pao is so much healther than samosas or aloo tikki, which are the ubiquitious north Indian snacks. Other healthy snacks that are ubiquitious in Mumbai include grilled sandwitch (filled with vegetables), dosa-idli-vada (better than chole bhatture – the cheap meal option in delhi), and fruit juices. Most people here seem to love fruit juices, and you get pretty good juices start at Rs5 a glass – unimaginable in delhi.

But not to say that Mumbai rocks and delhi sucks. That would be too much of a generalization and possibly a Mumbai cliché. A lot of people in Mumbai seem to have this opinion. Delhi is uncomparable in green cover, parks, big wide roads – I guess space is a disadvantage the Mumbai has to live with. Maybe that is what makes it's people so feisty. The lack of natural resources like land etc. forced the city to compete with the one natural resource it did not lack – people. The people in Mumbai have the best work ethic that I have seen anywhere in the country. Right from the street vendors to the man at the metro ticket counter - everyone is serious about their work. Well, nothing is 100%, but in Mumbai the percentage is quite high.

Well, that’s it for day one. More later.

These are a few of my favourite blogs - II

2006-10-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

The next series of blogs I am gonna talk about is the entertainment related blogs. My favourite and first blog that I started reading regularly in this category is Poonam Saxena’s Small Screen. It is a weekly roundup of what happening on TV. This blog conclusively proves that a woman’s worst enemy is another woman. While poonam has a razor sharp sarcasm and uses it to shred to pieces a lot of shows/channels, her worst is saved for Simi Garewal and Ekta Kapoor. She hates both their shows with a vengeance and is not afraid to show it. Her column is overall a delight to read simply because of her wit and the beauty with which she criticises the stuff she does not like. She has a chatty style of writing, the way a friend might talk to you.

Next are the movie review blogs. My favourite in this category is Ziya Us Salam’s blog on the Hindu on Sundays. Ziya is not a movie critic but rather a movie connoisseur. He very clearly loves movies and sees them not as entertainment for the masses but as an art form. He is fairly unbiased and likes all types of movies from racy action-special-effects-packed-thrillers to slow romantic love stories to children’s movies. His review is more on the honesty of the artist towards his art, and not on entertainment value of the movie alone. It was on his suggestion that I actually watched a movie like James and surprisingly found it to be a memorable movie. While he invariably finds something good in just about every movie, he does not shy away from telling the reader which movie should be avoided at all costs. The unique thing about his blog is that he does not follow the normal practise of giving a rating to the movie, but rather talks of what kind of person will like the movie reviewed.

The other two movie review blogs I read are Vinayak Chakravorty on HT and Nikhat Kazmi on TOI. Of the two, I generally tend to agree with Vinayak’s ratings more than Kazmi’s. Both however look at movies from the entertainment point of view, and not as an art form. Which I guess is what most of the masses look for while reading movie reviews. They want to know which movie will entertain them the most.

Besides this Abhilasha Ojha writes in Business Standard on Saturdays about the entertainment world. He does not write specifically about movies, but the whole gamut including TV, reality shows, music trends, Oscars etc. He picks up a topic related to the field and writes on it every week.

Business Standard on Saturdays is incidentally a veritable goldmine of good blogs. There is People Like Us by Kishore Singh who pokes fun at himself and his extended family with all their typical Indian mannerisms and Indian problems. Then there is People Like Them normally by Geetanjali Krishna on people living in Bharat – i.e. the rural agricultural/ labour class. This is a very interesting blog which reveals many facets of the lives of the rural poor which those of living an insulated city life don’t even realise.

Aditi Phadnis writes Plain Politics which as the name suggests is about political developments in the country. Her blog is by far the most insightful political commentary that I have read. I decided a long time ago that if I were ever to start a political outfit, she would be the first person I would try to recruit. She has an insight into politics which only an insider can have, and reading her blog is an educational experience. Lucy Kellaway writes for the financial Times in London and Business Standard syndicates her column and presents it in its Saturday edition. Kellaway writes a personal blog with her ruminations about life as a journalist, as a woman, general trends that she observes etc. Overall the focus is more on humour than any serious issue, and she has a way of being witty and still making a point.

A few other blogs on BS Saturdays - T N Ninan, who is probably an economist writes Weekend Ruminations, a blog on politico-economics issues. Somewhat similar to Swaminomics in scope, and he has written couple of brilliant pieces, but does not have that consistency which Iyer has. TCA Srinivasa Raghvan writes on political issues, both domestic and international. Again has written a few brilliant pieces, but lacks consistency. Devangshu Datta writes Smartshare, on stocks, derivatives and other financial instruments. A very good blog if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Then there The Wine Club by Alok Chandra on wine – both from a consumers perspective as well as the challenges facing producers and the country in general. Then there is a motoring page which is a team effort and is again very educating. This is not just for car freaks, but for anyone who drives a vehicle and is interested in knowing more about what the market holds in store for him. The best part is ‘Which Car’ in which they answer people’s queries on which car they should buy – good for daydreaming!

Besides this, HT Brunch has a couple of good blogs. There’s a small blog by Shikha Sharma who is dietician and writes about u guessed it – diets and lifestyle. Bhaichand Patel, who is an ex-diplomat and has travelled the world extensively writes about alcohol – yes, it is a wonderful blog and again ideal for day dreaming. He talks about different types of liquors, cocktails, types of beers, how to drink various liquors, the origin of different types of cocktails and liquors, and general trends in the drinking world. A most educating blog! Then there is Seema Goswami who writes Spectator. This blog could be called a late chick blog – basically the perspective of a single woman in her thirties. She raves and rants against just about everything from annoying children to over indulging parents to stay at home moms to fashion victims. Now normally for such a blog to be successful the criticism has to be very witty and clever for the reader to snicker along with the columnist at the object of her scorn. But unfortunately in this case Seema’s sarcasm rather comes along with a bit of moralistic superiority which takes the fun out of reading it.

So folks that brings me to the end of my favourite blogs. There might be one or two I’ve left out, but have covered most of them. Now if u read any of these blogs, then share your views about them with me.

These are a few of my favourite blogs - I

2006-10-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

Now if u think that a blog a recent phenomenon, a phenomenon of the 21st century, then you are mistaken. What is a blog after all? It is basically an airing of a personal thought or viewpoint on a public forum where it can be read and commented on by many. The internet part of it is immaterial – it is merely the medium. The oldest bloggers are the good old newspaper columnists whose columns are basically their personal viewpoint or thoughts and readers write in to post their comments. But of course the comment moderation is more strict due to paucity of space.

Well, here I am going to list out a few of my favourite blogs in the good old medium of newspapers. The first and my favourite, most revered blogger is Vir Sanghvi. Vir writes for HT and us faithful readers normally get two blogs a week. One is the main editorial piece on Sunday on a topical issue – reservation, Pakistan, politics and politicians – the usual staple of edit pieces. But reading Sanghvi is like watching a beautiful woman speak. It doesn’t matter what he is talking about, it’s a beautiful experience just to read his writing. He has a mix of a chatty personal style where he actually connects with the reader and yet suitably impresses the reader to leave the reader in awe. His other piece is in the Sunday supplement – Brunch. There he writes a piece called rude food guide about all matters related to eating. He is not a chef nor does he claim to be a food expert, but writes as a food lover, as a demanding customer, as a food historian, and as an observer of food trends and what they say about us. Reading rude food is like entering into a whole new world of fine Italian dining and Thai food from street vendors in Singapore and the best chefs in the world and why the French cuisine is the worlds finest, and the unique blend of Punjabi and Chinese cuisine that is found in India. He truly makes Sunday reading an experience!

My second most favourite blog is swaminomics by Swaminathan Iyer. Swaminomics, as the name suggests is essentially based on economics, but Iyer does not restrict himself to boring economics topics, but merely uses economics as the base for his arguments. My favourite swaminomics blog was a piece where he suggested that the govt try to alleviate poverty by throwing 5rs coins from a helicopter. The only people who would scamper and try to collect the money would be the ones who were the most desperate for it – i.e. the poorest. With this the entire chain of bureaucracy through which govt doles reach the so called poor would get eliminated and the aid would directly reach the most needy. This man is truly a genius and I often think of how his genius and creativity is wasted by him not being in the govt as a part of the decision making group. Swaminomics appears in the Sunday TOI.

Two other blogs that I like in Sunday TOI – Gurcharan Das’s Men and Ideas and Indiaspora by Chidanand Rajghatta. Gurcharan Das is like a moral philosopher, he talks about morality of our collective decision, the way forward for India, comments on our value systems and beliefs, personal anecdotes etc. His blog in not issue specific but rather a more general sharing of ideas and views. He writes well, and makes a good point when he chooses to. Indiaspora is a very informative blog about India and the US, and Indians in the US. Rajan is again a good writer, but what I like about his blog is that it is very educating. This week’s blog for instance talks about Indian Taxi drivers in the US. He raises a lot of issues that I’d never thought about, presents startling information, makes insightful analysis, and gives a good idea about the goings on of the globe in general.

Sunday HT also has two other blogs that are also pretty decent. The first is Karan Thapar’s Sunday Sentiments – in which Karan tries to stick to theme of his blog – sentiments. It seems that he’s been given a brief by the paper to not go into Vir Sanghvi territory of current affairs, because otherwise he is a brilliant political commentator and interviews people on all the latest issues in news channels all the time. He is essentially a good writer, but possibly because of the above mentioned constraints his columns are often quite vapid and devoid of any serious content, though he does manage to churn out one or two good pieces nonetheless every month. The second is Kushalrani Gulabo’s Chick Click. This piece, again as the name suggests is about a chick’s online explorations. And Kushalrani plays the role of a chick to perfection. She is invariably obsessing about her excess weight or lamenting her lost youth (even though she’s only 25) or ranting about her boss, the colleagues, Mumbai’s municipal corporation or the world in general. Very funny column – she has a rare ability to not take herself seriously, and is generally quite witty.

Phew! I’m all tired out for today and I’ve only just begin. So I think I’m gonna stagger out this blog into parts. So End of Part 1 folks. Wait for part 2 now.

Fear Factor

2006-09-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

One day while out in the city with my brother and a cuz, we received a panic call from 'I'. It seemed that she had rammed into a guy at high speed – she was coming down a flyover and the guy ran across the street. She was with her boyfriend and needed us to go come and take the guy to the hospital to avoid police trouble for her. Her car had a big dent and the best solution would be for us to take him and pretend that we found him after the other car had hit and run. We met up with her, she was totally panicking, we saw the guy – he was bleeding, and he was unconscious, and we also totally panicked. We shoved him into our car, and rushed to Safdarjung Hospital. I was scared. I don’t why I was scared, because I didn’t hit him, and yet I was scared. When we took him to the hospital, the cop on duty wanted one of us to write our name and address. I was too scared to write my name. I didn’t want to take on that responsibility. But surprisingly my younger brother wrote his name and address. And he gave true information, whereas I might have been tempted to give false information. That day he stood a little taller in my eyes.

As soon as we saw that the hospital staff had taken cognizance of that guy, we fled. Later in the car I saw that a single shoe belonging to that guy got left behind in our car. And I immediately felt terrible. I imagined him waking up the next day with only one shoe. How would he manage? I wanted to go back and give the shoe, but I also knew it was out of the question. So we threw out of the car. And that is the part that still comes back to haunt me – me throwing the shoe out of the car at a red light. Later as I was narrating this story to a friend, somewhat proudly, he responded with a couple of abuses for me and asked me if I even bothered to inform his family, to make sure that he was ok. After all safdarjung is a govt hospital and the staff is not likely to go out of their way for him. It was then that I realised what a terrible thing I had done.

I had previously written about another incident when I’d given in to my fears. I feel terrible for both the times, but I know they were necessary for to develop the courage for facing the same situation next time around. I recently witnessed another accident, and this time I was a lot more proactive. Though at the end I thought I could have done still more, but I felt good that I did not act like the others. Most people just stood there watching the poor man salivating and pretty much waiting for some authority figure to do something. Some said call the cops, some said call an ambulance, everyone circled around him, but no one did anything. Why do we have this really stupid crowd mentality? In most accident cases this is what happens. The junta crowds around the man, saying call the police/ambulance etc but no one actually does anything. Most people in such situations do not want to take responsibility. Calling the police means giving them a statement, a formal legal procedure. No one wants to get involved in such hassles. Doing anything for the victim involves taking responsibility, and that is where most people shirk away.

I think this is what separates a leader from a normal man – a leader does not fear to take responsibility. This is what makes Gandhi so great – he took responsibility for not just one person or a family or a locality, but for an entire nation. How many of us are willing to take responsibility to change the world we live in rather than simply saying “call the police”

“Give me the strength lord to accept the responsibilities placed on my path.”

The Nirula Brothers

2006-09-02T03:17:00.000-07:00

My very first exposure to western style fast food industry began with Nirula’s. In fact I would say Delhi’s first exposure to western style fast food began with Nirula’s. Nirula’s was a groundbreaking concept at the time when it started. I’m not sure if it started in the 80s, but my first exposure to it is from the 80s. We started to go the defence colony nirula’s when I was maybe just 13-14 years old. It was right after we got our first car. It was a red maruti van, and we were the typical middle class family ecstatic at its own affluence – we had a car!

Nirula’s at that time was mind-blowing. There was nothing quite like it in the market. The restaurant we used to go to for a meal out was a Chinese place somewhere in kalkaji which was a place where a good family Chinese meal would be within 200. But it was a rather dark place with no AC, rather it had outdoor seating with a small kitchen where we could see the cook sweating away making wok after wok of noodles using generous amounts of soy sauce and chilli sauce. Compared to this, Nirula’s was a class apart. AC interiors, lot of wood and mirrors, bright fancy lights, all staff in uniforms, a man with a computer on the cash counter. And the food was also amazing. The pizzas of Nirula’s according to me are still the best in its price range. But not only that, there was such exotic stuff like meat chops, hot dogs, fish orly, and they also had stuff for the north Indian palate – tandoori chicken, shammi kebabs, ma dal, thali etc. And the killer was the ice creams, which according to me are again the best in its price range.

All this good food was accompanied by prices such that a meal at Nirula's for our family would be within Rs300. So of course we did not mind spending that extra Rs.100, and so didn’t hundreds of other middle class families. A trip to Nirula’s would guarantee a certain period waiting for a table. The family would go together, we would place the order, and while the order was getting ready, we would stand guard at different tables where people were on their ice creams/deserts. But it was a really good time for the whole family. The music was good, the atmosphere was lively, the people were laughing and chatting, and there was so much for us kids to do. Get the glasses of water, check the order number, go up to the first floor and explore, go get the order, get forks and spoons, and so on and so forth. And at the end of the meal the family would share a hot chocolate fudge with extra chocolate sauce (our dad always asked him to put extra chocolate sauce) and we would go back home satisfied. And as always our mom would prompt us to thank our father by saying thank you papa in a sing song voice asking us to also do the same.

Nirula’s reigned supreme in the fast food market till late nineties. Wimpies opened shop in mid nineties, and I’m still not sure if that is an international fast food chain or Indian, and they had a only international fast food. Wimpey’s was popular only because it was a different place to go to. But the value proposition was never as good as nirula’s. The food was at best average. So it was never really a threat to Nirula’s. But then McDonalds opened up in around 97. And I remember a day or two after they opened their first store in Priya complex, I was there with friends and we decided to go to McDonalds, and we found a queue of around a 100 people snaking outside it. But the service was fast, the staff was well trained and we didn’t have to wait for more than 10 minutes before we were inside. And it was really flashy. Everything was very shiny and bright, the food was authentically international, though flavourless, the prices were competitive. And that was really the beginning of the end of Nirula’s.

Within two years from that Nirula’s had been written off as old guard, a place where parents went, not a young place like McDonalds. There was no longer a waiting time at Nirula’s, and it somehow seemed not as bright and happy a place that it used to be. Suddenly the staff seemed sloppy, they couldn’t speak English which was the norm in McDonalds, and overall Nirula's became in our minds what the old Chinese places had become. A fond memory, but no more aspiration value. No longing for it. Pizza’s were now home delivered by dominos in less than 30 minutes, Pizza hut had also opened up, giving us even more options, and all these places were authentic international stuff, we felt like we were part of the new generation sitting in those places.

I would have written off Nirula’s completely but then I suddenly became health conscious. I no longer wanted to eat the deep fried standardinsed tasteless food being served by McDonalds and co. I rediscovered the old childhood favourites – the pizza which was not all chewy but crusty and crispy. The toppings were amazing, the meat chop is still among my favourites, and the ice creams are still unbeatable. And whats more, they had not shut shop like we all predicted. Sure it was not as crowded as before, but people were still going there in enough numbers to keep them in business. And I frankly think it is the ice creams that keep them in business. Sure the other food is also great, but the ice-cream probably has the highest mark-up. I don’t think their other food would be bringing in much profit.

Recently I went to the Nirula’s restaurant at CP which is like a proper sit-in place with waiters etc. And I really liked that place. They had all the nirula’s classic, and beyond that they had many more things on offer like English Breakfast with the works, pastas, Mexican food, salad bar… you get the point. And even though it was not choc-a-block full, but it had decent occupancy for a Monday lunch. Later I read in an interview of Deepak Nirula, one of the Nirula brothers, that this place was their very first venture in the thirties. Both the Nirula brother were doctors and they started this place because they had no decent place to go for eating out. It really made me admire the vision of the Nirula brothers who really created a first class made in India restaurant chain. They were the true pioneers in this business. And now they have sold off the business because I think none of them have any sons who want to run the business. I hope the new owners take it out of the stagnancy it has fallen into.

More thoughts on Energy

2006-08-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

I can now see the business in terms of the energy paradigm that Celestine prophecy talks of. It says that human beings are constantly competing for energy from each other, and hence our control dramas to get energy from the other person. And at times we also give it willingly when we feel love towards one another. But the problem is this that we are frequently incomplete halves and when we combine, we form a whole entity, but with two heads. And the inevitable control problems arise as to who will control the body.

I was like that with both of my friends, I completed an energy circle with both of them and gave and received energy from both of them, but unfortunately it was me with each of them, and they did not feel this way about each other. When we were together, I completed the circle connecting them to each other, but they would never complete the circle without me. And hence there was possibly a problem of competition for the same source. While nothing competitive really happened between, they are both too good of a human beings to really play politics, but the team ultimately split. I think the reason for this was because I was living closer to friend 1 and spending more time with friend 1 and that left the friend 2 feeling let out and un-included in the energy circle, and hence he left us.

Later with just me and friend no1, we inevitably started having a subtle struggle to control the direction of the energy circle. I envisaged a different direction in the long term, and I think he envisaged something different. So eventually we also split. And I think the only reason why I am able to stay here alone without receiving much energy from any human source is because of the energy I get from the environment here. I end up giving out a lot of energy to my students, though I think I get back a lot of energy from them as well. This is what makes me so receptive about the class – I can sense where there is no energy flowing. And me not sleeping before my evening classes does lead to this – a lack of flow in my evening classes. So I should sleep now. Bye!

My pursuit of Truth

2006-08-03T01:08:00.000-07:00

I've tried out a lot things in my pursuit of the truth, and Landmark forum was the very first. One of my dad's friend's son (long chain! - but I guess that is what he was in my life for) had a transformational experience at the forum and hence I decided to do it. Another friend who had also done the forum told me that it was a great way to meet good chicks :)) So I did it. It was pretty good - the whole concept of it, and the trainer was really a powerful fellow, and it did offer me a new way of looking at things, but the problem was the same that I felt in all my future spiritual pursuits also. The guru (or the forum leader) did not seem to have reached enlightenment himself. He was a bit preachy, and I discovered that he had his own rackets (a landmark term for the psychological control games we play) that he was playing with us. I wrote about it also at that time (5 years ago) but don't think I have that with me right now.

I have also done reiki, Art of Living, and a course on hypnosis. In Reiki there was the same problem, that even though the concept of Reiki was really great, the guru again seemed to have double standards, he was a bit of a show off about his powers, and a bit preachy.

The Hypnosis guru was truly a showman. Everything was to dazzle and amaze, and it seemed that his own understanding of hypnosis was at a superficial or tactical level. But again he showed me the power of the mind and the potential learning from hypnosis.

Art of living is the only exception. I am sure that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is a truly enlightened person and would probably be a great guru. But I've never had a chance to even see him face to face. The trainer we had in our course was also quite good and seemes quite spiritually evolved. And I guess my experience with art of living was really powerful - the sudarshan kriya really put me into a trance-like state that I have never even experineced with Ganja.

On my wish list is doing a 10 day Vipassana meditation course run by someone called Goenka in McLeod Gunj in himachal pradesh. The course requires you to not speak for the entire ten days and sounds like quite an intense experience. I also want to experience more of Buddhism and Buddhist meditation.

But I guess what I am really seeking is a true guru. Someone who will recognise the potential in me and guide me to achieve it. The system is really not important to me. For me Reiki was connected to hypnosis which was connected to art of living and landmark. All of them talk of similar truths in different forms. What matters most is the guru.

Control Dramas

2006-08-02T01:12:00.000-07:00

The Celestine prophecy talks of four types of control dramas that we do in order to get energy from others. What energy you ask? Well, a simple of looking at it would be in terms of attention or love or interest from others, which is basically a form of energy.

The four dramas are: Interrogator, Aggressor, Aloof, and Poor me.

Interrogator gets energy by interrogating the person in order to find flaws and undermine his position and make him dependent. The aggressor gets the energy by dominating the person and forcing him to give all his attention to the aggressor. The aloof gets energy by maintaining a distance from the person to make the person pursue him, and the Poor-me gets energy by making the person feel sympathy for him.

When I first read this, I thought none of this applies to me, but now by observing my behaviour in my personal life, I have discovered that I am an Aloof. I just do not encourage any contact with any of my neighbours. I have a whole shitload of girls from a college which has made some apartments here as its college, and yet I do nothing to try and interact with them, except to run in front of them, cycle in front of them, and generally show off in subtle ways. But never initiate contact or encourage them to initiate contact. It is pathetic! When I first came here some neighbours took some interest, and tried to get me to visit them and be friends, and I just spurned their offer, and maintained my distance from them to the extent that we hardly say hi-hello. A guy moved into the appt below me, keeps asking me to visit, to spend time with him (he is very lonely here) and I spurn him also. I don’t like it when he comes to visit me either. But then that is because whenever he comes to meet me, he just uses me to unload his frustrations. Or so it seems to me.

My father played the Aloof drama, and I can see the terrible consequences of that. I and my brother are not really that close to him, though we still love him. There is the wall of aloofness between us, so we are not really frank with him. We fear his disapproval even though he never stops us from doing anything. In case of my mother, her drama is poor-me. In her case her drama works most of the time, and we always tend to support her in any family fights. While with my father the problem is that we are not frank with him, the problem with my mother is a lack of respect. How can one respect someone who does not respect herself? Or at least that’s how my thinking goes.

But the big question is what do I do now? How do I get rid of this aloofness? How do I start mixing with people and become a part of their world and make them a part of mine?

Thoughts on Celestine Prophecy

2006-08-02T01:05:00.000-07:00

You ought to read this blog only if you have read The Celestine Prophecy. I’ve jotted my experiences and thoughts while reading that book here.

Third Insight

I had started reading the Celestine Prophecy more than 3 years ago. A friend I was very inspired by recommended it to me and also recommended reiki to me. I did reiki first and read the book later. Because I had done resiki, I could instantly relate with the third insight of energy fields. I felt the energy fields when I did reiki, and I also experienced the mental morning alarm. The master made us put reiki morning alarm, and sure enough next day I was woken up by a phone call from a friend at 7 in the morning. Mere coincidence? I did not think so. I was truly amazed by the prospect of energy fields around our body and how we can manipulate them and heal them. I never followed up on them actively, for some reason I left reiki at that point of having received the understanding of energy fields.

I had taken this book with me to McLeod gunj, which is a hill station near Dharamshala, and is probably my favourite place in the hills so far. I read the book till the fourth or fifth insight, which is as far as I got there. And then I never got back to reading it again once I came back to life in the plains. I guess I did not want to waste the insights by reading them in a position when I would not be able to really grasp them. Recently I met S online who was deeply influenced by the book and inspired me also to read it, and I started reading the book again. I've re-read up to the third insight so far. I think this gap in reading it was meant to happen. I was probably not ready for the other insights, and I am probably ready for them now, and S came along at just the right time to guide me towards the other insights.

Fourth Insight

Well, I've just finished the fourth insight. I was reminded of the last time I met the friend who recommended this book to me. That day I felt so good after meeting her, and now I realise that it was probably because she was voluntarily giving me her energy. She wanted answers, she considered me to be very wise and wanted to listen to my theories on life etc.

I have always believed in vibes that exist in a place. I always felt that my family house in delhi had a lot of negative energy about it. It was a place that always made me feel passive and unsure. On the other hand, the very first time I came to Greater Noida (a suburb of Delhi) I fell in love with the place. I just felt so good here, so positive. I think there is a very strong positive energy field here that makes me feel so good. My life has changed so drastically for the better in the one year that I have lived here, I think it is only because of the energy I get from this place.

There are times when I meet some people and I just don't like spending time with them, I just get turned off from them. I think it because they are trying to feed off my energy, and I sense it at a subconscious level.

Whenever I am sexually or romantically attracted to a woman, that woman always reciprocates, though unfortunately it is most times a reciprocal in the form of friendship, but there is a reciprocal. I think they sense the energy I send out to them, and want more of it.

Why was I born to my parents?

My father is the most intelligent and logical person I know. He boasts of a time when he proved that a question given in his maths paper was wrong, and the professor was so impressed with him that he gave him extra marks for it. He got 105 out of 100 in that paper. He then went on to engineering from BITS Pilani, one of the top institutes of the country.

He is also one of the most hedonistic person I know. He will not get up from his sofa for even a glass of water, but will ask his wife or servant to get it. Not to say that he is lazy, because he is quite an energetic person, but he’s just that way at home. My dad is also a bit insecure, and hence has some aggression coming from that.

My mother on the other hand is not that sharp in the logic/mathematics department, but she has excellent verbal skills. She has very good people skills, and she is the one who is called on to resolve any disputes or fights that arise in the house. My grandmother specialises in having a major fight with her maids at least once every six months, but my mom manages to resolve the issue most of the times. She is also a very body oriented person. She shows her emotions very physically, looks after her body, and in fact I would say she specialises in what is nowadays called wellness. My mom is also quite sacrificing, and more often than not will put others before herself.

But what was their purpose of life? Possibly for my dad it is to make a lot of money so that he can indulge every fancy of his post retirement. Money is important for my dad. For my mom, possibly balance is what she wants the most. Balance in work-family life, balance in diet, balance in friendship…

But I am still not fully clear why exactly was I born to my parents.

The Eighth Insight

I have now understood why I did not read Celestine prophecy further the first time around. Now is when I am truly ready to understand and appreciate the eight insight. I am an incomplete circle, a C. And I am desperately looking to complete the circle by finding another C, a female C to compliment my male C. And that is why I am so fucking desperate right now. That is why I am searching for intimacy like crazy – I want the energy source of a female C, and it doesn’t really matter too much who it is. I think this problem has been compounded by the lack of any female energy source whatsoever like my mom, grandmom etc. This is probably also the reason why I start connecting (speaking in terms of energy) with every eligible single woman in my classes. I am desperately seeking the female energy.

This also explains the a lot about my past relationships also. With P (ex-girlfriend), we were both incomplete C’s desperately looking to complete ourselves, and we found the other half in each other. This is why we loved being naked in each other’s arms. That was how our energies really connected best with each other, that was when we really completed the circle. And that I what I am seeking now – someone to complete the circle.

With my one-sided love relationships, there I was again providing energy to the woman, and that is why the woman always got close to me and we became emotionally intimate. That was how we were feeding each other energy. But perhaps the women knew intuitively that I was an incomplete circle and would eventually destroy the love between us, and so they never got in a relationship with me.

Now the big question is how do I make myself a complete circle, how do I tap into my own female energy source? How do I become self sufficient?

Your body is a wonderland

2006-07-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes while running I feel like my body is a machine. My breathing is strong and perfectly rhythmic, the muscles in my legs are contracting and expanding, my chest is moving up and down, my hair is flying behind me, and my heart is like the powerful engine that is powering this performance machinery. I get visions of the type that they show you in car engine lubricant ads – the piston moving up and down, the liquid flowing throughout the engine, the powerful output that it produces. I feel my blood getting pumped throughout my body, my heart working like a powerful, efficient engine, all parts of the body in a state of heightened alertness and awareness, the whole body moving forward like a efficient car.

And when I finish running, I am completely spent and just about manage to crawl back home. At the end of my run, I put my hand on my heart and feel it thumping loud and clear. It is a very reassuring beat. It is not a frantic beating of the heart, but rather a rhythmic pumping of the heart – loud, strong and steady. And it feels good to hear that thumping (it feels like u can hear if u place your hand on your heart). In fact it reminds me of my bullet days and gives me that same kind of tranquillity as the steady powerful thumping of the bullet engine. Maybe that is why it sounds so good – the thumping – it somehow reminds us of the beating of our mother’s heart when we were in her womb.

I wish I had someone to share this with. I wish I could come home, take her hand and place it in my heart and feel the thumping of my heart through the feel of her hand on my chest. And she would feel the steady beating of my heart and feel the heat emanating from my body. And just for that moment we would be one, united by the steady thump-thump of my heart and her body would fold into mine irrespective of the sweat that I have worked up by that time. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have sex at that moment. Would it be an out of the world mind-blowing experience because of the already heightened state that my body is in? Would the heat from my body make her hot and drive her crazy? Or would I be just too tired to perform?

Our body is truly the best gift that God has given us, and it is our sacred duty to use it in every possible way. Explore the horizons of your body. Don’t waste your body.

desperado!

2006-07-13T03:10:00.000-07:00

u know, these periods of hiatus are very difficult for me to cope with. I am not asking you to change your behaviour in any way, I'm just sharing...

Why is it so difficult? Why do i wait for ur mails so impatiently? I am not like this with most people. Then why with you?

I think its because I see hope. I am like a drowning man desperately clutching on any straws I find. It is really terrible. I don't like being so desperate. But I am and I am not going to deny my nature. I'm reading a really nice book called pay it forward in which the heroine (a very outdated and desi term, I know, but I kinda like it!) tells the man to just sleep in the same bed with her even if he doesn't want to have sex cos she hates sleeping alone. That's pretty much how I'm feeling right now.

I'm incapable of maknig any woman friends right now because I just keep pushing them for more intimacy and that obviously drives them away. And I am like a machine. I don't even hesitate or change my behaviour or anything. I just start searching for another woman whom I try to befriend and again push for intimacy. Godamnit! I think I will just take up sanyas to escape from this whole mess.

Here’s the story

2006-07-11T01:23:00.000-07:00

I love a good story. I like nothing more than to sink inside a new place, a new world, with new people whom I’ve never personally met, but can still relate to them.

Yes, I love a good story, be it in the written word or through a movie. I think a story is also the best way to teach the world, to influence the world. Somehow a story conveys instantly its moral/learning to the reader instantly which if u tried to convey through an essay would not only be a difficult read, but at best half understood.

Kahlil Gibran is one philosopher whom I love deeply because of the way he uses stories to convey his teachings, his message, and his world view. Sample some of his stories and make your own interpretations of his message. Share your interpretation with me.

War

One night a feast was held in the palace, and there came a man and prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that the empty socket bled. And the prince inquired of him, "What has befallen you?" And the man replied, "O prince, I am by profession a thief, and this night, because there was no moon, I went to rob the money-changer's shop, and as I climbed in through the window I made a mistake and entered the weaver's shop, and in the dark I ran into the weaver's loom and my eye was plucked out. And now, O prince, I ask for justice upon the weaver."

Then the prince sent for the weaver and he came, and it was decreed that one of his eyes should be plucked out.

"O prince," said the weaver, "the decree is just. It is right that one of my eyes be taken. And yet, alas! both are necessary to me in order that I may see the two sides of the cloth that I weave. But I have a neighbour, a cobbler, who has also two eyes, and in his trade both eyes are not necessary."

Then the prince sent for the cobbler. And he came. And they took out one of the cobbler's two eyes.

And justice was satisfied.

The Fox

A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, "I will have a camel for lunch today." And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again -- and he said, "A mouse will do."

The Two Cages

In my father's garden there are two cages. In one is a lion, which my father's slaves brought from the desert of Ninavah; in the other is a songless sparrow.

Every day at dawn the sparrow calls to the lion, "Good morrow to thee, brother prisoner."

Said a Blade of Grass

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, "You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams."

Said the leaf indignant, "Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing."

Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again-and she was a blade of grass.

And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, "O these autumn leaves! They make such noise! They scatter all my winter dreams."

The Full Moon

The full moon rose in glory upon the town, and all the dogs of that town began to bark at the moon.

Only one dog did not bark, and he said to them in a grave voice, "Awake not stillness from her sleep, nor bring you the moon to the earth with your barking."

Then all the dogs ceased barking, in awful silence. But the dog who had spoken to them continued barking for silence, the rest of the night.

It is so difficult to select just a few. I can just go on with his stories, but I guess if you like these, then just google for more of Kahlil Gibran. All his books are easily available online.

The story of us

2006-07-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

You inspire me to write. Its funny, but I just need one person to get inspired to write.

I don’t know if u noticed, a lot of my previous blogs were also addressed to a single person. Even before I started writing blogs, my previous writings have always been inspired by a woman. The first time I wrote substantially was when I was in final year of college. This was like a 5 page long letter written to the woman I had fallen in love with and remained in love with for 2 years without saying a word of it to her. So u can imagine how bottled up I was feeling, and writing that letter really helped me to express all the feelings and hopes and disappointments and frustrations I had been keeping inside of me. This letter was triggered off by her revealing to me that she’d had a boyfriend all along, and yet she never told me about it even though we were almost best friends. That was a chaotic time for me which also led to a great learning stage. It pushed me out of being satisfied with who I was. It made me want to reinvent myself, made me want to change myself, and there was no better time for it to happen to me cos within months of that I was to join MDI – my MBA institute.

I entered MDI with a deep desire to change, to not continue to be who I was. I was appalled at my lack of assertiveness and I decided not to be so shy in the future. This was also the time when I started smoking. Even though my brother and my close friend had been smoking for ages, I had always felt myself to be above it. I always saw it as a weakness. But at that stage I wanted to rebel. Rebel against the nice guy I was. So smoking was one of the most visible ways to do it. I was still a nice guy, but I did not show it as much.

In MDI my writing skills got honed somewhat, but it was more of writing reports and project and so on. But nonetheless, by the end of MDI I had realised that if I want to, I can write better than the average Joe.

Now comes the second substantive piece of personal writing. This was again a 6-8 pages long letter I wrote at the end of MDI to another woman I had fallen in love with about a year ago. She did not have a boyfriend or anything, but she just did not see me as anything more than a friend. And we were truly best friends. I mean we loved each other like crazy, and would’ve done anything for the other person. But she just did not feel anything romantic or passionate about me. She continues to be my best friend is married to a guy from another community whom she fell in love with and had to really fight it out with her parents to get them to agree to her marriage. Well, coming back to the letter, well, this is a piece of writing I am not too proud. This was a mean, vindictive letter I wrote to her and after I kind of proposed to her for the third time and she turned me down and kind of backed away from the friendship. That was a really painful time. Every time I would see her, I would feel a whole mix of emotions. Love, pain, resentment, ego, longing, despair, so many emotions. And we both made eye contact with each other, but we didn’t talk. Finally after about a month of this silent treatment, I just sat down and wrote out all the emotions that were going on inside me, just vomited them out on paper. And I gave that letter to her without saying anything. And I was freed of those emotions. Its like I’ve written in another blog, writing down your emotions frees you of their hold on you.
She later told me that she read that letter at least a hundred times in the next 7 days, and she cried a lot, and at the end of it she burnt that letter and she also forgave me for it by burning that letter. She is undoubtedly the most generous woman I know. Or at least as far as I’m concerned, she loves me more than one would love family.

Post MDI, after I joined job, somewhere after six months of this I started maintaining a dairy and started writing in it after smoking ganja, which was quite a bit in those days. I also wrote in it whenever I felt frustrated, suffocated or just plain lonely (which was also quite a bit). This was still not serious writing, but I did really love what I wrote, especially post ganja. And I found that writing gave me a great clarity of thought. I would just start writing within a page or two of writing I would get some insights on what I needed to do in life then, in the future. It was almost like I was communicating with my sub-conscious. I just let my mind wander and tried my level best to capture all thoughts coming in it. I think those pages were really good writing, particularly cos the handwriting adds so much more character to the writing. Then the next spurt I got to writing was when I met M.

M was my brother’s friend and I never really found her appealing or anything, even though she’s good looking like a model. I always found her model like looks and f.r.i.e.n.d.s. like behaviour a bit superficial, and hence never found her attractive. But all that changed when she came to live with us for her summer holidays. Needless to say, I fell head over heels in love with her within 2-3 weeks. Now of course this one was also slated to be a case of unrequited love. She had a boyfriend of 4 years, and even if she hadn’t, I don’t think she felt romantic love for me, even though she did love and respect me a lot. Well, she was studying to be a psychologist, and we just hit it off with our thoughts and contemplation about spiritual development, purpose of life, higher goals, etc etc. She was the first person to read my writing and give me feedback on it, and she still does. What was most amazing about that relationship was how she understood me and what I was writing, and how she could respond with views and perspectives which made me look at what I’d written in a completely new light. But most of all, just the fact that she wanted to read what I’d written, and that it moved her so much made me feel real good. That was another creative period when I started writing a lot more cos I wanted her to read it, and I wanted to know how she felt after reading it, how it moved her, her thoughts and opinions on what I’d written.

This was followed by the inevitable heart break maybe six months down the line, and after that my writing again went down to infrequent attempts to write when I was really lonely or frustrated.

Then came this online phase when I started to write online, and this phase u can pretty much follow by reading the blogs so far and noting the time intervals between them.

So that’s pretty much the story of us, that is me and my writing.

Hear me sing

2006-06-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

I heard a song by John Denver in which he says something like “I just want to be with someone who will hear me sing.” I think that’s pretty much how I feel too about my future soulmate. Someone who will hear me sing – singing not in the literal sense, but the self expression sense. Singing is his way of self expression. My way is writing, and maybe taking photos?

So will u hear me sing?

Touch me!

2006-06-22T03:30:00.000-07:00

All I can think of is hitting the road again tonight. I just want to get lost in the road. I have an image of an long endless road with just darkness in front of me and darkness behind me. I have an image of just running without stopping on this road. The constant breaths, my heart pumping blood to my entire body, my legs moving like parts of a beautifully oiled machine, my hair flying in the wind behind me.

I just cannot talk to people sometimes. I just can’t say a word. And I don’t even feel the need to say anything, because the only thing that matters to me is touch. I want to be touched. I want to touch. Touch is the ultimate symbol of intimacy. The way u touch another person is what really shows intimacy. And I just cannot be intimate with anyone I haven’t touched.

I so long for someone to touch. I dream of waking up to the touch of her. Of waking in the middle of the night and touching her to make sure that it is not a dream.

Hit the road.

2006-06-22T01:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday for the first time I ran on the road, and it was really amazing. My steps felt lighter, and time just flew. While normally I look at my watch at least ten times during the run, I hardly felt the need to see my watch yesterday.

I think I am in love with the road. For some reason, I’ve always felt a special connection with the road. Right from my biking days, I used to love being on the road. I don’t know what it is, but there is nothing as soothing as an endless stretch of a well maintained road with greenery on either side. It just puts my mind into another plane. I frequently find that when I reach office, I have no idea what I was thinking of on the road. My mind was just at some other plane.

I think I see life like a road. And the purpose is not to reach someplace, but to enjoy the road. That is why I enjoy being on the road. I feel like I am living life in the here and now.

Sometimes on the road of life, you meet some companions who will travel with you, sometimes u r running alone. Sometimes the road is good, sometimes the road is rough. When the road is good, enjoy it. When the road is rough, keep going in the belief that the next stretch will be smooth.

I think that is also a good way of selecting a life partner. Select someone who is going in the same direction as you are – someone who has the same destination. And also chose some who is going in the same speed as you are. Speed in terms of learning speed. If u learn and evolve too fast, u will always find yourself looking behind you for your companion.

“the race is long. Sometimes you are ahead, and sometimes you are behind. But in the end, you are only running against yourself.”

The religion that Nanak founded.

2006-06-20T02:07:00.000-07:00

I want to be in love. I need to be in love. Without it, my insides feel hollow. Things seem more mundane and meaningless. My feet drag heavily through the day. Or maybe that is because I have started jogging??

Well, anyway the point is that I need to be in love to feel complete. Does it make me feel bad? Well, not really. I’m ok with being this way. And actually if I wasn’t, then I would have changed myself by now.

My biggest idol, the great Gandhi was also a married man with a pretty active sex life at my age. Guru Nanak was also married. Some of these religions attract me so much. Sikhism for example is a very attractive religion.

I made this observation when I was just a kid – a sikh never begs. You will never find a sikh beggar. They will do some work or the other, but they will not beg. I think this a very solid work ethics that they have.

I was also inspired by Nanak’s philosophy of being in the world and yet being a Godman. He used to work in his fields, he was married and had a family. That is so inspiring. And that is where the sikh work ethics comes from. And being a sikh is a life of a strong commitment. It is so easy to just cut off your hair. It takes effort to maintain long hair and wear a turban on it every single day. So only a person who has that level of commitment to the values of the religion will continue as a sikh. So maybe folks who turn to begging cut off their hair.

I also like the sikh custom of doing seva (service). You find so many Sikhs putting up a pandal to feed the thirsty. Money is not the done way of giving to your religion. The religion asks for your time.

I love my cooking!

2006-06-12T02:23:00.000-07:00

I just died and went to heaven!

That is pretty much what I feel most of the times I eat a meal cooked by me. Now I am not saying that I am the worlds best chef or something, but I do love what I cook so very much. In my one year of cooking experience, I've discovered that there are some basic principles of making tasty nutritious food, and I will ennumerate them below.

1. Good Ingredients: If you are starting your cooking with good ingredients, then more than half your battle is already won. You must know how to select the best ingredients and they must be fresh. I just had a bhindi and dal meal, and the reason why the bhindi was so fucking amazing was cos I just selected the bhindi myself an hour ago.

2. Good equipment: This is not necessary for the taste part of it, but will reatly help in the nutrition part. Using non-stickware means u r using a lot less oil to get the same end result. And also u must have a good pressure cooker. Again very useful if u want to slow cook something. Besides the food part, good equipment also acts as a positive motivator for the cook. Bhindi is something that normally takes a lot of oil for it to be tasty, but I think I must have made it in half that oil.

3. Eat fresh: Anything that was cooked the previous day, or even 3-4 hours ago does not taste as good as when it is fresh.

4. Oil/Fat: Now this is a common misconception that oil/fat is bad for the body. But the truth is that he body needs oil/fat, and if u don't have the required quantity, u will feel a lot of hunger pangs. Fat is what makes these hunger pangs go away. Now the other thing to remember is that different types of dishes taste good with different types of oil. Ghee is a must for Dal, and a lot of other gravy items. Mustard oil is good with bhindi, and also non-veg. Butter is good for stir fried veggies. Fish also tastes good made in butter. Olive oil is good for salads which are to make a meal.

well, now that u know the basic principles, go out and explore and I'll write some more on this another day, another time.

Take care,

aaaaaaarrrggghhhh!

2006-06-07T02:18:00.001-07:00

I don't even know if u read this anymore or not. I just feel so bottled up and so badly want to shout!

Do u really care for me? Am I a sympathy fuck and a lift-me-up for you? I know what I'm talking about cos I also do it. At times a girl finds me v attractive, but I don't find her attractive. Well, u know what I do? I encourage her. Why do I encourage her? I think its cos I am needy and want feel the appreciation and awe she has for me. It makes me feel good. But each time I have a sustained interaction with her, I realise that she is not the one for me, and end of each encounter I feel less needy for her. I find her less desirable at the end of it. But in a little while - maybe a day or maybe more, I want to feel her love and appreciation again. And so I keep encouraging her. Its a horrible thing to do a girl. And I think I'm probably doing it right now to a girl. Damn! I am a horrible person! And I can't stop myself from doing it. Just for that short span feeling good that it gives me. Its like a food craving. You just go and stuff yourself full of something cos it is a good lift-me-up and u crave the taste of it on your tongue. At the end u feel stuffed and repentent, but u will still go back to it and again feel the same way. Its a terrible addiction. And one that seems so difficult to cure.

U know there is a student in my class and I find her incredibly hot. She's dark and fine and has luscious long hair. She doesn't have an ounce of fat on her, and I find that so hot! She's got attitude too. She just attracts attention towards her without being loud or brashful.

Movies n me.

2006-06-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Saturday, which is my weekly off and is also the day that I go to Delhi and watch the new releases of the week.

I love movies and cannot wait to see what kind of movies I am going to watch tomorrow. I am like a child who receives a surprise gift and cannot wait to open it to see what it contains. I just cannot wait to watch a movie to see what it contains.

I like all types of movies. I like fast paced action thrillers. I like romantic movies. I like comedies, though don't like mindless comedies. I like thrillers. I like movies on life. (what is that genre called? where would u place movies like forrest gump? AI? The Hours?)

But the movies that have really touched me off late have typically been movies centered on women. One of the best movies I have seen this year is called Trans America. It was such a painful and yet such a brilliant movie to watch. It starred felicity Huffman who plays a leading role in desperate housewives, and is actually quite good looking in the show.

The movie was about a man who was on the verge of undergoing a sex change operation to become a woman. He was already like a woman in all his mannerisms and appearance, but he still had his dick. And so convincing was this portrayal that while watching the movie, I actually thought that this is a male actor(I don't watch TV shows). The slip in mannerisms, the voice, the body language, and the plain ugliness of the woman convinced me that this was a male actor trying to look like a woman (a la mrs doubtfire). It was only later that I found out that it was female actor, and it just made me marvel at how amazingly well she portrayed such a complex character. It made me appreciate the movie much more. What I cannot understand is why she did not get the Oscar? That blond winner of this year cannot hold a candle to this woman's talent as an actor.

But besides felecity's acting, the other reasons why I loved this movie was again because it was such a human movie about a human being's longings and weaknesses and desires without being judgemental about it at all. The neediness of the woman, her pain, her unfulfilled desires and dreams, her hopes - all of it was so honestly and beautifully portrayed. I just loved it for its intimacy with its subject. That is actually what I really look for in a movie. Intimacy with its subject.

Sufi Music

2006-06-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

well, now that my missing muse is back, I am also back in action. I've been really listening to a lot of sufi music and I'm in fact listening to it as I type, and I really want to tell her how it makes me feel and why I like it so much.

Well, I think what appeals to me most about it is that it basically an expression of love and longing. It is not love and longing for a person, but for the supreme being. Sample this "I am a beggar to meet you" "you are my only one" and God is frequently reffered to as one's lover. You can hear the anguish and longing in the voice for meeting allah.

Besides this, I also like the use of tablas in it - I am a big tabla fan. My fingers start automatically playing the tabla when I hear a good song. I in fact hear the tabla more than the words of the song. I think that is another reason why I like sufi music - even the voice is used like a percussion instrument. And the clapping also.

The best Sufi musicians are Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen. There was a phase when I used to listen to a lot of Abida, but I am currently on a Nusrat phase. I don't understand why, but my musical loves are very phase driven. There was a phase when I was totally into Doors. Then came the Pink Floyd phase and I was in it forever. And then came Santana for a short while. And now it is Nusrat. I just want to hear Nusrat day and night. And even at office my fingers and tapping the rythm of the tabla in his song. I am just completely obsessed with Sufi music for the time being. Wonder if it is good or bad?

u know, this peice is not very inspired, but I think I've become a bit rusty. Might take a blog or two to get back in form. Incidentally I've started jogging, and I just cannot stop raving about it cos it makes me feel so good! just love the rush of oxygen, the straining of my leg muscles, the increase of my heart rate. And when it is over, I am left with such an amazing high. Almost like sex! And it seems that I've lost interest in reading fiction for the time being. Am in the middle of such a god book, but don't feel like reading it!

Eklavya

2006-05-26T04:01:00.000-07:00

Man! I have already learned so much from this girl. Look at the previous blog – so many insights and learnings. And many of the last 10 blogs are insightful blogs. All these blogs were written with her as my inspiritation.

Now I know that she will say “how does this make me your teacher? I didn’t have any active role in your learning. You learned all these things on our own. These are your own insights, and none of this was told by me to you.”

To this I say – remember Eklavya. He took Dronacharya (henceforth referred to as The Dude) to be his guru, even though The Dude refused to teach him. So what did Ekalavya do? He made an idol of The dude and took him to be his guru and started practising under the watchful eye of his guru. And under this so called guidance he became more accomplished and skilled than any of The Dude’s own students, including Arjuna et al. One day The Dude happened to be walking in the jungle and he saw Ekalavya and was amazed by his skill. Then he asked him who is your guru, and Ekalavya replied “Dude, you are my guru.” And showed him the idol that he had made. Realising that this boy could easily outshine his own students The Dude then asked Ekalavya for Guru Dakshina (something akin to tuition fees, but a much bigger deal). And as his guru dakshina, he asked him for his left (or maybe right – I forget which one, and it doesn’t really matter) thumb. This would leave Ekalavya a cripple with only half of his marksmanship still remaining with him, and yet Ekalavya readily agreed. Without a moment’s hesitation, he took out his knife, cut off his thumb and presented it to The Dude.

So why did I go into such a lengthy aside? Well, it was pretty good wasn’t it? This is what happens when u write under the influence. You tend to get lost in your asides. So anyway, my rather long and elaborate point is simply this – even though you do not see yourself as my guru, I do. Same as Ekalavya did. You were the inspiration for my learning, which is really the most important thing.

Ganja,

2006-05-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I am writing this post ganja, so this should prove to be an interesting blog for all you wannabe social scientists ;-)

Well, lot of insights but no desire to write about them. How strange!

I am still missing her, but I don’t want to. So that is what I have been thinking about. And got a couple of good ideas about that.

First – I can’t really be in love with her. True Love is not when u love someone because that person is so wonderful and perfect. True Love is when u love someone in spite of all their weaknesses and flaws. So how can I really be in love with her when I don’t even know what she does when she gets turned off, when she gets angry, when she gets hurt… so many things I don’t know about her.

Second – if she really likes me then one mistake or wrong statement from my part will not cause her to leave. If that were so, then I would sooner than later make a mistake and she would leave me immediately after that, and so in a way its good if she leaves sooner than later.

Third – I got to get back into the civilised world. I have been withdrawing from people like anything, and hence I become so needy the moment I think I have spotted ‘the one’! We all are needy, and its perfectly ok to have friends because you are needy. I think at the end of the day you are also satisfying your needs and they are also satisfying their needs. So it’s a win-win situation, why should I shun it? Right now all my need is focused on one person and it has become like a laser and is bound to end up scaring away anyone who comes close.

Love hurts

2006-05-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

U know, she had told me that I present myself like an open house in which anyone can walk in the front door and walkout the back door whenever they feel like it, and that I should hold back some place and not let people do that. Well, she was right. And she has now walked out the back door like so many others!!!

And it hurts. Feels so bad. Makes me feel like such an immature juvenile teenager! Falling in love with someone I've never even met, and then feeling heartbroken less than 10 days later - its just too ... I don't know whats the word for it... like a girl who falls in love the moment a man shows her any interest which drives away the man leaving the girl sobbing and cursing herself, only till the next man shows some interest in her.

I am even worse than that girl. I think I need to make myself love myself more. I need to realise that the only person who can fill the loneliness in my life is me, and I think till I don't stop feeling so lonely, love will continue to elude me.

I have got to stop feeling this way. I have got to stop feeling so incomplete. But the worst thing is I don't know how. How do I stop feeling so lonely? Why am I so lonely? What do I do? This is driving me crazy. I just keep thinking that when I find that special someone, my life will become full of joy and more meaningful, that I will no longer feel sad and lonely, but I think that loneliness is an intrinsic part and there isn't anyone who can make it go away.

So am I doomed to feel lonely for the rest of my life? Is there no hope for me? I think it is this very loneliness and desperation that drove her away. And I'm so afraid that this neediness will continue to drive away any woman who shows any interest in me. I need help! This is the problem with being so intelligent. It is so difficult to be helped by anyone who is not as intelligent as u. And believe me, She could have helped me so much cos of her intelligence. That is what makes me regret this so much more. That she was just so perfect for me- how will I find someone like her again?

And the truth shall set u free…

2006-05-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

I don’t know where this saying originated from, and I don’t know what was the intention of person who said it, but I have discovered a powerful truth in this saying.

I previously wrote a blog on my fears of falling in love with Her. And then u know what happened – those fears lost their hold on me and I let myself fall for Her. Its not that those fears went away, but I had acknowledged them and faced up to them and that somehow made them powerless. Those things that I talked about are as likely to happen as ever, but I am not afraid of them happening. I am willing to face them should they happen.

In the previous blog I wrote about my need for Her which was basically a manifestation of my fear of loosing Her. And u know what – this fear has lost its hold on me. I suddenly feel lighter, as if a great burden has been lifted off my shoulders. I now know that I fear losing Her and that has somehow made that fear powerless. Accepting the truth about my fears has somehow set me free of those fears. I no longer feel that neediness, or feel crippled because of my fear of losing Her.

So the truth shall indeed set you free. Accept your fears. Acknowledge your fears. Articulate your fears. And you shall be set free of your fears. And writing is one really good way of doing that - of accepting the truth of your fears. So I think I am actually writing this more for me than for any audience that might be reading it.

Life is a roller coaster, just gotta ride it!

2006-05-23T03:51:00.000-07:00

We’re getting closer, and yet I am just as unsure as I ever was about her feelings for me. I so badly want her to want me the way I want her. I want her to need me the way I need her. I know that it will the best experience of my life if she chooses to give herself to me. But I am so unsure about her feelings right now.

Yesterday was strange. On the one hand it felt good that she had developed enough comfort and confidence in me to cry in front of me, and yet I also felt bad cos she was so much in love with him, and she was mourning so much for him. It was so painful to see her hurt and not being able to do anything about it. Will I be able to give her the happiness that she deserves? Will I ever be able to fill the void that he has created? Will I ever be able to make her feel as special as he did? Will she ever love me as much? I am so afraid that he will want to come back into her life and then I will have no standing, no position in her life.

How can she just take control of my emotions so completely? I think it is because I want her to. I so badly want to give myself to somebody. I am so tired of fighting alone. I want a partner. I want someone to look after, and be looked after by. I want someone to make my life warm and intimate and meaningful. Why do I feel that my life is not full without a woman? Why must I be so needy?

And while I am truly going through a roller coaster ride, I think it is better to feel all this conflict of emotions and mix of pain and joy rather than not feel anything. So for that I am grateful to her for bringing up all these emotions.

This just struck me - what do u think about me writing all my feelings on such a public forum? Does it turn u off? I know u won't ask me to stop, but does it make u even a little bit uncomfortable?

Woman Lover?

2006-05-23T03:47:00.000-07:00

Why is it that so many people respond with raised eyebrows to the title of my blog – confessions of a woman lover?

If a person says that he is an animal lover, then he is seen with respect for his selflessness and love for a noble cause.

If a person says that he loves children, then he is automatically seen as good parent/teacher material and as a kind and gentle soul.

If a person says he is an art lover, then he is seen as a intellectual and highly refined/evolved person.

So why is it that a person who loves women is automatically seen as a dirty/perverted/horny/desperate guy?

Case in point being Kushwant Singh. I think even that guy loves women and is quite open and honest about it, and what do we think of him – a dirty old man!

I love women not because I want to fuck every beautiful woman, but because I truly feel that a woman is one of God’s greatest creation. She is truly God’s gift to mankind. The aesthetics of a woman are what inspires the greatest art (think Monalisa!). A woman can cause the destruction of an entire kingdom (Helen of troy). I think that the only real reason why a man is competitive and creative and aggressive is for a woman. I personally don’t think money per se matters that much to a man, but I think most men know it at a sub conscious level that it is important to have enough money to attract woman. Not to say that a woman wants money from a man, but then in a society where man is supposed to be the bread earner, the woman has no choice but to rely on the man’s wealth to fulfil all her needs and her children’s needs, and to make her feel financially secure.

So what do I love about women? Well, I love the sensitivity of a woman. I love the softness of a woman. Only a woman can smoothen the rough edges of life. No matter how well I maintain my house, I think only a woman can make it warm and fill it with love. I love the effect that a woman can have on a man. Put a woman in a room full of men, and automatically the men become softer, their voices become more mellow, they become more kind, courteous, and maybe even shy. I love the way a woman looks at a man she loves. I love the way a woman can say so much with just her eyes. I love the shape of a woman’s body. I think it is the most beautiful shape I have ever seen. The long neck line, the valley of her breasts, the rounded stomach going down to her pubic hair, the v between her legs, the flared hips, the soft smooth legs… I feel like I am in heaven in the arms of a naked woman who loves me!

This blog just did not come from the heart. I had been thinking about writing this blog for days, and right now it was a very thought out and deliberate process of writing the blog. Unlike the previous blog of making love to nature which just came out spontaneously. It is just so difficult to write from the heart. Sometimes you are lucky and the words just flow from within, and the hands struggle to keep up with the flow of thoughts, and sometimes u have no choice but to stop and think after every sentence "ok, what am I going to write next?" So my dear reader, tell me if this effected the quality of this blog.

Making love to Nature

2006-05-22T04:15:00.000-07:00

Greater Noida experiences nature in all its fury and beauty. Of particularly strong nature are the wind and rain storms here. A rain storm starts slow and mellow. Kind of like a woman just stirring from bed. Just a light cool breeze is all you can feel. Then she stretched herself, and you can feel a slightly stronger wind which makes the dust go around in circles, but doesn’t really pick it up. Then slowly the gentle breezes get stronger and stronger. And all this happens in a span of less than 5 minutes. And believe me, it is truly a gift to be able to experience this happen in front of you. In five minutes time that woman has started moaning and gently moving about the bed as her lover expertly kisses her body and stimulates her. At this stage the wind is picking up the dust and the loose paper. Then she gets wet, and u can feel just a drop or two of rain on your arms. And then it gets wilder and wilder. The wind goes up to speeds of more than 80km per hour. Now her lover has entered her and she is bucking and thrusting and going crazy. The wind is whipping up like crazy. It picks up anything and everything in its path. And then the woman lashes out and hits the glass next to her. It falls and shatters, but she doesn’t care because she is too consumed by her own passions. The wind now gets violent. Temporary structures get torn up and thrown aside. Windows fly open and glasses shatter. Branches of trees get torn out. Trees get uprooted. But the wind doesn’t care. And then the woman starts coming, and the rain starts falling in full force. And the rain feels like bullets on your skin. And standing out in the rain is the lone man, the lover who feels the rain surround him, like the lover who feels the woman constrict and pulse and throb all around his dick, and yet he remains still.

(The storm begins!)

And it is in a rainstorm like this that I dream of making love to you outside on the roof my building. Just our naked bodies and the nature making love all around us. And I can feel the coldness of the rain and at the same time the warmth of your body. I can feel the cold water on my back, on my hair, and I can feel the warm wetness of you on my erection. And as the rain drenches our bodies, I drench you with my kisses, I feel your hands all over me, and now slowly I enter you and we become one with the nature around us. Oh the ecstasy of the coldness of the rain and the warmth of being inside you, of your mouth on mine, my tongue in your mouth, your tongue in my mouth… it makes me lose my mind just thinking about it!

I can’t wait to possess you!

Joy and Sorrow

2006-05-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

More of Kahlil Gibran on Joy and Sorrow. This is taken from 'The Prophet'. Possibily most influential work. I love his use of anologies - the was he compares joy and sorrow with a wone glass, a lute, scales of a balance. This is something that I try to incorporate in my writing as well - the use of anologies to create pictures.

Her

2006-05-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

There is so much that I want to say about Her. To start with, I can't believe that I've managed to meet someone like Her. I can't believe that she also likes me. I can't believe that we have so many of the same preferences. I like to hold, and she likes to be held. I like to sleep naked, and so does she. She likes to listen more than talk, and so do I. And I think both of us love to fuck.

And yet both of us are different enough to be complementary. She likes to be in charge of things, of running the house or her place of work, and I hate doing that. I like to cook, and she likes to be cooked for. I'm guessing she will be good at managing money, which is again something I hate. But the thing which attracted me most to her is that she is so deliciously complicated. I could spend years trying to understand her, and I think there's a lot I can learn from her.

The way I see her is so different from when I first started talking to her. And her interaction with me has also changed from that time. When we first started chatting, I saw her a bubbly 21 yr old who was also quite naughty and horny. During those chats she was flirting with me more, trying to convince me that she liked me. Unfortunately that situation has changed now. Though I know that she likes me, but she doesn't really express it directly.

Now here's the most amazing part that ought to convince you how much I've fallen for her. After my blog on my fears about entering into a relationship with Her, she showed me her photo. And to be honest at the risk of being hurtful, I did not find her v attractive. Now there's a bit of history to this photo thing. I was also chatting with a female thru shaadi.com. Now we were also going on the same track - both of us wanted to enter into a relationship, and both of us were quite excited that we might have found that special someone in the other person. And again we reached the stage where she showed me her photo. I did not find her attractive, and that pretty much ended our relationship there. While I did not hold looks to be that important, but somehow things just unraveled after that. I suddenly realized that she was not the type of person that I desired, even though we had a lot many common likes/interests. Again we both were quite horny which I think is always a sure shot way of bonding any relationship, but I don't think there was a lot for me to learn from her. And funnily this realization happened after I saw her photo. I wonder if it got me back to my senses and made me realize the illusion I was seeing, or if it caused a new set of illusions. What if she was good looking? Would I have been writing the same things right now?

So anyways coming back to Her, I thought that maybe the same thing will happen here also. And I even told her that our next conversation will be after 2 days, so that I would have some time away to think if the attraction I was feeling for was also just an illusion like before. But well, u know what, the next day I ended up fantasizing about exploring her body, about kissing her dark chocolaty skin! And I could not wait for the 2 days to talk to her. I wanted to let her know immediately how attractive I found her. How I longed for her. I just had to talk to Her, I missed her voice like a drug addict misses his fix.

And now I know u will read this. Well, I feel scared that u might get hurt at what I've written. I feel scared that u might judge me to be a superficial bastard not worthy of you. But I hope u will instead see me as a very human guy, who is trying his best to be honest about his human frailties and failings to you so that u don't get hurt in the future.

My fears

2006-05-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

U know why I am scared?

I am scared that I am falling in love with you. I am scared of that because falling in love is so hard on knees ;-)

But seriously, falling in love brings with it so mane expectations and the consequent hurts. And I am more afraid of getting hurt with you.

I am afraid that of desertion. I am afraid that I will not be able to keep you satisfied, and that u will go to other men for getting what u might not be getting from me.

I am afraid that you will let other men dominate and prevail on you for sexual favours.

I am afraid that I will not measure up to your standards of what you want from your man, and possibly what u have been getting from men.

I am afraid that you might damage my fragile male ego. I am afraid of being vulnerable in front of you.

I am afraid that you might do to me what I did to Priyanka. You might be entering this relationship because of your neediness/loneliness and not because of love for me, and then what happens when the needs stop being so urgent?

I am also afraid that what if we meet and I don’t like the way u look? Even though I tell myself that physical appearance does not matter, but I do find myself getting turned off by certain women because of their physical appearance.

But seriously, the biggest thing that these fears mean is that I am getting attached to you and hence I am afraid of loosing you. And this itself reassures me that I am on the right path. Its like the reassuring bitterness of cough medicine which tells you that soon this medicine will get to work on your body and will make u whole and complete again.

Sorrow

2006-05-18T08:36:00.001-07:00

When My Sorrow Was Born

When my Sorrow was born I nursed it with care, and watched over it with loving tenderness.

And my Sorrow grew like all living things, strong and beautiful and full of wondrous delights.

And we loved one another, my Sorrow and I, and we loved the world about us; for Sorrow had a kindly heart and mine was kindly with Sorrow.

And when we conversed, my Sorrow and I, our days were winged and our nights were girdled with dreams; for Sorrow had an eloquent tongue, and mine was eloquent with Sorrow.

And when we sang together, my Sorrow and I, our neighbours sat at their windows and listened; for our songs were deep as the sea and our melodies were full of strange memories.

And when we walked together, my Sorrow and I, people gazed at us with gentle eyes and whispered in words of exceeding sweetness. And there were those who looked with envy upon us, for Sorrow was a noble thing and I was proud with Sorrow.

But my Sorrow died, like all living things, and alone I am left to muse and ponder.

And now when I speak my words fall heavily upon my ears.

And when I sing my songs my neighbours come not to listen.

And when I walk the streets no one looks at me.

Only in my sleep I hear voices saying in pity, "See, there lies the man whose Sorrow is dead."

And When my Joy was Born

And when my Joy was born, I held it in my arms and stood on the house-top shouting, "Come ye, my neighbours, come and see, for Joy this day is born unto me. Come and behold this gladsome thing that laugheth in the sun."

But none of my neighbours came to look upon my Joy, and great was my astonishment.

And every day for seven moons I proclaimed my Joy from the house-top-and yet no one heeded me. And my Joy and I were alone, unsought and unvisited.

Then my Joy grew pale and weary because no other heart but mine held its loveliness and no other lips kissed its lips.

Then my Joy died of isolation.

And now I only remember my dead Joy in remembering my dead Sorrow. But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more.

These poems by Kahlil Gibran have greatly influenced the way I see joy and sorrow. Why do we try to avoid sorrow? It can be such a beautiful thing, it can give us so much depth, so much intensity. Any man who has not experienced deep sorrow cannot truly experience deep joy. To quote a character from the movie vanilla sky - "without the bitter, the sweet ain't so sweet". To me, feeling sorrow is proof that I am still alive, that I am still human, that I am still capable of loving and feeling, because without love there can be no sorrow.

Intellectual whore

2006-05-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

I read this term in this really funny website that I discovered through orkut. Read it here to know more about it.

Yesterday I again ended up being an intellectual whore of a woman. So bad was it that she was actually calling her boyfriend from her cell while on the phone with me, and that after I had been convinced that we were both attracted to each other and I was on the good ladder (read the site!) with her. Damn!

Well, she will probably read this blog, so let me address her also.

You know, I really appreciate your honesty with me. You told me straight out which ladder I was on without any round about explanations, and that I admire about you.

But I am just not in the market for friends right now. I have a lot of friends, and they really love me very much. In fact the only reason why my business is still afloat is because of their financial support in my times of need. But I am still v lonely. What I want at this stage of life is a woman to share life with. And not a woman who is a friend alone. I also need physical intimacy (more on that in another blog). I don’t know why I am so needy, but right now I am.

So basically a girlfriend is the only thing that can alleviate my loneliness right now. And talking to you will just make me lonelier. It’s like a hungry man standing outside a bakery with all the delicious smells of the food wafting out to him, but he cannot eat any of it. It will just drive him crazy with hunger.

“To deny our impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human” - The Matrix.

Gibbrish?

2006-05-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

I remember reading a book (I think it was by Anne Tyler) in which the protagonist says that Gibran was the spiritual guide of her generation, and she wonders who is the spiritual guide of the current generation. Well, I guess the spiritual guide of our generation would probably be Paul Coehlo. Almost everyone I know has read him and has been influenced by him. Its funny how each generation finds its own spiritual guru. Twenty years from now our kids will probably not understand what the fuss about Coehlo was all about, and they would probably have their own spiritual guru for their generation.

Which brings me to a very important concept that I’ve been thinking about – is there something inherent inside a person which makes him a hero to a whole generation, or is the result of circumstances and his becoming a hero was inevitable given the playing out of events and circumstances?

Was a Gandhi inevitable, and he just happened to be named Mohandas? Did the circumstances of Mohandas’s life make it inevitable for him to emerge as the mahatma, and had there been anyone else in his place, then would he have also become a mahatma?

Well, there is one way to reconcile the two views. If I walk into a room and see three equally long lines, I can then do two things – a. choose any line and stand in it. Or b. try to determine the fastest moving line and get on it. Now in the second one, I am choosing what circumstances I wish to place myself in, in order to have the fastest progression.

Similarly it was no coincidence that Mohandas was born in the family he was born in, and he was born at the time when he was born. He chose his birth in such a way that it ensured his progression to the level of a mahatma.

Does this make sense? This blog I’m afraid was written in two instalments, and I think it might not have a coherent point, or proper structure. Please give me your feedback on the same.

Letter to my soulmate

2006-05-15T02:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Whoever,

I am tired. Tired, tired, tired. I’ve searched for you everywhere – from the busy streets of the city to the deserted pathways of the himalyas. From crowded market places to isolated valleys. From outrageous parties to online communities. But I still haven’t found you. Or maybe I’ve already seen you, but haven’t recogonised you.

Where r u? I need you – you hear me – I need you. This is the time when u should be next to me, and instead here I am left alone trudging through this life, from morning to evening, from Monday to Friday. I’ve had all the learning I could get alone. I need you to come be my teacher now. I need you to teach me to feel happije, to cry, to be sensitive.

Please find me soon,
Yours forever and more,

Many lives, one master.

2006-05-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

You know if u r only reading this blog without meeting me, you will probably think of me as quite an introspective person. A very serious type. Very intellectual rather than physical. Well, you'll be seeing me in a different way than people who see more of me offline.

People who have known me since school days see me as a shy chilled out person who's a bit conservative n boring. People who know me from college also know me as somewhat shy, but they see me as a rebel - someone who's unconventional and daring. And also as someone intelligent. People who know me from my MBA, see me as a motivated person with a lot of interest in extra-currics, and good organisational and leadership skills. And also intelligent, though not as much as my college friends.

Well the truth is that I am all of these, and much more than that. I am leading all these lives at the same time and all of them are me and yet none of them are me in totality. Its like the 8 blind men who try to doscover what an elephant looks like. All these people see me with respect to my relationship with them, and who I was at the time we got together. With a lucky few I have managed to move out of the person I was earlier and become a new person with them who is more in tune with me now. I think those are the friends who will stay with me for a life time.

So what is the point of this blog? Well, its basically to tell you that this is not the real me that u r getting acquianted with. This is just the blogger in me, who is not at all like say the lover in me or the child in me or the father in me.

Speaking of which, I am really eager to discover the father in me. Will I be as perfect a dad as I imagine myself to be? Will I be my childs best friend, will I be able to give him enough space for him to learn on his own, and yet not isolate him?

Well, there are many more lives that I will live through the different me's, but they will all have the same master - me.

Now this last line was a deliberate effort on my part to give this blog a good ending. Dear reader, please tell me if it was a good way to end this blog or if I can end it better.

Orkut

2006-05-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

This is an absolutely amazing community I discovered online.

You see, for the last one month I have been desperately searching for mates online(Not necessarily a soulmate, but just someone to hold n touch n caress...). I started with Shaadi.com - which I must tell u is pretty good. It requires payment for u to really make it work for u, but then that's the price u pay for quality.

I then moved on in search of free options and I discovered Indian friend finder. This is also a pretty good site and I got some response from it, but it has a lot of dead/inactive members in it. Then someone told me about orkut.

Orkut is owned by google and like gmail, one needs an invite to open an orkut account. I had never heard of orkut before, so I was a bit sceptical. But when I got access to the site, I was shocked. It was like there exists a whole different reality that I did not even know exists. This site is as close as it gets to real life communities. Discovering this site was actually like disocvering a whole new city underneath your present city. Like u peel back the cover and u suddenly see a whole buzz of activity, of people going about in their busy lives - meeting, chatting, dating, flirting - quite like suddenly discovering a colony of busy ants.

The future potential of this site is truly mind boggling - this site will only grow and I can only imagine the grip that google will have on the internet economy some years from now. In fact I think most people on this site will prefer it to real world. And I think this is going to be the next big thing after blogging. But the only issue is the lack of competition in this domain - or maybe there is competition and I just don't know about it.

So do u want to know what the Orkut is?

Unfortunatley you cannot be told what the Orkut is. You have to see it for yourself ;-)

The Rang de basanti phenomenon

2006-04-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

I feel so lucky to be living through these times. India is currently on the cusp of change. We as a nation are awakening from the slumber of independence and security.

Everyday I see more and more evidence of people getting angry with the way things are, and actually taking action to change things. For the last few weeks the newspapers were first dominated with the outrage over the Jessica case, and not to mention the Candle lighting at India Gate in Delhi was probably like a scene right out of Rang De Basanti. This was then followed by the Medha Patekar fast and Amir Khan’s involvement in the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Rang de basanti was a movie for these times, a movie which eloquently captures our inner desires to change things, to not just sit back and criticise. Yes, I think we are Indians are finally tiring of armchair criticism, we finally are willing to take action to change things. I think this first became evident with the defeat of the NDA which was an active action taken by the people. Then the Bihar verdict also showed the desire of people to change things. I am quite keenly anticipating the UP elections now.

Most of us look to the west and feel overwhelmed by the level of cleanliness in the system there, and the checks and balances that at least prevent small time frauds like the cash for questions scandal. Sure they have their big scandals, but I don’t think corruption permeates to such a level in their systems.

So how will we in India ever reach that level? Well, I think the process has started. America was as lawless as India say 50 or 100 years ago. So India will also reach that level of cleanliness. But I don’t think it will take us 50 to 100 hundred years. We are after all living in the internet world where 4 years equals one year. I personally think that by 2020 India will have reached upto the western standards of clean governance, and who knows – judging by the way American standards of democracy seem to be deteriorating, we might even surpass them.

The Great Gandhi

2006-04-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, as unfashionable as it has become nowadays, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is one of my biggest heroes.

Gandhi is an enigmatic figure. As of today, there are probably more detractors of Gandhi than people who truly appreciate him. As far as politicians go, I think most of them just pay lip service to the great man.

So am I a Gandhian? - Honestly I don't know. I have no idea what that term means - Gandhian. But generally speaking, I don't like to constrain myself with these narrow ways of self identity.

Now most people say that Gandhi took many wrong decisions. Like not saving Bhagat Singh. Agreeing for the partition. Calling off the non-cooperation movement. etc. etc.

Well, I have no arguments against these accusations. I don't admire him for his political decisions. I admire him for his ability to transcend himself, and his needs and desires and give himself to a cause so great and daunting that it would have crushed any normal man's spirit. I admire him for his commitment and dedication towards the path of righteousness. For not compromising, for not taking any easy ways. For being willing to take physical abuse and not react in the same manner.

How many of us will be able to go the path of righteousness when confronted with physical violence? How many of us will be able to sacrifice things that are important to us for the sake of doing what is right? Let me give a personal example -

I was running a spoken English institute in Lajpat Nagar almost two years back. Our neighbour was a placement agency who had advertised in the paper for a walk in interview for a call centre. We decided to take advantage of the people coming for the interviews by distributing our pamphlets to them.

Soon enough our boy came back saying that the owner of that company had snatched our pamphlets and was refusing to let us distribute it to the people standing outside his office. He had no valid reasons to stop us, but I guess he felt that because he had paid for an advertisement, so we should not get benefit of those students for free. We personally went there and started distributing the pamphlets ourselves. He came out, we had a verbal match, and then he threatened to call in the gundas to fix us. And at this stage I must admit that I got scared. Though I managed to save my face before backing out, but I did back out. And I felt ashamed. And I recalled how Gandhi had not backed out of doing what he felt was right even in the face of physical assault and violence. He took the beating without any protest. And I backed out. And that my friends is the real reason why Gandhi is my hero. He did not give in to his fears and insecurities.

I am happy to say that after that the shame of that incident helped to overcome my fears somewhat. This time it was while I was running my institute in Greater Noida. This time it was some students who had joined but only attended 1-2 classes before they stopped coming. They came for a refund after almost 2 months. I was again on the right side – I tell everyone when they join that for a refund they must ask before their classes get over. But these boys were persistent. They soon got down to making threats. They made me talk to someone on the phone who again made veiled threats. But the shame of the previous incident had made me determined not to give in. And I lost my sleep for a few nights, and all my employees were also afraid and asked me to pay them and settle the mater. I didn’t, and in the end they left me alone. I wonder what I would have done if they actually came at with hockey sticks etc…?

God

2006-03-10T06:39:00.000-08:00

Have you found God yet?

Don't worry, I'm not out to convert you. In fact, on a casual level I would say that I am an athiest.

Why I say casual is that though I believe in God, I don't believe in relegion. And hence I frequently find it easier to answer that I am an Athiest, because that is what my beliefs translate into for a lot of people. I have no respect for any God, simple because they are not my Gods.

I believe that I am God.

Yes, I know how incredibly arrogant that sounds, and trust me I am actually quite an humble guy. Let me explain what I mean by this statement.

To believe in God is in the end all a matter of faith. No one can really proove the existance or disexistance of God, but if you have faith on God, then he exists as far as you are concerned. So basically what I am saying is that your God is your choice. And if God is indeed a matter of choice, then why not choose to have a belief which empowers you rather than disempowers you. And the most empowering belief would be to believe that you yourself are your God. That God is inside you. That you are in control of your destiny, and that at some level you decide what happens to your world.

I personally feel that those who see God as someone other than themselves, someone who they talk to and someoone they turn to in times of need and someone they hope is listening to them; well; these folks are just disempowering themselves. They are taking their destiny out of their hands.

I believe that I chose the life that I am living, and if I am not satisfied with it, then I alone have the power to choose to make it different. I chose everything that happens to me, good or bad. Why do I choose the bad things? Well, because I need to learn something from them.

Those of you who have read Richard Bach will find all this very familiar, and rightly so because a lot of my beliefs in life have been influenced by him.

But more on him in a later post.

take care,

Who am I?

2006-03-06T10:35:00.000-08:00

No,this is not an exestential peice like the title suggests, tho I do think of myself as a lay philosopher, but I am not going to submit you to the torture of reading half baked theories of yet another philosopher who dreams of being remembered even three four hundred years after his death, tho I must say that I do appreciate those who do manage that - being remebered so many years after their death that is. That is a subject I will come to in a future blog. But I do think I am quite an articualte guy - which is something I can thank my jeans oops I meant genes for. I am a poor speller and I sure hope that this thing has a spell checker at the end of it.

So anyway before I ramble too much and loose my audience, let me say what I really want to say in my first blog - who am I?

I am an Indian

I am a woman lover.

These are just about the only two things about me that I can say with any certainity.

I love my country, I love the fact that I was born in the country which is the birth place of eastern mysticism and the Gita.

Have I read the Gita - well no, but it has effected my heroes sufficiently for me to regard it in high respect - there must be something to it. Who are my heroes - well you'll discover them by and by as I am sure to write on them in future blogs.

The second thing about myself that I can say with surety is that I love women. I absolutely love women - always have and always will. Probably.

There is nothing else I can say for sure about myself. A few years ago I thought I was a finance guy, currently I think I am a trainer, and I don't know what I will think of, about myself a few years down the line.

So let me sign off with that today, tho I am tempted to write more. Let me chew a bit more on what I want to write next and then write it.

love,