Year

A year has just passed by me. No, us. No, wait, is it me or us? By us, I mean the better-half, wife, missus or how most of the world chooses to term her. As far as I am concerned, being with someone I love has been a ride of a life time. A ride as crazy as in any outlandish fantasy park, may be but a ride indeed – from where and how I was to where and how I am now.

Given my penchant for bullet-points, summaries and nostalgia, it is predictable that I’ll come out with a list of how things have changed, highlights and the usual dose of sentimental claptrap as I complete a year of married life. So, without disappointing you further and any absence of ado (ado – what a strange word), here I start off:

1. Ta Ta TV – A major decision was to have no TV at home. And despite our initial apprehensions and doubts on how long we’d survive without it, we did and more – we thrived. No distracted conversations, more living room space and more laptop use. Goodbye reality shows, stuff-they-call-news-on-endless-loop and Barkha Dutt. Welcome Youtube, Viveo, Facebook and Google Reader.

2. News – Thanks to the missus, I am hooked on to the best newspaper in the country. No more ‘Madonna spotted with ……..’ and ‘Having more sex/babies/love makes you ……..’ and ‘ ‘I-don’t-care-a-damn’ and ‘I-still-don’t-care-a-damn’ spotted at ’some-pub’ ‘. I have also become a fan of their sisterpublication.

3. Food – Lot of healthy dietary changes, again courtesy the wife. Our sugar carton has gone untouched for months now and we have had less milk in the last one year at home than most families have in a month. I now like curry leaves, garlic and sugar-less green tea. We had nasty fights about me eating out but I am glad that I was persisted with – I eat out lesser than I used to.

4. Decor – Our home is minimalist. Whatever excess you spot is thanks to my need to fill in my insecurities with stuff. What if I wake up tomorrow to have no socks to run in? Or, what if all the 13 shirts are left un-ironed before an unexpected travel?

5. Culture – If you had asked me last year, I couldn’t have told you squat about classical music or dance. Now, I can give you a small speech on the music, forms and famous exponents of Odissi. I might also go on to add that Ninukori Varnam in Vasantha raga is a favourite. Yeah – the wife’s culture quotient spilleth over to me.

6. Me – I exercise more. I eat healthier. I am liberal. I like Cantonment. I am reading again. I slouch less. I find sitting on the floor easier. I can climb three flights of stairs. I know Indiranagar in-and-out. I can guide you on house-hunting. I am assertive. I like traveling by the bus. I spend lesser time advising others. I take less shit from others. I am still lazy, hypocritical and self-obessed (evidence #1 – count the number of ‘I’s in this blog-post).

7. Miscellany – We have breakfasts regularly at Parents-In-Laws’ and fried food at Parents’. We have a trouble-free maid and had a troublesome roof. Our house hosted parties, ants and dear friends. It also happened to host chess games, sparring fights and romantic dinners. We like our individual spaces and like sharing our individual spaces more. I have spent hours playing Commandos while she painted an elaborate and colourful duo of birds. We have also whiled away time having churumuri on languid evenings by Ulsoor lake. We have liked each other’s company and we have fought so hard that we weren’t able to stand each other’s sight.

Such-like and more, life’s tumbled on to the second year of living together. A year that promises a lot of aquatic adventures, dancing, hard work, new neighbourhood, getting back to schools and lot more fun of living together!

And lastly, here is some advice (now that I have spent a year tucking in all those pearls of wisdom, I deserve this, no? ) – If you can, don’t marry. If you must, don’t involve families. If you must, be prepared to be very tough and strong. I was not and the ensuing annoyances take more than a few anniversaries to clean up. In hindsight, I would have gladly taken up the option of living-in rather than going through the gut-wrenching drama that is the Great Indian Wedding and the consequent stampede of families.

A year has just passed by me. No, us. No, wait, is it me or us? By us, I mean the better-half, wife, missus or however most of the world chooses to term her. As far as I am concerned, being with someone I love has been a ride of a life time. A ride as crazy as in any outlandish fantasy park probably, but a ride indeed – from where and how I was to where and how I am now. So, yeah, a year has passed by a married me.

Given my penchant for bullet-points, summaries and nostalgia, it is predictable that I’ll come out with a list of how things have changed, highlights and the usual dose of sentimental claptrap as I complete a year of married life. So, without disappointing you further and any absence of ado (ado – what a strange word), here I start off:

1. Ta Ta TV – A major decision was to have no TV at home. And despite our initial apprehensions and doubts on how long we’d survive without it, we did and more – we thrived. No distracted conversations, more living room space and more laptop use. Goodbye reality shows, stuff-they-call-news-on-endless-loop and Barkha Dutt. Welcome Youtube, Viveo, Facebook and Google Reader.

2. News – Thanks to the missus, I am hooked on to the best newspaper in the country. No more ‘Madonna spotted with ……..’ and ‘Having more sex/babies/love makes you ……..’ and ‘ ‘I-don’t-care-a-damn’ and ‘I-still-don’t-care-a-damn’ spotted at ’some-pub’ ‘. I have also become a fan of their sister publication.

3. Food – Lot of healthy dietary changes, again courtesy the wife. Our sugar carton has gone untouched for months now and we have had less milk in the last one year at home than most families have in a month. I now like curry leaves, garlic and sugar-less green tea. We had nasty fights about me eating out but I am glad that I was persisted with – I eat out lesser than I used to.

4. Decor – Our home is minimalist. Whatever excess you spot is thanks to my need to fill in my insecurities with stuff. What if I wake up tomorrow to have no socks to run in? Or, what if all the 13 shirts are left un-ironed before an unexpected travel?

5. Culture – If you had asked me last year, I couldn’t have told you squat about classical music or dance. Now, I can give you a small speech on the music, forms and famous exponents of Odissi. I might also go on to add at the end of the speech that Ninukori Varnam in Mohana raga is a favourite. Yeah – the wife’s culture quotient spilleth over to me.

6. Me – I exercise more. I eat healthier. I am now a liberal. I like Cantonment. I am reading again. I slouch less. I find sitting on the floor easier. I can climb three flights of stairs. I know Indiranagar in-and-out. I speak a smattering of Tamil. I can guide you on house-hunting. I am assertive. I like traveling by the bus. I spend lesser time advising others. I take less shit from others. I am still lazy, hypocritical and self-obessed (evidence #1 – count the number of ‘I’s in this blog-post).

7. Miscellany – We have breakfasts regularly at Parents-In-Laws’ and fried food at Parents’. We have a trouble-free maid and had a troublesome roof. Our house hosted parties, ants and dear friends. It also happened to host chess games, sparring fights and romantic dinners. We like our individual spaces and like sharing our individual spaces more. I have spent hours playing Commandos while she painted an elaborate and colourful duo of birds. We have also whiled away time having churumuri on languid evenings by Ulsoor lake. We have liked each other’s company and we have fought so hard that we weren’t able to stand each other’s sight.

Such-like and more, life’s tumbled on to the second year of living together. A year that promises a lot of aquatic adventures, dancing, hard work, new neighbourhood, getting back to schools and lot more fun living together!

And lastly, here is some advice (now that I have spent a year tucking in all those pearls of wisdom, I deserve this, no? ) – If you can, don’t marry (instead of living-in). If you must, don’t involve families. If you must, be prepared to be very tough and strong. I was not and the ensuing annoyances take more than a few anniversaries to clean up. In hindsight, I would have gladly taken up the option of living-in rather than going through the gut-wrenching drama that is the Great Indian Wedding and the consequent stampede of families.

Thrice over

Stranger Than Fiction:

Start-ups and Small Organizatons

I remember reading somewhere that stated one shouldn’t work for a start-up unless a part of the founding team.

It is a golden rule to follow. I would stretch it to include small organizations that have yet to transform into a process-driven structure. The biggest thing going for a small, growing entity is the constant state of excitement and challenges employees get to be a part of. The challenges are enjoyable as long as they have a fair degree of control over tackling them and tapping new opportunities.

The biggest leap of faith for the founders to cross is the art of delegation. Depending on how small or large is the power of delegation, employees will tend to be either inefficiently used or lack direction. This is, in my view, the most difficult and critical leadership skill. It is what separates the great, big organizations from the myriad number of small and medium-sized entities.

Before the founders reach this part of the curve, the tendency is for decisions, strategic and operational, to be taken by a set of individuals, arbitrarily and informally. Without a set process, there is redundancy with the group having to decide on similar points repeatedly. If the organization is lean, this can still be managed. But, once it grows beyond a critical mass, the employees further down the organizational chain leave decisions to higher-ups and/or are left confused on the organizational growth path. This structure also breeds sycophancy of types subtle to the obvious since decision centers are individualized rather than consensus-based.

While house-hunting

We met a gregarious lady who was keen to let us feel like we are at home. The bucket of mopey talk quickly overflowed. Before we knew, the conversation proceeded to:

Lady: So, you got married last year?
Us: Ye..
Lady (interrupting): What about children? (grinning like a cheshire cat now)
Us: Err.. not now
Lady: No, no. You should not do all this birth-control and all. If it happens naturally, it should. All these medicines and other ’stuff’, you shouldn’t use.

I, at this time, was desperately wishing I was outside. Both of us (me and the partner) quickly finished the niceties and scooted out. My partner, whispering urgently, ‘cupboard!cupboard’. I nodded my head in vigorous agreement.

PS: Cupboard is the crypt-word to utter when either of us doesn’t like the house we are seeing.

PPS: In all fairness, she was a genuinely nice lady, who just happens to consider everyone family.

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Best Movies 2008

Firstly, a happy, fun-filled and sunny new year to all of you!

Declared as the year of the frog, 2008 has personally been a year of leaps in my life.

Blame it on the cops?

Work has been like a debut game of Age of Empires – exhausting but addictive. In the meanwhile, I have also let memory, language skills (or what remained of them) and social existence go to the proverbial dogs. A culmination of the above has translated to a meagre blogging presence.

Events of the last week, though, have been shocking enough to distract me momentarily towards the news feeds. Distracted enough to be reading tweeter feeds, multiple news websites and blog posts all day through. Distracted enough for the wife to feel I am hopelessly addicted to the Internet. 

The audacity of the 26/11 terror attacks betrayed the one deep malaise that exists in our system that has often gone unnoticed. In fact, the deeper and more dangerous malaise is the deep wedge that keeps widening, a new ghetto at a time, is the deep-rooted mistrust that no longer rests with a few right-wing nuts. It is widespread and open. A tremendous amount of statemanship and political will is required to extract this wedge. 

The unnoticed flaw, though, that I notice is the inability of our police force to think, recon or act in time. Almost all of us have spewn curses at the “annoying and money-swallowing” cop one time or the other. I myself have a few incidents with cops that figure on the top of ugly-incidents list. I have cursed the cops to no end and absolutely loathed their existence. I have always wondered at the reasons behind absolute corruptability and bankrupt morality of the policemen in our country. To my mind, it was beyond comprehension, that anyone could lead such a life just for the sake of a few extra rupees. The Indian police also swallows gobs of criticism from the mainstream media for failing so despicably in doing their job. It is rare to find any article that praises the police, even more so during terror attacks. The 26/11 incident(s) becoming another entry in that roster of media and societal criticism of the police force. 

But, just to put things in perspective, here’s a very readable piece with the required insight. It turns out our government, and in turn, us have isolated the internal security system for a step-motherly treatment. The politicians in power want to employ the force as their own fiefdom and we think of them as good-for-nothing, corrupt entities. I also received a mail on an alumni group from an IPS officer. I’ll just quote a few of the relevant sections:

“As for connectivity amongst police stations, while police stations (PS) have radio communication sets (RT sets), in some States the PS do not have an extra battery to keep the sets working – this means that they switch open their RT sets every two hours to check if there is any event of any consequence! !! This is when even the poor in our country can afford mobile sets!!! We still have weapons that are outdated. We have no centralized database to check on identity of person detained. This implies that if I detain a suspicious person in Delhi and he says that he belongs to some village Begumangalam in district Nalgonda in AP, I have no way to immediately verify his identity – unlike the US where a centralized databank will let you check his antecedents in a matter of few seconds. While there is about 1 policeman for every 300 people in US, in India we have one policeman for every 1000 people – and mind you the cop of US is supported with technology, communication and cyber connectivity and vehicles, which increases his capabilities manifolds. Cases take decades to get conviction, unlike the US where it is disposed off in months time. What will a criminal be afraid of, if he is not punished? Police leaders are hardly kept in their places of postings for a significant time so that they can improve situations – I, for example, have been transferred 27 times in 9 years of active policing in UP!!! Political insulation from professional work does not exist.“

Maybe time for me to go easy on the curses.

Of Buses and Donuts

For the last 2 weeks, I have struggled to tell you. To tell you that I have become a fan of BMTC – Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation’s public bus system. I wanted to tell it humourously. I wanted to let you know in a self-deprecating, albeit conceited tone that I am traveling by bus to save the environment. I also played around with the idea of preaching you on why you should use public transport as well.

But, I failed. I can only tell you that every morning when I walk to the stand to hire an auto, a big white-and-blue monstrosity stands there invitingly. With a sprained ankle, I promise myself not to strain it further and travel in an auto every morning. But, it’s hard to resist the option of hopping on to that big, gentle mass of painted sheet metal. 

I usually don’t resist. It is a delight to travel in the bus, especially if you have found a seat to plonk yourself on. You can entertain yourself with colorful characters. You can indulge in guilt-free eavesdropping. Or, you can pack yourself a headache or two, by attempting to read small-print through large-jerks. You can also play my favourite game while seated – how to last longest without touching any part of the bus that may or may not have been touched by unknown stranger’s hands that have arrived from an earlier residing spot on the unknown stranger’s person.

The other less charming benefit for me has been the complete isolation from that annoying menace called Bangalore Traffic. I am happy I have managed to extend my valuable life-span by a further few hours. I can assure you that traveling by bus is zillion times easier than going through the clutch-and-press routine, repeated ad nauseum.

The flip side? Years ago when I used the bus more extensively, my constant fear was that I’d be engulfed and suffocated by the mass of huge people on crowded buses. As a taller person now, my constant fear is that I’ll have to “nose” over a mass of short people on crowded buses. I have often wished on those instances for my olfactory sense to disappear. Also, as mentioned, there are passengers who have found an alternate use for the furniture present – a giant wiping device for dry ablutions of all kinds for the said passengers.

Yes, it is not all ha ha hee hee, but I still love the BMTC buses – the “old” blue-and-whites, the brown Pushpaks, the airy Volvos – the whole lot. I also like the fact the bus stands are so much better – cleaner and swankier. Shivajinagar Bus Stand has this huge detailed bus-route map of Bengaluru that you can spend hours with. Their website (which is down now for some reason) also has a comprehensive route information system, along with schedules that is not perfect but is still immensely useful.

Now, to the second part of the title of this post. Doughnuts. I only want to say this – If one ever develops an addiction to doughnuts like I did (this could involve any or all of the following – walking 2 kms just to reach the nearest ‘Donut Baker’ shop, experiencing elation at the idea of eating doughnuts soon, spraining one’s ankle in one’s quest for having doughnuts, changing doughnut shops just because one didn’t want to become a familiar face at that particular shop), I suggest one should eat 7 (yes, 7) doughnuts at one sitting to rid onself of this addiction. One and all are welcome for this useless piece of information.

No Bad News.

…has to be good news these days eh?

 So, I duly took out blogs from my blog-roll that had more bad news than what I could handle from Deccan Herald:

churumuri -  Started off as a good Kannada and Karnataka related blog but lately has just become a xenophobic abode for ranters and writers alike.

India Uncut - Almost an inspiration in my early blogging days, these days I find most of Amit’s posts too cynical and negative. I wouldn’t have a problem with that except he posts no real solutions to them.

Thanks for all the fun chaps, while it lasted.

And welcome:

B Rangan – Anyone with Internet and an interest in movies would have read him. I do not agree with him always but extremely well-written and sufficiently objective reviews of movies.

KQA – Oh! The joy the quizzes here give me.

The song everybody sings sometime?

Yesterday
all my trouble seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they`re here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday

Suddenly
I`m not half the man I used to be
there`s a shadow hanging over me
Oh yesterday came suddenly Why she had to go I don`t know
she wouldn`t say
I said something wrong
Now I long for yesterday

Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh I believe in yesterday

Why she had to go…….

Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday
Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm…………

-Composed by Paul McCartney, performed first by The Beatles and covered by 3000 different artists since then. The words are sung by a voice that is soaking with immense pathos in the original version.

Back-dating

I glanced through my fresh, brand-new WordPress blog and I am quite saddened to see it is as empty as some of our politician’s brains. So, to spruce it up, I am importing most of my short stories and poems from my older blog here. Yes, I admit I am out of fresh material!