Better Than Ever

There are a lot of things about the way people go about their lives. There are certain givens - assumptions – which are incorporated into our thinking and attitudes, the way we deal with our worlds, which have their influence in most of our decisions and indecisions. Sometimes one of these assumptions act as pillars for what a person is. Many people go through their entire lives without addressing what these assumptions are and what they stand for. The one such belief which is most addressed is religion. People choose to specifically accept it or reject it. But many other axioms go unnoticed. Passively accepted or rejected but never addressed.

One such feel, a certain hypothesis that doesn’t get analyzed enough: Life as a whole right now isn’t as good as it used to be in the old times. Old times can be a person’s childhood or teenage or their grandparents times depending on whether the person is question is a teenager or middle aged man or a loser. I can’t say that majority of people feel this way but a significant bunch do. And majority of us feel this way with lesser consistency.

For instance, how many times have I heard - Yesterdays songs are gold. Today’s, just too ripe. Yesteryears lifestyle (with barriers and scarecrows) was too good. Today’s lifestyle (With Independence) is messed up. It is kind of a curse to have a drunk around you unless you are drunken enough yourself to ignore him coz this is the stuff that inevitably pops up with drunkards. Too much philosophy with too much bias. As if philosophy of any kind is good at all.

Yet, let’s philosophize. It can be fun if I you know how to take it.

We need to go deeper into the concepts of Music and Independence the drunkards talk of, as they define a lot of who we are in general. Also, because this space isn’t about stuff that matters.

Music is subjective. It is dependent much on the quality of the musicians as the genre. And on the person listening. So when we say old time music was good. Mostly it was the melodious music of 70s/80s/90s (which was the only kind then) which is good. Wait, 90s was shit. It was the transition of everything (at least that is how I feel as I grew up then) where they were just learning to use guitars in places of veenas. The music currently seems messed up because there is too much to take from too many musicians. But if you choose with ears, the music today was not even conceivable 20/30 years back. In types of music available, whether classic Bollywood hits or western albums on charts, history is being made every week with music so beautiful than ever before. This goes for many things apart from music. You can always say there is nothing as soothing as Kishore Kumars Tere Bina Zindagi.. But Kishore Kumar may have done much more today, and better! 

You know what else was not conceivable 20/30 years back? Technology. Just by the presence of all that is available to us, we of today are superior to ourselves of yesterday. And technology takes everything with it. To some extent, mindsets. Independence is such a victim. People take it, play with it, misuse it. When it backfires, they say that its evil. It’s like writing ‘the bike was drunk’ on an insurance claim paper.  Fact is, our education, especially at home, doesn’t take into account the freedom a man gets after he turns 16 or so. 

When there were restrictions on how to live. People asked for freedom. In fact it was fought for and rightly earned. But, when their loved kids get spoiled because they were not taught how to deal with all the options freedom gives, the confusion the options create and the threat pushing the wrong button poses. When the naïve click the bad habits button which is colorful and gives immediate returns. When a kid suddenly turns stops showing respect. People confuse their failure as failure of independence. The failure of ‘today’s generation’. Fact is, yesterdays generation must have been knowing what’s coming and prepare for it. Too bad our that dads didn’t. We can safely say today’s generation will be equally screwed when the tide turns and the next generation shows up. Planning is for losers anyways.

As a sub note, it must be said that not everything is getting good and creamy. I Look at the IT engineers out there who don’t know as much about SQL as me (I don’t know shit) and think, where are we anyways! Population just stinks. This has to be the major negative today. Children everywhere. I am getting allergenic to kids (and people in general). Maybe a huge cleaning program takes away one-third the whole population and there will be smaller Qs in petrol bunks and Theaters. Fingers crossed. 

Foolishly hopeful, wandering mind, mine.. Anyways, what was the bottom-line again? Evolution says that we learn from our shortcomings and learn do things better without/despite those shortcomings. 

Another thing that is degrading, other than population, is the quality of articles I could think of for this page. Wait, this one looks fine.

PS: confused whether the above constitutes philosophy.

Markets

It’s like this, they take a Mango tree, they auction it, each branch at a time, and the branch with highest number of mangoes sells first for highest price. In the next season, the buyers get to sell their branches on their own and the tree of scenarios is:

Everyone buys the branches with the highest mangoes last season expecting the same to repeat. Making the prices for them rising.

Some buy branches with fewer mangos last season at cheap rates expecting that it is the turn of these branches to shine now.

Some don’t buy thinking that mangoes don’t matter.

Well, it is a bit more complicated than that, like, say the tress have pests..

What actually happens is all the branches have mangoes, more or less, randomly, or not randomly but with too many factors to take a call. And people draw patterns after a couple of seasons like in races or news channels.

In the end, the persons conducting these auctions live guilty lives in costly cars knowing that they cheated many mango lovers. Some mango lovers live happy lives in costly cars knowing that they’ve been lucky. Rest of the mango lovers turn to haters and advocate that mangoes are unhealthy. There will always be newbies aspiring to be the lucky-happy ones. And everyone has taken a bite of the mango at some point in life.

And then there is the farmer.

(Inspired from a professor who tries to simplify the world of Forex derivatives with mangoes. I have lesser ambitions)

By-line

Well, I am yet to write about Sachin’s best Innings but tonight a great match is scheduled too. Tonight, at 1 am, technically tomorrow is Football, FC Barcelona.

I, too, wasn’t aware that football is also a sport until Sachin played less and less and no more. Look up Wikipedia if you doubt me, but cricket is lame without Sachin. Never mind all the people still watching it, they actually know the schedule of the World T20.

 And one can’t play Chess for weeks together. To be simple, entertain as many hobbies as you can with whatever little talent you think you have and chances are you won’t be much bored.  Not to talk about the no-talenters but they can go and vote for BJP for all I care.

Because you can take only so much torture of talking to other human beings just for the sake of talking. (And by other human beings and talking, I mean the people who are your friends but not good enough, your relatives, but blood enough. Otherwise, you can talk to your good friends and blood relatives to the tune of 10-15 words per week without running the risk of dying of an infection spread by words)  

Waiting games

This day that year, when memories come back, it’s like I could have done this differently, I would have had a better chance if I started earlier. Why did I not take that course. And why did I not prepare for the Campus placement. And if I did decide to do something, why not go all the way? To the bitter end, Like Charles Bukowski says.

Well, did I give up? No.

Then am I doing anything in the right direction? Presently, no.

So what’s the plan? Wait.

How long? Not very long.

Anything Specific? No.

So I don’t like what I do and don’t know what I am going to do about what I like? It’s not exactly like that.

Life is gray in color. A Bit dark shaded at that.

Hate

I get philosophical in situations like these, when the smell of chicken and prawns and meat is all over the neighborhood and I, we, decide to have some rotten Dal and rice for lunch on a Sunday morning.  With mom not being at home, its like we are left to ourselves on a island to live like wild beasts. Eating what we can cook. And we. Cant. Cook.

Its been routine these days. Not the insanity I love about my life. Going to the office in the morning, do meaningful work for poor pay and get back home by 730. Counting time like precious. Counting the hours I can sleep, if sleep at 12 and wake up at 10 minutes more or less to 8. Well lot better than my previous job. But lot worse than where I’d rather be. For me, this is insane. I cant be long doing nothing but what I am supposed to do. Seriously, listen to this routine:

Go to the office. ‘Manage’ a bunch of stupid people and get them to do routine stuff. Try and ignore the office politics, try neither to be a pain in the ass nor a hypocrite. Smile at people when you don’t want to. Listen seriously about stuff you don’t care about. Start talking to new people hoping to find a genuine one luckily. Almost always get disappointed. Obey the boss who knows no shit. Ask him for more pay. Get disappointed. Hurry to in time. Look forward to out time. Open FB, close it, open mail, close it, go out, have tea, come back and bury your face in the jungle of excel sheets. Count your time. It is precious than others think it is. Plan your weekends, which consist of just one day, to cover one group of friends and loved ones each time. Count every hundred as it goes out of your pocket. Listen to bullshit of people saying that you earn so much. Think  ‘what if I have it all to myself’. Think ‘what I can be doing right now’.

Hate it all. 

Not that I live in misery. Don’t need your sympathies.

Perfection

I look up to perfection. That’s the reason why I idealized Howard Roark of The Fountainhead

That’s the reason why I am a FC Barcelona football style fanatic

That’s why Sachin matters

That’s the reason why my blog has few posts. I post here only what I feel is worth. When I want to write an article for my blog, I go back and read my previous posts to get that feel. That is my inspiration for a new article. I am no writer, this place is not an object of motivation or stimulus for anyone else - not even of admiration I guess. But what’s up here is the best I can come up with.

There was a boy in my school. In what I remember, he was the cleanest mind around. He was sincere and humble and straight, at the age of 12-14. Looking back, I wonder what he would be if he had the opportunities to achieve his potential. I lost him in school. Wonder what the world has done to him.

The footballing style of Barcelona depicts perfectness. It’s smooth; it is free flowing game with skillful passes, smooth touches, rigorous efforts and great tactics. It needs and uses the best players in the world. It is totally dominating. It’s totally obsessive. Hard to not follow the team when they play as if the games are designed by technicians and programmed into an animation. Except this is real. Recently, they have lost the match of the season because they did not play any other way. They played the beautiful game. It was worth it. Again as the fountainhead says, work is its own reward.

Once you start looking for and understanding perfection, it becomes an obsession really. You can’t take anything less. Like, when Sachin retires, I’ll not follow cricket anymore – not that I follow it now. My generation made cricket rich because Sachin was in it. Many moved on with the game. But I stick to Sachin. Not to all his glory, just the glory of a well judged shot or let-go.

Not the hundreds of hundreds, just the couple of sessions he faced against Dale Steyn at CapeTown in January of 2011. This contest was the best of Cricket for me. And the very best of batsmen and bowlers had to come together to make it happen. Of course I am writing a fresh article dedicated to this special play.

The Fountainhead. It simply tells the basic form of a thinking human being. How simple and truthful a man can be. And should be. No bias towards anyone/ thing. How he should exist for himself. And why only that makes sense.

When I measured my real life with the same basic rules, I started to understand people though their bones. I felt a bit of pride as I was objective in little ways. But also, realities hit me hard. For I wasn’t close to being the ‘man as he should be’ I idealized, and I am never going to be. My world is too complicated for that. Many need me to be diplomatic. Hell, I’ll not survive if I say what I have to. Am I man enough to say what I want to if I was allowed to, is a hypothetical question. But I try keeping my variables as close to the answer, within these constants. The equation doesn’t tally, but it isn’t meant to.

We grew up

Used to watch Sachin with wide open mouths. Learned perfection hence

Never being interested in his records, just the Goosebumps-giving straight drives with MRF

From the promises-to-self of never marrying

Of never drinking, never drinking and driving

Never doing the wrong

From the summers of boredom to being busy for the waiting ones

Came a long way

 Learned English with the spoken English classes offered by Yahoo messengers and Orkuts

Who would’ve thought, that it would earn the food that donkey years of education never could

That waiting for the kissing scenes in Hollywood movies

Anything more than that would make the day up

Studies meant exams, exams meant marks, and marks meant expectations

Studies never meant learning. Not even after knowing that marks meant nothing

Terraces were the play grounds which never existed

Terraces were converted to secret party places later

And Bars, And night out adda’s

Bunked it all

Schools, colleges, tuitions, offices

Some times, technically, home

Those afternoons of blaming our dads for not being rich

And blaming the rich for not giving it all away

Not having the bucks to party

To having no places which could hold the parties long enough

From the outlander view from inside a boys school

To getting bored and sick of nuisance of girls (oops - most of the girls)

Moved on, from hand video games, to TV video games, to PC games

Now to no-more games

From the Dexter’s labs and ftv

To Nolan’s Memento and more

In the process, came across people, acquaintances, few friends, very few good friends

Losing a couple of them by chance, some friends by choice

From being pure atheists

To being just an agnostic

And not caring enough to even remember that term

From Learning about hypocrisy by observation

From gaining expertise in it by practice

To hating it all by heart

To deciding never to be a pert of that mix

To realizing that it’s a resolution hard to hold

Starting with belief of a destiny, going around the concept of luck

Coming to believe in the randomness

We grew up.