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.

Change is..

Who cares what the fuck in the world change is (except the stupid videocon ad), I’ll just tell you how people change.

People change because the world around them changes. Some change for good. Some, for not so good. Though good or ‘not so good’ is relative, that’s an altogether distinct subject. Some forget faces. Some get used to forgetting faces. Some forget friends. Some get used to forgetting friends.

Getting used to forget is pathetic. Changing in such a way as to flee when people with you are in trouble is sick too. I know such people and hate them to the brim. Forgetting because you can’t remember is different. That’s me [;-). Can be because a person has too many things to remember (or forget). Maybe he is too fucked up. So it’s ok.

Most people change to survive. Our world, like nature, thrives on the concept of survival of the best. Practically. When the people surrounding a person get too good to cope with, he/she doesn’t have any alternative but to get good enough. Or else that person ends up a loser and the world doesn’t belong to losers, I tell you. You may have observed that when you meet an old friend and you realize that he hasn’t changed much; your instinct also tells you that he hasn’t grown much either. Mentally of course. This is not a hard rule to judge anyone but I’ve observed it.

So when someone was not the same guy you saw when he was your best friend, you’ve got to understand that he was almost forced to change if not tempted. If tempted, its bad that he changed. If forced, well get over with it. Those who change for the need must have changed usually to become a more complex person. Or a more uninviting, more unwilling. Or a more dynamic, extravagant. Or a more insecure, unreasonable person. But change doesn’t impliedly mean that the person is not in your range. It only means that your friend doesn’t behave the same way anymore given a situation (It can also mean that you are too dumb now :-P). Nevertheless, he is still your friend and you know how to deal with your friend – hang around.

A lesson on screwing up your life

He wasn’t the best student in our class. But wasn’t bad enough to end up like he did! Our only hope now is that its not the end..

After passing 10^th grade in a not so grand B grade along with us, he chose POLY TECHNIQUE over the regular intermediate - with electronics as majors. No one said it was bad. It wasn’t. Except that it was a 3 years course. But had a benefit that the B.Tech that followed was reduced to 3 years for them. But that is still a long way! The first year in the 3 year poly technique shit, he cleared most of the subjects. Not beginners luck but enthusiasm and a small dread that was assumed from the school. Then the problems started with the following semesters. He started failing more subjects as the course grew. The problem wasn’t the complexity of the course. It was the amount of distractions he gathered around himself.

But even then he wasn’t fully into the pickle yet. He struggled with some new subjects, cleared some old ones and so it was alright till the third year. Then came a new circle of friends into his world implying that he completely lost track of whats happening for three months or so. Even that was not the end. He eventually moved away from them and had a whole 2 months or so before the final exams of the third year. And he had some seven subjects in the spare as back logs. No one knows how he spent those two months and no one cared then actually. So he wrote the finals. To be correct, he just attended them and gave a blank paper most of the times. Other times he had more important works to do than write the most important exams in his life.

He flunked the exams successfully after his tremendous efforts. The girls in the middle would be a special mention here but he’ll never agree with me there. Maybe he is right. I don’t know. But that failure was just the beginning of a series of extravaganzas.

So he failed and he convinced his family that he was gonna complete it in the next year without any doubt. He wrote the exams in September again. Sorry, he just bunked all of them because there was still another attempt left for him. He told his parents that September was the last attempt but the results would come in May or something. So he still had the March attempt.

For March, he studied a bit more sincerely, at least because we were pressurizing him to do so. So he wrote the exams and wrote fine till the day before the last exam when he bombed me with another fact. That he didn’t write any of the exams except the first one. And first one, he gave gathered enough strength to give a blank paper. I tried not to get animated. I only hoped that he was trying to make an ‘april fool’ out of me. He wasn’t.

To sum it up, In addition to the one year that he wasted after the third year, he accomplished the task of wasting yet another year. The problem is that he is still at the beginning of that year! Its like standing at the foot of a huge mountain and wondering if he would ever reach the top. In fact, whether he wasted one year or a lifetime depends how his dad reacts when he gets to know this grand news! 

And now am off to play cricket. Of course with the lead character of this story!     

And yeah..no comments  :-)