Satisfaction

Yeah.
I lived.
I am sure.
I really did.

All those unlived, unliving out there.
Take a risk,
Risk that rotting, decomposing riskless life of yours.
take sip of poison with a breath of fresh air.

Nowhere

is a good place to be.

its stinks sometimes. Sometimes its just boring.
Mostly its just a little lonely.
nowhere is good place to be. If you have someone to give you company.

Total Dark Sublime

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Desire

And So it is...

Buried

The last inhibitions
The last principles
Now, grovelling is legal

Sad day for me. Like so many others.
Reality is the harshest teacher in the world.
First the dreams go, then the ego, then the dignity.
What is left now?

Wanted

A lucky break.

Speaking

It all started with the need to scream. Aloud.
So I took the more civil way out and started this blog.
When you scream, you say dumb things, you rant, you rage, you say things you dont mean.
Thats how I started.

Now, I feel like speaking again. The demons have been quelled.
The past though not on talking terms is no more the pariah. We are trying to make amends, me and my past. And getting on.
I remain confused though(nothing new there) whether I want people to listen, there is a urge to be appreciated and a fear of criticism.
I criticise so many people, so often. I find most blogs tiresome and boring and hate blogs written by a lot of self indulgent adolescent batchmates of mine.

Inspite of everything, all the callousness and the frivolity, the chucking away of a good career to trade uncertainty, I remain a person driven by the stadium impulse. Every act is followed by a clandestine glance at the galleries, are they cheering? Are they jeering? Are they even listening. The imbecile who does not care but still wants applause or even jeers but not indifference?

Thrift, Thrift, Horatio!

"Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio."
- Hamlet


The future looks bleak, The present confused.
The past lacerating.
There are regrets now, risks not needed,
Life could have been lived
with a little thrift in dreams.
Days could have gone, Just as meaningless.
But no whetstone,
to break knives on.

There is man who is mad
he wants to make amends with destiny,
who he shunned
but now he fakes knowledge
of fate and and its yarns
he feigns a power he lost
over his own desires

Now he does not know
what use dreams are
except excuses to sleep longer
and wake up a little later
realize the universe is real
and he is but a slave
of someone else's dreams, of someone else's screams

the poets are all dead and now all is matter
riches are to be scavenged
friends are to be lost
none are forgiven
life is just too short

Murphy

Murphy was such a bastard.
He was right.

A little less

dreams of the past,
nightmares of the future,
they ask,
master of the present,
what have you done?

have you smiled,
twice more than you should have?
made a day,
little more beautiful than it was?
helped a bit more than was practical?

At 28,
Do you claim to be unfazed?
by greed and by emotion,
by yourself chasing illusions,

What have you done?
A little more than was required?
or a little less...
this day you were born
is it special?

Evolution of Love

Circa 2007, February
LP: Hey, I want to ask you something...
SC: Sure, go ahead
LP(Shyly): Can I listen to telugu songs after we get married.
SC:(Laughs for good measure, Frowns, Getting Married!): Of-course, darling(for impact)

2009, February
Early one morning,
LP: (Singing Loudly) ^%$%^%&*^&*^&*^ (Telugu song)
SC: hush, hoosh, hush
LP: (Even Louder) #^^$&^%&^%*^*&^
SC: (Frowns, Getting Married! Sighs! covers his ears with a pillow with a degree of finality, mutters...)the deal was listening!
$%$&^^&*^(*&^(*&)(&*)(*)(

Into the shining sun

ticking away
catching up
no escape
no getting away
inexorable, the wings
freedom stings
life goes away
and you hold

memories,fading away fast
unrelenting
briefs flashes
of time
the greatest keeper
in time we will all
fade away fast
too fast

and still we try to
to collect
to enslave
what we cannot
Happiness come again,
and this time
no binds
no bounds

no false notions
of things not mine
This time will be different
and no staring audience
lets just start again
this time is different

The Diary of Unemployment

Day 1 to Day 7

It is unfamiliarly good to wake up in the morning with the clock not running out of ticks for you to get dressed and make a run to the office. The office run requires you to unhinge your mental faculties and keep them aside so that they do not interfere with your functioning at office. You commit yourself to living from opening bell to lunch and then look forward to EOD.

That said. It is unfamiliarly crazy to think of what to do with your time. There are ofcourse lots of things to do but none without an overarching sense of guilt, none without the social stigma of freedom bearing down on your mind and none without you wondering "what next".

The society demands an explanation. It needs a credible reason when it asks you "what are you doing?" I am a corporate banker with X Bank is a good enuf reason for your existence. It is a decent excuse for having 24 hours in a day and being alive to witness them.

But what if I say "nothing, really. I am just looking around for something to do. Something which does justice to my ability. Something which I find exciting, something which I think would be a good way to spend most of my waking hours." That sounds global and stupid, even to me.

And yet, what do I do when I know what I am doing is definitely not on the list of what I want to do. Trudge along until I find something more interesting? and probably trudge along until I see no sense in giving up what I have done for so many years? Yeah.

Thats the hell of it. There is no easy way. The desire to employ my intelligence seems to have commited me to a course where no matter which way I choose. Pain will follow.

So be it.

The construction of a catastrophe

The reckless adventure of attempting the im-plausible
The feeling of being a step closer to your calling in this world
The madness of self belief in the face of an ever changing probability
The rush of blood from an anarchy of ideas
The anticipation of a possibility becoming a reality

On the precipice of disaster
the edge of catastrophe
is it all worth it?

Does it matter?

It is in the very nature of the universe.
Some will brook success, others abject failure.
We serve a purpose.
Be it a guiding light or a warning bell.
Speak out. Serve your purpose.

Certainty

To wait for everything to be clear is to be certain about not taking a decision.

Contempt

I have often been accused of having contempt for people(humanity), in general.
Sometimes the disdain is so obvious that it makes some of my friends cringe.

Well, yes. I do have contempt for people.
For one thing, my biggest grouse in life is that we are too afraid of losing things which we do not really care about.
And what do we do with things we really care about. For example, people close our heart?
Obviously take for granted that they will always be there, no matter what we do.
This is not relationship gyaan. I despise relationship gyaan.

A little courage. A bit of intelligence. Thats all I expect from anybody I know.
And I find nowadays, it is too much to ask for.
Go ahead ...damn me for being arrogant.

Inertia

Whether good or bad, when something rolls, it rolls.
To stop anything on a roll, something needs to happen.
To look at momentum and just hope it will stop, the odds will even out or things cant get worse/better is stupid.

Inertia drives the world. Someone needs to give it the right direction.

Plans change

Plan A
B Plan

One option. To succeed. Baaki sab bakwaas.

Plan A

Plan A:
Take classes at TIME
Write a book
Learn trading
Read Lots
Be Happy


Plan B:
Make a Plan B

Mr. Dumb Downer

I need a lot of time.
Time and Space. For myself.
I feel claustrophobic with a job.
Work needs to need me. Need my imagination, need my creativity, need my intellect.
Or I don't need it.

I am tired of dumbing down.
That is the reason, I like movies and books.
Good movies and good books.
No dumbing down there.

Woodehouse or Wilde don't want you to be dumb.
Or they would be jobless.

Kiewoloski or Coen brothers dont expect you to be dumb.

I am tired of being dumb for sake of it.
"Bend over, dear. And remember don't think."

To Hell. Anything better than dumbing down for a living. No more dumbing down.
No more Mr. Dumb Downer.

B for Bschool

B in B school stands for business. Right? It does?
And yet it astounds anyone if you tell them that you want to do something on your own after B-School.
In my view, we should refer to them as S-Schools.
Slavery-Schools.
Which seems to be the only takeaway everyone likes to take-away.

Some Friends

Like all else,
Passion needs to be nurtured.
An invaluable companion when the life defining moment comes around.

I miss this friend of mine in Austria.
Everytime; he makes some irksome comments, good conversation and interesting company.

Project Freedom

If there is a clear path in front of you,
A distinct and defined reward system,
A timeframe for achievement,
A safety net if you fail,
Then don't kid yourself. You are employed.

An entreprenuer has to live without these things.
The advantages he has are independence of thought, a distinct awareness of fallibility or failure lurking around the corner and a hazy vision of the horizon. His horizon is so much bigger that it is difficult to have a clear and clean vision.

Exceptional

To do something exceptional, is it neccesary to think exceptional?
Or is it just being the best at something conventional?

The way the wind blows

For often I wonder,Why sadness,Why sorrow,
why I write poetry
on graves and corpses, of feelings trampled upon
Why not sunshine, why not the daffodils, why not the brook
crooked little paths, ephemeral love stories or feelings so delicate.
but beauty extracts its price, nature never gives when there is none
the best photographs, are still from the darkest rooms
If you stare long enough, even shadows are friends.
Some get the day, Some the night...nobody gets everything right.

---written by yours truly on 13th February, 2007.

A dust of snow

Dust Of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost

Inspiration

Inspiration can come from the wierdest and most unlikely of sources.
Suddenly I am all gung ho about doing something on my own.

My primary comfort for starting on my own is that regardless of what I can and cannot implement, at least I can USE my imagination.

So I take my usual approach. Burn the bridges. It will force you to survive.
As much for the thrill as for the payoff. I cannot live, cannot work if I do not find what I do interesting.

And for the umpteenth time, let me repeat Oscar Wilde "The only thing you do not regret at the end of your life, is the mistakes you made"

But what?

Certainty

I am quite sure, once again, that I am not a corporate banker.
Not that I ever believed I was.

At 27 years old, it feels good to strike off another career on your list of "what I cannot do with my life"

I am tempted now to risk all and do something outrageous. Only the rent of my house and the EMI of my education loan stops me. How long?

Being in Bombay

The one thing good about Bombay is the sea.

It is not an uncommon thing. Many cities are based by the water.

But Bombay is so starved of everything else, that the sea takes on a whole new meaning. It represents a peace and a gentleness that the daily life(?) in Bombay takes away. It is one place an average Mumbaikar can sit without being in a hurry to move on to the next mindless task at hand.

One thing is for sure, If you want to live in Bombay and have the two most precious things (at least in my book) space and time - You should have tons and tons of money and perhaps an effiecient non office going way to earn it. (in other words ... a rich dad)

Else just go to Calcutta. Live the good life. Live in a city with a soul and a complicated but all embracing heart.

Do we have a choice?

I like to think, yes. We write our destiny, not only with our actions but more so with our desires.

Being a banker.

The word banker has quite a twang to it.

Makes one feel special like one is a doctor or a skiing proffessional or something. Something cool, something unique. Unfortunately thats not the truth. The only thing which sets bankers apart from rest of the world is that they are a ruthless but necessary evil in life. Very ruthless. Very necessary.

Nah! I guess there is more to it. Banking is a profession that brings with it great responsibility. There is so much money involved that you visibly feel the weight on your shoulders. Being in corporate banking is tougher still. The amount of money is big, the quality of work sucks.

Documentation takes on a whole new meaning. Day in and day out will be spent haggling with a puritanical and clinical operations team over things that appear logical and simple to you but do not fit in with their dashboard definitions. Logic will pretty much disappear from your life and in its stead will be an obsessive attention to detail and diligence.

Such is life.

Creativity has no space in banking. You cannot be creative when you have to disburse 20-50 cr rupees to a client. You have to be resposible. Period. But aside from the stifling of all emotions, banking is an amazing training ground because it teaches you so much and makes people like me who are flippant and casual by nature think twice about everything.

Let me give you a quarter(we think only in quarters ...q1 to q4) in the life of a corporate banker at the bottom of the foodchain.

1. Clearing exceptions...we do documentation, any documentation exercise being fully complete is impossible so we take defferals(defer the docs for later) and spend a good part of the year cleaning up our self created mess. You are a house keeper.

2. writing CAMs... CAMs are notes to analyse credit, they have to sent to a risk team which gets backs with inane queries. Most of the queries would be regarding deviations from formatting. In a bank, Format is sacroscant. Some of the queries will revolve around the core nature of the exercise - credit but mostly decisions are taken at the very top. You are a book keeper.

3. Fighting the ops... every day of your life you will pick up the phone and dial 4-5 numbers around 25 times each. Of these, about 2-3 calls will get answered on your lucky day and definitely you can rant on mails as much as you like - they will only get lost somewhere in the infinitude of mails in the average ops inbox. Yet you will write them. Somewhere your mind will rebel, your ethics dont allow you to shout at people neither say lies. But here it is a way of life, you cannot but escape them. You are a call center operator.

These will take up 95% of your time...documents, operations, exceptions, CAMS, endless phone calls, pleading with people to do their job.

And yet, horrid though it sounds it is one of the better jobs I have had in my long and rather un-illustrious career.

I have ...well, sold advertisements virtually 'door to door' or 'shop to shop' to be more precise...mostly unsucessfully but towards the end with a bit of success.

I have toured all of north india doing the rounds of plywood factories nestled in weird places with weirder people. Carried a fair amount of cash as an account settler.

I have tried my hand at guiding media relations to a finally failed amusement park

I have tried to make money out of arbitrage between stocks and their futures. Never did, though.

I have been a teacher, sort of...for Data interpretation, math and english for CAT a commonly over rated test.

I have also been an IT - sales guy ...doing some arbit work for a few months, in, undoubtedly one of the worst companies I have seen.

I have been over the last few months, a corporate banker. Sort of.

A long post to a long career at the bottom of the food chain.

I admit, though, to give credit to a job which held my interest for 8 months; that I left out the good parts of corporate banking in an effort to vent my perennial frustration.

I wonder ,as always, whether I can do something better with my life. The thought always lurks at the back of my mind...something on my own? Maybe...

The restlessness lives on...