Happy Birthday to me.
Im 24 . Its the first birthday of my life that Im not too excited about. I mean, finally i ask myself, whats the fuss? I go to my personal Wikipedia ( Mother ) who wishes me in her sleep and gives me sindhi blessings. I tell her, "Mom Im not too excited about my birthday. " Instant response, " Its because your not feeling well beta, youve been having health issues. I have told you 100 times not to hang out with those friends of your who .... .... .." I walk away.
Its 9 :30 am , Ive received the usual phonecalls from my handfull relatives. Being a Friday, I dont have work, and quite frankly, today I dont even feel like sitting with Dad and giving him evolutionary ideas on how to manage a company he so successfully has since the last 30 years. So I get restless, walk into my room and sit, without music, just hear the raindrops in the background, the wheezing in my chest, and some memories in my heart. Meditation is the need of the hour so I close my eyes and try to sit in a Yoga pose, quite unsuccessfully. Finally I settle down and decide, lets just have a monlogue and pretend some inputs are from God. The conversation begins with our usual pleasentaries.
Finally its time to ask "questions with difficult answers", this time its God whos asking me all the questions.
God : Happy Birthday. 24. Whats the difference?
Me : Thanks , no difference, feel a bit weird cause 24 is when people are extremely involved in themselves, most of us our done with quarter life crises, quite a few of us are engaged or in extremely serious relationships, and responsibilities are at an all time high. For me, Im just starting to realize how much of I is involved in LIFE, around half way done with feeling weird, am absolutely single, but for a change not brooding over it and quite loving it, and I havent shown any inclination on marriage.
God: So are you happy the way the year went?
Me : Quite satisfied. The year before was quite a pain cause I got single after a whirlpool of relationships lasting over 6 years, so I was starting to enjoy man's natural existence : solitude. Finally this year has made me much more confident, I do not remember being very depressed or upset this year. Career wise things have been still slow, took the GMAT and fared OK. Health has not been a big problem for a good part of the year. Met some interesting people, even more interesting women, but things didn't go too far. So its been quite balanced.
God: Your Biggest Gain for the year?
Me: Self - realization. Finally beginning to understand what exactly do things like " enjoying your own company, listening to Bob Dylan, sitting alone for 4 hours, not going mad over the fact that there is no one to talk to, scanning my cellphone for contacts I used to talk to, but not being bitter about it, heeding my friend the Shrinks advise on how family is THE most important part of life, etc. etc. etc.
God: Your biggest loss?
Me : No loss. Maybe that's why this year has been good .
God : Why are you lying? Confess.
Me: Like I said, Nothing. Its hard to imagine, but its true. This year is the year I could proudly say I have NO regrets. Maybe 24 years is a long time , but finally I have nothing to be sad about. All the mistakes Ive made, I've repented, People whom I have upset, have been apologized to. People whom have upset me, have lost me. My equation with people for a change has been really practical.
God: So you say your confident now. Tell me about the journey.
Me : The difference was that I didn't rely on what millions of others count on you for, HOPE. It has helped. That's the one thing where you and I are dissimilar. God's image on Earth is that he or she solve all the problems. Going by that logic, God pretty much create the problems as well. I mean, its not fair to blame us for problems, and credit God for solutions. I create my own problems, and I solve them myself. This has made me confident enough to face my problems head on, and not listen to motivational bullshit. People love reading about hope, survival, faith and Paris Hilton. For me they are all in the same category. What happens then is people just appreciate the text and then do not apply it to their life. Ill remember year 23 because of the way I started feeling good about my self, and that what I do in life is completely independent. Having a benchmark is good during schooling days, but it should stop then. I need to be compared with myself and nothing else. That is when I will make the most of my life.
God: Some moments worth remembering.
Me: The recent one was the conversation with Dustin. Drinking actually is the best conversation starter. I admired his practicality of life, the blunt manner in which he said , " Look Bhatia, I'm not your best friend and your not mine, and there are no hard feelings bout it. Tomorrow if you or I die, the other person is not gonna feel depressed. So whatever you say or do doesn't affect me, and that's the way it should be. " There have been several instances when I spoke to Mom about things, she simply asked me " So what?" and that solved the problem.
God: Your heroes this year?
Me: Mom and myself. Both had a blast together, and I'm proud to say shes my closest friend.
God: Any people who u hate?
Me: Not really, just have to ignore them I guess.
God: So what do you think of me?
Me: (Fountainhead, here i come) But I don't think of you.
That was it, felt good after meditation, had a good day not depending on people or things, and look forward to enjoying the year/s ahead.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Who will cry, when you die?
Kudos to Mr. Robin Sharma, of using the title for his dry and repetitive jargon of how you should be the difference in the world , be a nice person , and sell a Ferrari ( from his previous notes !!) .
As always, Sunday evenings are second best spent going to Crossword Bookstore at Bandra, and see what people are purchasing. To a great extent, I beg to differ with R. Sriram's ( Crossword's boss) recommendations, although he adds Atlas Shrugged to his list (Im surprised Fountainhead didn't make an appearance). By the way, the best thing to do on a Sunday evening is to procrastinate and also bitch about the next week.
So in the rightly titled " Self - Help or Self - Improvement" section ( You really need help if you purchase any book from this category), Robin Sharma has virtually taken over the full category! He has left no stone unturned in giving zany titles to his one - hundred odd pages of crap. I blame our readers for this, Why are they so unsure about themselves. Hell, if we all were perfect and had no worries, what the fuck would be the point of living in Earth, we would all be in heaven, wouldn't we?
In my comprehensive survey ( I asked 2 -3 people) on what is their Greatest Fear, I was not surprised when "Death" ruled over the other options. ( Other options being - heights, Abhay Bhatia etc.) . I was curious, why death? The spontaneous answer - because we do not know what happens once we die. I am puzzled - Do we know whats happening while we are alive? "We'll, at least we know we are breathing, and can think , and see, and feel and touch ." I have time, so the next question comes natural to me. " But don't you also know that you CANT breathe, think, see, feel and touch when your dead?" I am greeted with a pissed off expression , sometimes even an expression of pity. "Well, you can be born the next instant from another womb, or you can become a spirit moving around Just Around The Corner(JATC) ( That's the birthplace of weird questions. Jesus was born in Jerusalem, Weird questions were born in JATC). Hmmmm. interesting . After sometime, my victim adds, " Well, you also fear for your loved ones." I ask, in what way. Response: "That they ll be all alone and sad.". I chuckle, REALLY? I get the same pissed off expression. But then I ask, Do you say such a thing, because you feel bad for them, or you feel bad for yourself ( a.k.a Self Pity)?. Thats the googly.
Yes, death is certain, but it is uncertainly certain. Yes we will not be part of conversations, victims of torture, partners in crime and many more combinations, once we are gone. So, we have reason to fear, because we are forced to believe that we make a difference in this world. That the Earth may stop revolving, once we are gone. That we wont be there for the party. These sort of feelings are amongst all of us, we are human after all.
Religions try to pacify us by promising that death is actually the greatest celebration. We shall rise from the grave. We will be in heaven where Kurt Cobain will not have guns or coke to kill himself. But, for being on the guest list of Heaven, we need to be good children. How bloody convenient. And to top it all, all these things are forced into us as little children. So half our cause of worry since we are legal enough to think is that, are we living life in the right way? Are we dead sure that God is happy with us, and our death will indeed be a celebration?
Because of this, we end up living life much less than a 100%. We worry too much, psychiatrists are minting money giving bull crap and advising people to read the latest Robin Sharma book. Its all a racket. I want to state down some few things I feel people are not told.
1. It is normal to be confused, to not know what you are doing in life.
2. Everyone dies. Everyone has it in the back of their mind that they will not be here someday.
3. You are not weird, when you fail in your career, relationship or you fail yourself.
4. No one knows answers to all questions except Wikipedia.
5. Death is not the most important thing to be concerned about in Life. Death has to be there, because the day has the night, because the book eventually has an ending, because the last song has to be sung, because some things have to be stated Post Script. (P.S), and because every case has to have an outcome. You will not be really entertained if the same process went on and on and you were witness to it.
6. DEATH IS OVERRATED. Its nothing great, its like good sleep. Once your asleep, you never worry about waking up.
Instead of worrying about death, lets start worrying about not living life. The concept of wake up - job -come home - sleep is getting extinct. We have to realise that the level of boredom in our lives is the result of the input we give it. Stop caring about how people feel about you and start worrying about how you feel about yourself. That, my friend, when done, will be a bigger celebration then Death.
As always, Sunday evenings are second best spent going to Crossword Bookstore at Bandra, and see what people are purchasing. To a great extent, I beg to differ with R. Sriram's ( Crossword's boss) recommendations, although he adds Atlas Shrugged to his list (Im surprised Fountainhead didn't make an appearance). By the way, the best thing to do on a Sunday evening is to procrastinate and also bitch about the next week.
So in the rightly titled " Self - Help or Self - Improvement" section ( You really need help if you purchase any book from this category), Robin Sharma has virtually taken over the full category! He has left no stone unturned in giving zany titles to his one - hundred odd pages of crap. I blame our readers for this, Why are they so unsure about themselves. Hell, if we all were perfect and had no worries, what the fuck would be the point of living in Earth, we would all be in heaven, wouldn't we?
In my comprehensive survey ( I asked 2 -3 people) on what is their Greatest Fear, I was not surprised when "Death" ruled over the other options. ( Other options being - heights, Abhay Bhatia etc.) . I was curious, why death? The spontaneous answer - because we do not know what happens once we die. I am puzzled - Do we know whats happening while we are alive? "We'll, at least we know we are breathing, and can think , and see, and feel and touch ." I have time, so the next question comes natural to me. " But don't you also know that you CANT breathe, think, see, feel and touch when your dead?" I am greeted with a pissed off expression , sometimes even an expression of pity. "Well, you can be born the next instant from another womb, or you can become a spirit moving around Just Around The Corner(JATC) ( That's the birthplace of weird questions. Jesus was born in Jerusalem, Weird questions were born in JATC). Hmmmm. interesting . After sometime, my victim adds, " Well, you also fear for your loved ones." I ask, in what way. Response: "That they ll be all alone and sad.". I chuckle, REALLY? I get the same pissed off expression. But then I ask, Do you say such a thing, because you feel bad for them, or you feel bad for yourself ( a.k.a Self Pity)?. Thats the googly.
Yes, death is certain, but it is uncertainly certain. Yes we will not be part of conversations, victims of torture, partners in crime and many more combinations, once we are gone. So, we have reason to fear, because we are forced to believe that we make a difference in this world. That the Earth may stop revolving, once we are gone. That we wont be there for the party. These sort of feelings are amongst all of us, we are human after all.
Religions try to pacify us by promising that death is actually the greatest celebration. We shall rise from the grave. We will be in heaven where Kurt Cobain will not have guns or coke to kill himself. But, for being on the guest list of Heaven, we need to be good children. How bloody convenient. And to top it all, all these things are forced into us as little children. So half our cause of worry since we are legal enough to think is that, are we living life in the right way? Are we dead sure that God is happy with us, and our death will indeed be a celebration?
Because of this, we end up living life much less than a 100%. We worry too much, psychiatrists are minting money giving bull crap and advising people to read the latest Robin Sharma book. Its all a racket. I want to state down some few things I feel people are not told.
1. It is normal to be confused, to not know what you are doing in life.
2. Everyone dies. Everyone has it in the back of their mind that they will not be here someday.
3. You are not weird, when you fail in your career, relationship or you fail yourself.
4. No one knows answers to all questions except Wikipedia.
5. Death is not the most important thing to be concerned about in Life. Death has to be there, because the day has the night, because the book eventually has an ending, because the last song has to be sung, because some things have to be stated Post Script. (P.S), and because every case has to have an outcome. You will not be really entertained if the same process went on and on and you were witness to it.
6. DEATH IS OVERRATED. Its nothing great, its like good sleep. Once your asleep, you never worry about waking up.
Instead of worrying about death, lets start worrying about not living life. The concept of wake up - job -come home - sleep is getting extinct. We have to realise that the level of boredom in our lives is the result of the input we give it. Stop caring about how people feel about you and start worrying about how you feel about yourself. That, my friend, when done, will be a bigger celebration then Death.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
What can you offer me , 10 years from now?
I have a confession to make. I always end up speculating over strange things and wasting my time. I am not sure if I do this in order to postpone a task I don't feel like doing, or is it because I am restless. Either ways, over the last year I have been pondering about my future, like everyone else I know. Quarter Life Crisis lasts a while, I must say.
So then I'm on Pali Hill, the usual night drive with some nonsensical conversation heading nowhere. This time its Kapil, the most weird person I know. Very erratic behavior, and very very moody. Kapil works in some department in ICICI bank, and he loves his food and he loves his 100 year old Van.
But Kapil is quite an intellect himself, over the years he's asked me some strange questions, and told me some even stranger things. I must say, he lends a ear to all my ideas and plans for the factory. So we get along well, since I always need someone to listen to me whine, and I guess he needs to keep in contact as well.
The latest common "hobby" with my close friends is the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) . I plunged into this new source of wastage of time, because I felt I should hurry up with my "process of enlightenment" at a B - School , and then take over the Company in a quick efficient way. With regards to the rest of the clan, they are kind of bored with their jobs( I too am quite done with the monotonous routine of life) . So we all need "CHANGE" . And so we study for the GMAT, and then the series of assumptions begin.
1) Assuming I get a 700 , followed by
2) Assuming I get into ISB, followed by
3) Assuming I get done and learn nothing and come back to my job with a year or two wasted, and the guilt of not having an escape route.
So the most perplexing question arises :- Where will you, Abhay Bhatia, be 10 years from now?
Now I am strictly talking about my self here, and I do realize you must be wondering why Kapil was even there in this story, well we'll just get back to that in a bit.
When you are a "second generation entrepreneur", you are lucky. People struggle years to get to a lifestyle similar to yours, a decent office, responsible profile, no nagging boss , extremely flexible hours, etc. So you are considered lucky, and you also have the pressure of managing the business as well as your dad.
I begin to wonder, will I be still running a company 10 years from now? Will I have grown or shrunk or shut it ? I don't know. And right now I'm not even worried about that. I love my job, it gives me a high. But what I don't love , as more than a hundred million people in Mumbai will agree with me is the travelling, the population, the lack of infrastructure etc.
Now i'm not complaining about Mumbai. I know its not the most interesting and unique thing to talk about. What I don't like about Mumbai is that there is nothing really there to do in this city. You might argue that every city is the same, and so why are you against Mumbai?
This is when Kapil re-enters the story. Kapil told me something I thought was spot on. 10 years from now, we ' ll live comfortably with a decent pay, a good wife, and a great family. But then what? We will still be living in the same house, cause the property prices of this city are as high as the pollution levels. We ' ll be stuck in the same traffic everyday. ( I use the railways, but its getting impossible to travel in these outdated, crappy bogies). We ll work 5 or 6 days a week, and in the nights, we ll go drink with the SAME people at the SAME places, talking about the SAME old things. The weekends will be spent usefully wondering what to do at home, or else just sleeping. Can you imagine living life from age 33 to 73 or more or less in the SAME way? Somehow I can't
Kapil wants to live somewhere where on weekdays, he works 5 days a week from 9 - 5, leaves office, goes home quietly and peacefully goes exercising, comes home, has some pork chops ( I know he loves pork chops) and some wine, listen to some music, paint , and go to bed. Now many of us in this city can do some of the activities mentioned. But can we do it on a daily basis? No we can't.
What makes it interesting is what Kapil wants to do in the weekends. He wants to climb rocks, drive to another city or state comfortably without having to curse the traffic and roads, try horse riding , go sky diving, paint a beautiful scenery of mountains with dense greenery, without having to be tapped by beggars for 1 Rupee or 1 Wada Pao or any such interruption, and finally the most important extravagance - go fishing.
The guy is not asking for the moon, the guy is not asking for activities which require huge investments. All he wants is peace and a better way of life. Is he asking for too much?
Can Mumbai offer me these simple pleasures, 10 years from now?
I am not even going to talk about how Mumbai can be improved. It can't , we are stuck. And now Im thinking, why Mumbai, take any city in India. Is it possible to live such a life here.
Now don't get me wrong, whatever Kapil wants to do in the weekends is possible here. But at a senseless price . My friend Rakesh sends me an invite on Facebook for ORCA Diving Club. Where the fuck do you dive anyways Rakesh, the Mithi River? Let me not even quote the price for the crap. Moving on, if you want to learn how to fly a small plane as a hobby in Mumbai, well you can't. You can according to Yash Airways, but they will not respond to your query, cause 1000000000 people are training for their CPLs . You want to go trekking, do it at your own risk of stepping over people's crap. You want to go to the zoo, you wont see the rhino, he died chewing plastic bags and chemicals. You want to go to the drive - in , you can't , it shut down, cops thought its WRONG. You want to join a good gym - its no point , cause hundred others will be there, fifty with personal training so no one gives a damn about you. Want to learn a musical instrument. Be prepared to shell out Rs. 3000 for a total of 180 minutes for learning for the Trinity School of Music, with a 3000 non refundable deposit.
Why are we killing ourselves here? We know that careers are not made because of hard work, they are made cause of sucking up to your boss , or in my case bluffing to my customers, and delaying every job. We don't follow any safety requirements. We travel in trains where people are spitting all over the god damn place. Our lives are threatend by Qasabs, who by the way is above 18 but yet the governemnt is giving him a fair trial. He gets the feeling he has a strong chance of being released.
I know many of us can afford to move out. I know the job market is shaky, you are an outsider . You will not have the status of being your dad's son or whatever. You will be a secondary citizen. But what the hell, at least you will be treated like a citizen.
Do you think there are any activities one can do without worrying? Can any one hone some skills , or learn some art here? Do let me know
But at least
So then I'm on Pali Hill, the usual night drive with some nonsensical conversation heading nowhere. This time its Kapil, the most weird person I know. Very erratic behavior, and very very moody. Kapil works in some department in ICICI bank, and he loves his food and he loves his 100 year old Van.
But Kapil is quite an intellect himself, over the years he's asked me some strange questions, and told me some even stranger things. I must say, he lends a ear to all my ideas and plans for the factory. So we get along well, since I always need someone to listen to me whine, and I guess he needs to keep in contact as well.
The latest common "hobby" with my close friends is the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) . I plunged into this new source of wastage of time, because I felt I should hurry up with my "process of enlightenment" at a B - School , and then take over the Company in a quick efficient way. With regards to the rest of the clan, they are kind of bored with their jobs( I too am quite done with the monotonous routine of life) . So we all need "CHANGE" . And so we study for the GMAT, and then the series of assumptions begin.
1) Assuming I get a 700 , followed by
2) Assuming I get into ISB, followed by
3) Assuming I get done and learn nothing and come back to my job with a year or two wasted, and the guilt of not having an escape route.
So the most perplexing question arises :- Where will you, Abhay Bhatia, be 10 years from now?
Now I am strictly talking about my self here, and I do realize you must be wondering why Kapil was even there in this story, well we'll just get back to that in a bit.
When you are a "second generation entrepreneur", you are lucky. People struggle years to get to a lifestyle similar to yours, a decent office, responsible profile, no nagging boss , extremely flexible hours, etc. So you are considered lucky, and you also have the pressure of managing the business as well as your dad.
I begin to wonder, will I be still running a company 10 years from now? Will I have grown or shrunk or shut it ? I don't know. And right now I'm not even worried about that. I love my job, it gives me a high. But what I don't love , as more than a hundred million people in Mumbai will agree with me is the travelling, the population, the lack of infrastructure etc.
Now i'm not complaining about Mumbai. I know its not the most interesting and unique thing to talk about. What I don't like about Mumbai is that there is nothing really there to do in this city. You might argue that every city is the same, and so why are you against Mumbai?
This is when Kapil re-enters the story. Kapil told me something I thought was spot on. 10 years from now, we ' ll live comfortably with a decent pay, a good wife, and a great family. But then what? We will still be living in the same house, cause the property prices of this city are as high as the pollution levels. We ' ll be stuck in the same traffic everyday. ( I use the railways, but its getting impossible to travel in these outdated, crappy bogies). We ll work 5 or 6 days a week, and in the nights, we ll go drink with the SAME people at the SAME places, talking about the SAME old things. The weekends will be spent usefully wondering what to do at home, or else just sleeping. Can you imagine living life from age 33 to 73 or more or less in the SAME way? Somehow I can't
Kapil wants to live somewhere where on weekdays, he works 5 days a week from 9 - 5, leaves office, goes home quietly and peacefully goes exercising, comes home, has some pork chops ( I know he loves pork chops) and some wine, listen to some music, paint , and go to bed. Now many of us in this city can do some of the activities mentioned. But can we do it on a daily basis? No we can't.
What makes it interesting is what Kapil wants to do in the weekends. He wants to climb rocks, drive to another city or state comfortably without having to curse the traffic and roads, try horse riding , go sky diving, paint a beautiful scenery of mountains with dense greenery, without having to be tapped by beggars for 1 Rupee or 1 Wada Pao or any such interruption, and finally the most important extravagance - go fishing.
The guy is not asking for the moon, the guy is not asking for activities which require huge investments. All he wants is peace and a better way of life. Is he asking for too much?
Can Mumbai offer me these simple pleasures, 10 years from now?
I am not even going to talk about how Mumbai can be improved. It can't , we are stuck. And now Im thinking, why Mumbai, take any city in India. Is it possible to live such a life here.
Now don't get me wrong, whatever Kapil wants to do in the weekends is possible here. But at a senseless price . My friend Rakesh sends me an invite on Facebook for ORCA Diving Club. Where the fuck do you dive anyways Rakesh, the Mithi River? Let me not even quote the price for the crap. Moving on, if you want to learn how to fly a small plane as a hobby in Mumbai, well you can't. You can according to Yash Airways, but they will not respond to your query, cause 1000000000 people are training for their CPLs . You want to go trekking, do it at your own risk of stepping over people's crap. You want to go to the zoo, you wont see the rhino, he died chewing plastic bags and chemicals. You want to go to the drive - in , you can't , it shut down, cops thought its WRONG. You want to join a good gym - its no point , cause hundred others will be there, fifty with personal training so no one gives a damn about you. Want to learn a musical instrument. Be prepared to shell out Rs. 3000 for a total of 180 minutes for learning for the Trinity School of Music, with a 3000 non refundable deposit.
Why are we killing ourselves here? We know that careers are not made because of hard work, they are made cause of sucking up to your boss , or in my case bluffing to my customers, and delaying every job. We don't follow any safety requirements. We travel in trains where people are spitting all over the god damn place. Our lives are threatend by Qasabs, who by the way is above 18 but yet the governemnt is giving him a fair trial. He gets the feeling he has a strong chance of being released.
I know many of us can afford to move out. I know the job market is shaky, you are an outsider . You will not have the status of being your dad's son or whatever. You will be a secondary citizen. But what the hell, at least you will be treated like a citizen.
Do you think there are any activities one can do without worrying? Can any one hone some skills , or learn some art here? Do let me know
But at least
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