My Handicap: Indiscriminate "Socializing"

Vanity is one of my most prominent attributes. I am vain to suicidal extents, although to be fair, I always mask my vanity in humorous self-ridicule. Nevertheless, I admit that I am forever loath to accept any weakness of mine. This piece is therefore completely against my instincts.

For quite some time now, I have been trying to ignore this one particular compulsion of mine, although the repercussions have been affecting me too strongly for my liking. I like to think of myself as a man, nay a phenomenon :P, with extraordinary self control. Yet, time and again, I have faced defeat at the hands of this weakness of mine. It is time that I admitted it, to myself more than anyone else: My greatest weakness is that I am an indiscriminate "socializer". So there, its out in the open now. Not that I think that writing about it is going to soothe my soul or anything. Even so. Maybe I am the first one to ever think of it in this way: indiscriminate socializing. But even if there were others before me, I am confident that none of them possessed its characteristics, or rather was possessed by them, to as great a degree as me.

All my life, I have been an extrovert. Wherever I have been, people have invariably liked me. I may have met them for half a minute, but I have involuntarily impressed upon them my worth. And whenever they meet me next, they welcome me as their closest long-lost buddy. Maybe it is a boon (or a curse) for I now realize that I have no control over this. The good Lord ruling over us simply made me universally-likable. Plus I simply love meeting people. And nothing satisfies me as much as making each one of them a close friend of mine, and believing that they will all stand by me in my "time-of-need". Even though what that "time-of-need" could possibly be to require such enormous support, I can't imagine.

If, however, I try to look deep into my psyche and my nature, I discover some interesting (and frankly, disturbing) features that I was unaware of up until now. I have a tendency to try and please everyone around me, so that they think well of me. Ordinarily that would mean low self-esteem, but one thing I am definitely not low on, is my self-esteem. I realize now that this tendency of mine to please everyone is just a manifestation of avoiding confrontations. I have been trying to figure out what makes me so fearful of disagreements, but I can think of nothing that has me completely convinced of its crime. One reason may be that all confrontations/disagreements I have been in get really nasty. I say some really mean things, my already-acid wit getting more acidic at such times, many a time leading to complete estrangement. Something of that sort, of course, worries me infinitely, for like I said, I wish everyone to like me.

Maybe its a good thing, and maybe its not, but I am now restraining myself from trying to make friends all over. For one thing, its difficult to maintain too many good friendships. So while I am casually in touch with many people who I do not wish too much to keep contact with, the really important relationships seem superficial too. I am unable to give enough time to the friends that really matter, and they deserve better than that. So I have vowed to do justice by my real friends and give them more time. 

I have no clue how to conclude this piece. It just seems random and incomplete. My thoughts on the subject, as well as on my condition, are rather hazy right now. Perhaps, at a later stage, I will be able to collect my thoughts better and understand more. I will then follow up with a more sound analysis. Then, hopefully, my retrospection may be of use to someone coping with a similar problem. Signing off.

P.S. Will try to put in a weekly entry henceforth 

A New Beginning-Chicken for Romantics?

And yet again I start to write online, or "blog" as they call it. At least I didn't start a new blog altogether. Maybe that is what will make the difference this time. Or perhaps it will be yet another failed attempt at keeping at something for long enough to actually achieve something substantial. And I know of the 10000 hour rule, but I would be pleased with just a 100 hours at anything.

It would make sense to begin this series with a number of topics that I feel strongly about. This first one I will dedicate to Love. The very scope of such a subject may tempt one to dedicate an entire blog id to it, but I shall refrain. For like many others, I too have suffered from the cheesy to the cheesier. So I will attempt to bring into focus the million thoughts that might occur to me in the shortest span possible.

Love is an emotion. Intangible, inevitable and infinite in potential. I would categorize love into two basic types viz. directed towards the inanimate and directed towards the animate. Furthermore, it would be intuitive to realize that love for the animate may fall into several categories e.g. for parents, for partner, for friends, for celebrities, etc. Let us look at these in some greater detail.

I love food. Good food. Sweet or salty, bland or spicy, veg or non-veg, wet or dry, protein or carbs. As long as it tastes good I don't care whats in it. I never count my calories, nor am I too finicky about hygiene. I have picked up that piece of chocolate that fell on the ground, I have finished off a friend's leftovers after I was full and I have even forced down some suspiciously slimy pudding that had once tasted good. But it would not be fair to call my affinity for food, true love. For if I were to be deprived of good food for a year, it would make me sad, but my heart would feel no pain. So I love food, but that's really not love in all practicality.

I love Metallica. I couldn't get tickets for their show in Gurgaon (liquidity issues), and was a bit sadistically pleased that it didn't actually happen. Sorry. But they played Fade to black in Bangalore man! That's the worst news I received this year. So I love them. Because of the feel to their music. Because of there amazing personalities. Because of the depth of their emotions. I may not know them now, or ever for that matter, but my love is born of admiration. Yet there is only a limited extent to my expectations from them. And the heartache is missing I guess.

I love my parents. Mummy and Papa. As also my grandparents viz. Nanajee, Nanee, Dadu, Nana. No matter what they do, I love them. Why? Because that is what is correct and I am a fanatic when it comes to propriety. But to be fair, I probably got a good deal as far as family is concerned. There are many who are not as lucky. At least, one acknowledges ones love for certain people who are formally related. This may also be extended to include friends, true friends at that, or at least the ones we feel are the lifelong ones. We choose to give them our love, to lay down our lives if the need be. Of course if I had to give up my life, fat good that would do me. But in essence.

And then there is love that happens. You didn't wish it, you weren't anticipating it, but it sure as hel* creeped up on you. Maybe you were ga*y all along, and then you met this person who forced you to think that you might be straight. Not to equate love with physical cravings, but the excitement of the beating heart, the knot in the stomach, all of that zing-ding and abracadabra doesn't happen in the other kinds of love. So this love is taken from you, not given of free will. Nevertheless, it is the one that yields or can yield the greatest pleasure or the greatest pain.

A common myth about love is that love is selfless. That it is giving without expecting anything in return. Bolloc*s to that. Its not. You may read this piece and say "bull", and I couldn't care lesser. But if a loved one were to call me nuts over it, I would experience that heartache reserved for the special ones in my life. Or maybe not. I give my loved ones the right to ask for my life when they need it. But if they were to ask it of me, they would probably soon fall down my favorites list.

Another common myth is that the manifestation of love in one's actions must come from within oneself. No external influence, etc. Incorrect. A person may work at showing his love, against his own nature. Think of a geek taking advise from his cooler friends on how to woo a girl he likes. Some may call it devious, fake, superficial and what not. But the very fact that he endeavors to put up the act speaks great volumes in my dictionary. So all those who ridiculed Kevin James in Hitch, you lost the entire point of the movie, and I pity you, for you do not understand one of the most powerful of our emotions.

It would be unfair if I were to give up on this subject without talking about hatred, because love and hate are intricately linked. Anything you love greatly, you could have hated as much and vice-versa. Whether in the end its love you feel or hatred, depends on whether the object of these emotions came through on your expectations or not. So you can love your girl deeply, but only if she is everything you want her to be, or at least fulfills most of your major requirements and the shortcomings you are ready to embrace. Similarly, half the people who say they hate Bush Jr. are just jumping on the bandwagon. You couldn't hate him unless you could have loved him. Ridicule him, yes. Criticize him, sure. But not hate. A true Bush-hater hates Bush because Bush once promised to be what he wished for and he loved Bush for it and then the veil was lifted.

Love is too complex to be waved off with cliches. That is why it took religion centuries of evolution before the message of love emerged as its final teaching. Those of us who thought that they knew it all, must think again. For only those who admit knowing nothing about love (although not for lack of trying) have understood its true nature.

LOVE ON!!!

PS: This is called chicken for romantics because i saw a book by that name(almost) and I thought i can generate enough chicken on this subject to never read that book. Thus this post. :D Cheers!!!

SAD RHYMES : Like REALLY sad

It is now time to have some fun. Everyone who knows me accepts that I have a penchant for slapstick mindless humor. Here are a couple of verses that I composed impromptu tonight.

The first was a response to a comment by a good friend of mine at IMT namely Robby. Robby made this comment on a senior's quote:

quote unquote,
were going together in a boat;
they rowed in opposite directions,
and angered by each others actions,
each grabbed the other one's throat,

And my response was:

quote unquote,
baarish me lot-pot;
we are in different sections,
but have the same collections,
of stuff in our "langot".

HAHAHAHAHA

The second one came soon after. I was definitely at my creative best today what with the Marketing mid-term exam coming up in the morning.

Banga Sir wrote the following shayari as his status on Facebook:

Mehfilein Aayi aur gayi, Log aaye aur Gaye
Tum jo aaj aaye ho, dil mein bas Gaye

And my response was :

susu aayi aur gayi, potty aaya aur gaya,

aise gande status message, sir, thodi to karo daya

HAHAHAHAHAHA. Was that sad or what!!!

I am freaking awesome. :D

PDP : A case study in psychology

The Personality Development Program at IMT Ghaziabad started at the odd hour of midnight after our first day of the orientation week. It was a program conducted by the senior batch for "our benefit" and was to continue for the entire orientation week. By now the euphemism i.e. PDP must be clear to everyone(meaning the idiot who typed in the wrong URL yet again). If it isn't, PDP=rag*ing (censored due to Supreme Court vigilance).

However, to be honest, ragging is too harsh a word to assign to what was cheap fun the seniors attempted to have at our expense. The schedule was crazy and we were thankful when we got two hours of sleep in a day but the PDP sessions were rather sad. Not to imply that the entire session was uninteresting. But being from an engg. college which was really serious about its ragging tradition, the small-time conversations here were most amusing.

I have always supported the cause called ragging and I believe it must be made compulsary under the law of the land, but thats just crazy me. Jokes apart, ragging essentially attempts to instill in its target extroversion, subordination and other such characteristics that hold real value in the real world. That is of course the claim of all seniors ( me having been one of them once upon a time). However some of us get so carried away by the excitement of the moment that the once sacrosanct tradition has now been forever tarred.

But this is not an essay titled Ragging : Pros and Cons. This is a case study on psychology. But keeping with the tradition of just increasing the size of the case with irrelevant bulls*it, I have provided the background for this interesting study.

We will begin with the bulk of the seniors who participated in PDP. To give you a picture of their mindset, the favorite PDP indulgence of seniors was to make us run around with our hands in the air and tie around the head saying nonsensical things like "My beard grows fast" or "I don't have socks" or to give us stupid scenarios to analyze and then abuse us to their heart's content at our answers. This is a pure indication of the fact that rather than interaction it was plain cheap fun that they were aspiring to achieve. However, one must not make any assumptions about the intellectual levels of our seniors based on their actions during PDP. I realized within a couple of days that even the most unimpressive of them had a keen logical and analytical mental faculty that they could bring into play at a moments notice. The sad part is that they seldom did.

However a learned psychologist-type person (like me :D) can use his immense intellect to coax out stimulating conversations from hell-bent-to-have-fun people. The sad part is "It isn't about canning". It must be noted that the behavior of some of the most strong personalities in our batch during PDP was amazingly docile and submissive. For they realized the true outcome of being an obedient junior during the PDP. These are people now who are on friendly terms with large numbers of our senior batch and are reaping the benefits of their superior experience at IMT.

Coming back to the PDP, there were a few seniors who were good-natured and while having fun themselves made sure that the juniors had fun as well. These are people who now say " Stop calling me sir you idiot." Nice friendly people. High on "A" characteristic in the NEOAC five point personality assessment.

There were however a few of the senior batch that commanded respect with their intellect alone during the PDP's. One of them was a senior called Prashant Aneja who with his logical arguments forced me to admit that I was a "16 year old fake attention-seeking boy who reads superficial books for entertainment". That was my first experience of oral sex for he without any doubt screwed me with his words. I was suitably impressed, and the critic that I am, that is a superlative compliment. However Mr. Aneja now categorically ignores me for reasons that I am not at liberty to discuss yet.

The PDP also had an unforeseen effect. It gave me an opportunity to realize the psychology of some of my batchmates. Who being a random set would justify by induction those conclusions being affixed to the entire PGDM 10-12 batch of IMT-G.

Everyone here is an above average student with above average personality traits. As such almost everyone is used to being a leader at some point in his life before coming to IMT. The PDP induced in my friends (as almost all my batchmates are by now) the desire to grasp early opportunities to establish their leadership and popularity. Equally quick was the response of my other friends to collectively denounce these attempts.

What we fail to realize is that although it may not be a bad thing to wish to be a leader, it is infinitely stupid to force oneself into a position of imminence without the sanction of ones peers. A true leadership potential also includes the capability to accept another as ones leader if his claim is stronger than ones own. It must be kept in mind that people do not become leaders on their own. Rather a situation chooses a leader of its own accord. One must learn when to back off when a better contender appears at the scene.

I am now bored of all this psycho stuff and decide to sign off. There was a lot more that I wished to say but I will have to squeeze all that somehow into my further notes. A review tells me that this is still dung but I am getting better, aren't I???

:D

A NEW BEGINNING?????

Yet again I start blogging inspired by a friends blog hardeeppathak.blogspot.com and hope to keep it up this time(yet again). But perhaps this will indeed be a new beginning what with getting rid of Nag-fuc*ing-pur and entering IMT Ghaziabad, a premier b-school :P .

A pleasant change from nominal hostel life, life-on-campus holds infinite appeal to me. Be it the Wi-Fi, the odd hour sports or the round the clock eatables, I am simply loving it here. The faculty seems good and is at least knowledgable. The curriculum interests me till now and I can finally appreciate the value of long sleeping hours ( which I am deprived of currently).

But it is not just the campus that makes me so cheerful these days. It is the presence of my peers who are all at the same intellectual tranche (although they still do not approach me :P) that brings me joy. Its not like I have to think twice before asking someone a query or cracking a joke.

The crowd in general is cool and some of the girls are hot ;). However, this being my first large scale interaction with Delhi girls, I find their forwardness too frivolous for my liking. Delhiites in general are cognizable from a great distance like the smell of ammonia if there is a urinal nearby. But I must not digress or we will get into a Delhi vs Mumbai (shit vs hit) debate which I believe is a waste of time.

So I was talking IMT. The fact that so much stress is made on having fun really unnerves me sometimes. Indeed one of the characteristic comments by seniors in the PDP sessions (which i will make a small note on shortly) was " If u wanted to study, why tf did u come to IMT? " I must admit however that the multitude of events that have already been conducted have been fun to participate in or be an audience to.

Some of our seniors are really eye-catching. Sorry, that might seem like a disjoint statement but I couldnt secret away my feelings. HOT HOT HOT. The weather I mean.

Anyways, having overviewed this blog, I realise that my current writing is as seductive as compost and I must request all my readers (meaning the one person who types in the wrong url) to bear with me while I rejuvenate my writing skills. If you havent realized your error in typing the URL yet then maybe you can go back to my previous blogs and appreciate my writing skill. I am talented you know!

The Pak Issue

Since i have been born i have been under the impression that we have but one enemy in the real world-Pakistan. But am i to be judged as yet another prejudiced indian? That is precisely why my cousin Sheivani(ei???!!!!!) says i have these rigid stereotypes for everything. Time for self-rectification.

With new movies coming up empathizing with the present Paki scenario, we find that life across the LOC is not too different from ours. And i am sure there are thousands of those who are sympathetic with the Indian stance of non-agression. But dont our leaders today think that the situation is getting out of hand. Are we blind fools to stand quietly while the enemies of democracy try to disrupt our otherwise peaceful existence. The recent bomb blasts in Delhi shud have been an eyeopener for our slumbering government. But they seem to be too busy deciding an appropriate line of action. Too bad. We seem to have ideals that are a bit hard to live upto these days. We do not have natkhat Krishna or maryaada purushootam Ram to save us from evil this time.

What surprises me even more is how an internationally recognized government can openly provide covering fire to militants planning to cross into our holy ground (never assume that it is only the land of pakistan that is actually pak). And we have not even issued a strict official reprimand. If it had been the US in our stead, we cud have expected a major demolition mission underway by now. But we are not US, nor are we PAkistan. But then there must be something that we can do.

An engineer can do nothing but analyze facts logically. Why is the govt. of pak. so adamant about trying to invoke our ire? And why is Kashmir such an important issue? Coz frm what i have heard, the most beautiful regions of the kashmir region are in POK. The only reason that seems likely enough not to make u think i am crazy is that they think access to the Indian mainland will quicken their development. But then isnt the course of action they are following too risky? It is highly likely that one day the very land of pak. will be destroyed by a nuclear weapon that was let off just to satisfy our hurt egos. But, that is too extreme.

My job is naught but to ask questions. If i knew the answers my ambition wud have been to run this amazing nation. But i dont. So i hope some day our diplomats? will come across my blog and know what we ordinary indians feel. And as far as the land of Kashmir is concerned, there is no way that we can let go of it, for reasons of securiy as well as selfesteem, both of which are our right by birth. Those who want to merge into pak. can go for all we care. But they have no right to claim land that is as much mine as it is of any kashmiris. Not that i am anti-kashmiri. I am sure most of them are really as patriotic as iam . But pls, those of you who are not faithful to our beloved nation, buzz off( and i had other words in mind, but i am a good indian).

Too serious a post, but i find that it helps to be serious once in a while so that those who have seen only the jolly version of us indians shud know that we are capable of serious thought. But i was frustrated and needed to let off some steam. I am however feeling better already.

Hope to right a few more of these damned blogs, too much " mehnat" involved i tell u.

Ciao.

PS:-Damn, Stud now costs Fifty bucks. Still within grasp though ;).

Memories

I start with a wish to share my tale
Dont mind it,just skip it,if it gets too stale

Born in Ranchi, 11 years in Kolkata
I wish my hard disk were genuine Sata
Two glasses of milk and a pound of Atta
Everyday, is what describes my gatha.

I arrived at Mumbai in 1998
With a bag of clothes and an empty slate
I struggled to keep up with my opponents in debate
dont remember much of that at any rate.

So i continue my obsession to share my tale
Dont mind it, just skip it , if it gets too stale

The Boards were ok right uptil tenth
Till then i cud have gone to any length
To score over my peers and top them all
Proud, vain and walking tall.

But junior college was an experience new
Guys who could holler and girls who could mew
To be counted amongst the coolest, i offered in lieu
My ability and capability, my expectations due.

So in twelfth my academic record got screwed
Not iit, not nit, fuc*ing Priyadarshini dude
And my very personality, it got so lewd
In my anguish and grief, nerves stripped nude.

But in my defense, i made friends pretty soon
But each o' those bastar*s is more like a goon
I wonder sometimes whether they are a boon
Or a curse, a bitter potion offered in a spoon.

Three years down the line, i realize
I hate those who unnecessarily sympathize
Leave me be, I have ears and eyes
To judge them all, the earth and the skies.

U may think that I sound a bit too bitter
But my life right now is like a pile of litter
Still i enjoy each moment like a star cricketer
Most disagree, but i am a sharp hitter

I must stop writing and hereby conclude
But u shud know i love sleep and food
Frankly, i am out of rhymes that may be good
I think ill get back to doing what i should.

And thus i fulfil my wish to share my tale
Dont mind it, just skip it, if it gets too stale.

OOPS!!!TOO LATE NOW.

PS:-Stud still costs 40 bucks only