Random Musings

The zeitgeist today is overflowing with violence. The mood of the world is kill and destroy. There is anger in every peace talk and violence in every protest.

The pacifists are talking about permanently silencing the nationalists and the warmongers are calling peacemakers terrorists.

We live in a world today where humans have more luxury and peace than they have ever had and ironically all we can think about is war. And it’s not just the content. It’s in every walk of life.

Take marketing for example. The word ‘campaign’, if you read, has its root in military parlance. And it is used in that context where your ‘Target’ group has to be ‘hit hard’ with a message. You may use carpet bombing or sniper strategies.  So marketing continues to approach people like in a war. Only this war is that of narrative. And like any other war, the people that are actually making it happen are the ones that belong to neither side. They are simply generating wealth by finding out the most impactful ways for lords to earn more money.  

When in doubt, earn money. That is the motto. It is very similar to the body’s tendency to accumulate fat for a rainy day. Blind insecurity making people run like moths to a light. Any light. Even a flame.

Money is a notional piece that has been created in the consensual reality so that things can be equated. How else would you draw a parallel between the value of a one sac of rice and one pair of shoes? Too many variables would be involved. The need of the receiver, the quality of the rice and the shoe and zillion other possibilities. Money in this case serves as a beautiful tool that helps bring it all on one page. Further years of civilization has made money more and more sophisticated. It has now reached a point where it is free of physical form. A lot like God. And in that spirit, it has also become more mysterious and more powerful. So much so that money in itself is enough.  

Art is dead. It is not art until it makes money and something is art when it makes money. The richer you are, the more beautiful you are, the more talented you are, the funnier you are. Art is democratized and as more people like something, more money an artist earns, and the more money an artist earns, the more he/she is liked by the people. This gets into a never ending spiral and what it results in is that everything gets valuated in terms of money.

Oh, he is a brilliant writer! – How much does he make? Oh, that film is gorgeous! Really? How much did it earn? With this, opinion becomes measurable and that measure too, is money. And it’s money because money represents value that people perceive in something. It’s a token of what people really want. But do people always know what is best for them as a group? The founding principle of democracy say yes, they do! But practically, we know, they don’t! This is because those adept at war of the narrative can easily persuade public opinion. And today, when someone has more money, by default he/she is seen as more successful and hence more aspirational and hence more like a role model.

May be this is because the population of humans has grown so much that those who control money and those who can afford to see money as a means to an end are an increasingly small fraction. So small now in comparison to the vast population that they practically don’t exist.

Art is now gibberish. It is beyond Kitsch. If it exists, it has drowned in the ocean of content now floating on the internet like thermocol pieces in the Arabian sea.

The Hare and the Tortoise

Once upon a time there was a hare called Mukesh and a tortoise called Nilesh. One day when both of them were drinking at a bar, Mukesh mocked Nilesh that he was so slow that he would never manage to get anywhere in life. Nilesh sipped his whisky slowly looked at Mukesh calmly and just chuckled disdainfully.

"I would go farther than you for sure!" he said. 

 Mukesh got furious. "Look at you!”  he said." "I challenge you. By the time you can put your glass to your lips, I would run to the bardoor and back here."

 Tortoise looked to the bardoor and said "huh... Kids race to the bar door. If you have the balls, try and race me in a real race!"

Mukesh thought it was a joke so he laughed his heart out. But Nilesh kept looking at him calmly. When Mukesh realised that Nilesh wasn't joking, he said... "You are serious?"

"Race of a life time" Nilesh said calmly. Mukesh said "Challenge accepted!!" "What would be the finsih line" asked Nilesh "You choose" Mukesh said. 

Nilesh set the finish line14 years away. Mukesh died after 13 years. about a hundred years later Nilesh walked by the stone where Mukesh was buried. He took one step ahead of it.  and said with a soft chuckle...

 "Look Mukesh, I won!" 

 

Moral: When you can choose your race, choose to your strengths. 

Random Gyaan

Magic is for naive people. If you want magic to happen to you, you must protect your naivety with all your heart.

Each moment we have spent leads us to be what we are in this moment. Had we spent any moment differently, we would be different people. So never regret your decisions. They have made you what you are and it couldn't have been any other way.

Could have, would have should have... Fuck That!

If you really really want something to happen, never focus on the million ways it won't happen but focus on the one possibility that it will and act accordingly. That's faith.

Never try to define how low you can stoop. Instead verbalize and define how high you can stretch. Once you define it, it won't be long before you reach it; both ways.

Doubt is the antonym of Confidence. If you want confidence in yourself, eliminate the realistic probable things that are causing the doubt and have faith fearlessly that you will manage the other thousand things that can go wrong, if they do.

from her to her baby

This too shall pass my sweet child,
like everything that hurts, this too shall heal.

With time your sorrow will bear sweet memories and as it passes you'll see a bit of me in your eyes

Love yourself then as you love me today and time will see us together again...

and the days pass by, like a nudist parade
You try to grab a sight with your diseased eye,
and they walk on, quick, indifferent, like the flow of life.

You stand in the balcony, thinking whether to jump
but you never do, and when you actually do
the doctors ask you, "What were you thinking?"

And you keep shrinking, as the days pass
and your body grows on, unaware of the mind
aware of life in it and of death pouring in at nights

The world around you seems to have it all figured out,

And what’s really scary is that it seems to have a plan

For you too.

Mirrors

If you've never seen an elephant in your life, not even a picture of it, and i had to explain to you what an elephant is, would you be able to understand what i was talking about?

The picture you'd be able to draw in your head would be based on your experiences or your imagination. Imagination, that is again restricted by your direct or indirect experience of real life. So till the day you actually see an elephant, you would have a very restricted idea of what an elephant looks like.

in other words, my description will have added nothing to your knowledge, except for triggering some of your past experiences and a wonderful process of joining experiences to make up something new, a process we often refer to as imagination.

the entire process of my explanation to you would be nothing but just a reflection of what you already know or of what lies in your consideration set for your imagination.

Extend this to the people you meet.

what are other people, then, if you are going to perceive through them, only those things that you either already know or you have the capacity to imagine?

every conversation you have with any other human being is nothing but a revelation of parts of yourself that you had not seen before. every other person you meet then, is nothing but a mirror that reflects a part of you.

First week at IMT G

So i come to IMT G, i'm thinking, hmm, well i have to make the most of my time here!
first week and i have this schedule in my hand. the schedule begins at 5 am with early morning Yoga and ends at 12 midnight with some closing presentations...
first nigh and at the end of the sessions, seniors start gathering like an ominous dark cloud (like the birds in the Hitchcock movie.) looks harmless at first, but then begins PDP. Personality Development Program, which is designed to make freshers at IMT understand their true value (understatement?/ overstatement?) and to get them used to the fact that they may never get to sleep again. ever.
Orientation in full formals and half the time i'm wondering, really, what is the function of this necktie hanging by my neck? and before i know it in the midst of questions from many curious souls during the sessions comes the time for PDP again and we line up like holocaust victims, one leg of the pants upto our knees to distinguish US from THEM.
before long we are explaining the exact reasons about why we want to do an MBA to complete strangers and finding out increasingly that we really don't know why. it's all civil till now but then suddenly we hear a guy come to us shout out loud 'mein ladkibaaz hoon IMT mein meri life barbaad hai!' (apt commentary on the sex ratio i must say, but man, what happened to all the dignity?)
Before we know it we are clowns in a play. shouting out the weirdest things we can think of and all the intellectuals, all the smart asses and all the shy little things are suddenly hurled into one category: Fools!
it works guys! i kinda enjoy this first day, but little do i know that there is no distinctions like 'day' as against 'night' in IMT. the next day begins before the last one ends with a rejuvenating yoga session where we understand the true meaning of 'Shavaasan'. you wish you were really dead, but you're not and the next aasan requires you to come up with your best impersonation of a lion. I'm not joking, you're a lion on a mattress, roaring to your left and roaring to your right. you conclude with a hearty laugh directed to yourself, and that's the beginning of another day. the next 120 or so odd hours are just one long day punctuated by 10 mins of shavaasan and roaring. at the end of this day, Insomnia has turned into insanity.

It’s absurd. I’m living in a Louis Bunuel movie.
When you haven’t slept for over 6 days, you can barely tell the ground from the sky. You become a walker in the centre of gigantic softball made of sky earth and other zombies that look like you. So I’m walking this soft ball of earth and I wake up in the sun. I mean literally burning in the sun in what was supposed to be an early morning Yoga session. And what do I hear?
Are my ears playing tricks on me or is it really a 14 year old guy singing boulevard of broken dreams on an even more broken microphone?
Boulevard of broken dreams from a 14 year old! only Bunuel knows if it's symbolic.

This is followed by thank you speeches in theth hindi.
Thank you speeches!! Thank you speeches as I am burning and all the life that flashes in front of my eyes is the last 6 days of bizarre neckties strangling me in the day and Personality Development at night when each of the 420 idiots was on the verge of insanity.
Welcome to Insomnia Management Technology, better known as IMT.