From Dusk, Till Dawn

This photograph known as "The Kiss" is famous as being among the classiest shots ever captured by a camera. It was taken on the eve of August 15,1945 after the Japanese surrender to American forces in World War 2, during the celebrations in the famous Times Square in New York city. It’s said that on that day every swabbie worth his bell-bottoms kissed every girl within reach. The pic shows 1 of those sailors and a nurse engaged in a moment of sheer ecstasy.
I love the natural, un-artificial beauty of it. The way her legs are positioned, with the grace of a ballerina, while his legs are firm and supportive. The way she seems to have completely submitted herself to the trustworthy embrace of his arms. The way those lips are locked, unperturbed by the presence of hundreds of prying eyes around them . “A picture can say more than a thousand words.” If the word ‘Passion’ was ever to be described by a picture, then this would be it. I’d been looking for an excuse to use this picture here for sometime, and I don’t think there can be a more apt time than Now.

The time has almost come to kiss another year goodbye. As has been true with almost all the previous years, this year too had it’s own share of ups and downs. Some dreams were fulfilled, some were not. Some really good friends were made, and some were lost. Some targets were achieved, others remain.

Yet whatever be the case, this is the time to look forward to new beginnings, new horizons, crossing new frontiers (maybe a new job ;) ).
This may/may not be my last post for this year, since I’m leaving for a well deserved vacation to Bombay and Goa tomorrow.(Though I would check for your posts). Whoa, I’ve been told Goa is among the top 5 destinations WORLDWIDE to celebrate the New Year’s! Moreover some really good friends have been real nice to forward me a lot of information on what to do and where to go. A Goan friend of mine has even promised to take me along to 1 of those exclusive ‘firang rave parties’ on Goan beaches. Let’s see how all this turns out !

So all you talented souls out there, it’s the time to let your hair down and boogie the nights away! I hope you all rejuvenate yourself and come back with a BANG next year! Here's wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Fantabulous New Year!!!
So till next year, Adios Amigos !!!

Shame

These are the days of the debauchery of the senses and the death of innocence.

I usually would have avoided writing about a depressing or somber topic specially in this festive season, but the recent news of the rape and murder of a woman that is rocking Bangalore has made it inevitable that I vent my ire on the current state of affairs, especially more so in this case since the victim happened to belong to the BPO branch of my very own organization.
Apparently, around 2 a.m. on Tuesday last week, this lady got a call on her cell from this driver, who told her he had come as a replacement for her regular cab, and who then drove her to an isolated place, raped her, then slit her throat and dumped her body in a nearby ditch, and fled the scene, only to be caught by the police after 2 days.
I shudder to think what would’ve gone through the mind of her husband, (she’d only been married for a few months).
And that’s the reason I hate the Human Right’s activists who’re against capital punishment. The sad truth is that such vile and disgusting oversexed men can be controlled only by fear and sheer terror. I beg your pardon if I’m being too graphic, but I totally support the punishment given under the Shariat law in Islamic countries for such heinous crimes, to chop off the very tool which was the root cause of the crime, and then keep the perpetrator alive in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.
As was expected, the whole organization is now shook up and rattled with allegations and counter allegations, with the police claiming that she might’ve been saved with the timely action of the travel desk staff, since the regular driver had informed them about her absence that night.
It’s tragic that it took such a ghastly incident for the company to wake up from it’s slumber and issue new safety guidelines for all people who might have to stay back beyond normal working hours, be it BPO or the Software employees.
Had this been the U.S., the victim’s family could’ve sued the a** of the organization. Anyways these MNC’s earn more than 10 times their employee’s salaries from the outsourced countries, and the least they can do is ensure their safety and security.
Sadly, nothing can change the harsh truth for her family members, who’ve lost a loved 1 forever.

Even on a broader scale, crimes against women are gradually increasing by the day. Bihar and UP have always remained the badlands,(no disrespect intended), but the recent crime surge in metros like Delhi and Bombay(and now Bangalore) reflects a disturbing trend.
Though we take pride in calling ourselves the 2nd fastest growing economy in Asia, all that growth is meaningless if it’s not accompanied with an equally effective growth in law enforcement and a swift and just judicial system.(Now that’s a distant dream)

The state of a nation can be judged by gauging the state of it’s women. – Jawaharlal Nehru

The Complete Man?

"Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential." – The Fountainhead

Nah, this is obviously not about the Raymond’s ad or discussing the finer points of Fountainhead. This is about my drive for the pursuit of perfection(?, or is it striving to lead a fuller, comprehensive life, whatever that is supposed to mean), for as long as I can remember.

When I was a kid, a very deep sense of right and wrong were drilled into my gullible mind. I was told to follow an existing code of conduct, by following which I was to have achieved perfect manhood (or adulthood or whatever) one day.
It was all pretty straightforward, until the notion of ‘perfection’ started encompassing more and more prerequisites. E.g. What was an early liking to Tintins and Enid Blytons, soon graduated to Grishams and Sheldons and now Lapierres, was NOT considered at that time to be a manly (or boyish) pursuit, at least by my granny. “Why don’t you stop reading this trash and go out and play with the other boys?”, she would often remark. Anyways, like most Indian boys, I too tried my hands at the only game that drives this nation crazy, and soon realized that I was not to be the next Kapil Dev. (He was the icon from my city Chandigarh in the early 90’s)
And so I started hunting for alternate areas for achievement, and soon joined Karate classes. By the time I’d cleared the White and Orange levels, I didn’t see myself following Jackie Chan’s footsteps either. The same fate awaited Swimming, Horse Riding, BallRoom dancing, Roller Skating, Sketching and God knows what not. I was wild with the passion to discover my hidden talent(If there was ever any). Yet I was just glad that I was experimenting with anything and everything under the sun.
A proper masculine physique had always held a special place in the typical North Indian male mindset ( especially so in my case since my dad happened to have won quite a few Bodybuilding championships in his college days), so whenever his friends would visit, I would always be grilled on when would I start flexing my muscles. So as soon as I reached the 11th standard, I started hitting the gym regularly, shuttling it with my coaching classes. And Yessir, I did manage to pump them up, Sallu style, though when I flunked my Math exam during the mid-terms that year, I was forced to renounce my ‘Schwarzeneggerism’ and start hitting some books instead.

The last and the most enticing bug that bit me during that period was that of modeling. Oh Cmon now, how many of you have not, at one point or another, stood in front of the mirror and wondered if you were the next Brad Pitt(Lol, or Angelina Jolie!), so stop giggling. Anyways I’m digressing. So this real fast buddy of mine who happened to be a cool dude as well as the son of a hotshot IGP, claimed to have some amazing contacts with the who’s who of Bombay’s Glam industry. So one fine day (12th Standard) he tells me he’s going to Bombay for 15 days to get his portfolio done and circulated to his contacts and modeling agencies, and I was invited to come along. When I asked my folks I was simply told that there would be thousands like me already struggling there, and anyways I was not to miss precious days of my coaching classes (entrance exams were drawing near). Now this point struck a note with me( I wasn’t too confident with my dusky looks anyways) and so I somewhat reluctantly agreed. That friend of mine went on to get shortlisted for the final 7 in Grasim Mr. India next year! (Though I have to admit he was a REAL hunk).

So am I disappointed at ending up as yet another engineer in this ocean of techies? Hell No, this is my bread and butter at least for now.

The quest for a fuller life has definitely slowed down now, though not extinct. There are still many things I feel I have to experience before I either burn out or become too occupied – learning French, the Tango, Bungee jumping, biking to Ladakh, Scuba diving, just to name a few.

And the Million Dollar question – Do I feel like a ‘Complete’ Man yet?
To tell you the truth – I couldn’t care less.


Jack of all trades, Master of none?
- A Master can be boring, at least I’m having some fun.
;-)

Keep Walking

So me'z back after a pretty long hiatus.
The truth is I’ve never had such a hectic period in my life as I had in these 2 months. 15 hour workdays for 2 weeks at a stretch are no jokes, yet when you come to know that all this hard work might not cause the least bit of change in either your appraisal ratings or your onsite chances(hence your remuneration), it does cause a little disappointment. To top it all, you’re supposedly given a paltry 100$ reward (!) for all your efforts while your colleagues who haven’t contributed 5 % of what you’ve done, are given 800$ just because they’re your so called ‘seniors’!
Duh, this world reeks of politics. Sometimes it’s disheartening to see the lengths to which some people would go to in order to serve their purpose. Ethics and morals seem to have ceased to exist anymore. I sometimes even wonder if these people have ever had something called conscience in them at any point of time, coz I bet if they did, they wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
But then sensibility demands that one takes it all as just another lesson of life, and as Johnnie Walker says…”Keep Walking”.

I’m reading Dan Brown’s ‘Angels and Demons’ this week, and I’ve been really taken aback by this 1 particular dialogue that takes place between the leading characters in the book, Robert Langdon (the main protagonist who is a Harvard professor of religious iconology) and Vittoria Vetra (a pretty Italian scientist).
Vittoria: Do you believe in God?
Langdon: A spiritual conundrum. Well, I want to believe. (The intellectual suspension of disbelief that was imperative if one were truly going to believe had always proved to be too big an obstacle for his academic mind)
Vittoria: So why don’t you?
Langdon: Having faith requires leaps of faith, cerebral acceptance of miracles- immaculate conceptions and divine interventions. And then there are the codes of conduct. The Bible, The Koran, Buddhist scripture… they all carry similar requirements – and similar penalties. They claim that if I don’t live by a specific code I will go to hell. I can’t imagine a God who would rule that way.
Vittoria: Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what Man says about God. I asked if you believe in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories….legends and history of man’s quest to understand his own need for meaning. I’m not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I’m asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you’re staring up at the work of God’s hand?

Langdon: Well, as a scientist and the daughter of a priest, what do you think of religion?
Vittoria: Religion is like a language or dress. We gravitate towards the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.


Hmmmm….now that’s surely some food for thought! I’ve always been fascinated with theological history myself and have always been perplexed at why do people have to kill each other over something that has a universally common goal….to acknowledge and thank the higher power that created us. Be it the persecution of early Christians by the Jews, or the bloody massacres of entire villages of Jews and Muslims by the Christian Crusaders who were encouraged by the Roman Catholic church for over 400 years, or the holy war called 'Jehad' started by followers of Muhammad which called for the slaying of all 'Qafirs' or Infidels as the holy duty of every devout Muslim, and which continues to this day, or be it the mindless killings of Muslims in Gujarat by Hindu fanatics justifying it as revenge for the Godhra massacre; all of them are equally deplorable barbaric acts of a few twisted minds who bring a bad name to their entire communities. These people obviously miss the bigger picture, that all of them have been created by the same higher power which can never endorse the destruction of one part of it's creation by another.

Science and Religion have always externally been like the opposite sides of the same coin, with 1 using rationale and reasoning as the basis of all theories, and the other relying on faith, legends and beliefs to try and explain the workings of this world. Yet, these 2 cornerstones of human understanding do often come at crossroads where the postulates of 1 vindicates those of the other.

Every major religion agrees to the basic law popularly known as Karma, - “As you sow, so shall you reap”, “What goes around, comes around” etc. etc.
Newton’s 3rd Law is eerily similar in it’s proclamation – “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

Even science fails to explain the cause of the “Big Bang”, the cosmic explosion out of a miniscule subatomic particle, out of which this entire universe is supposed to be made of. Who or what caused that explosion and what was there before it, remains unanswered.

“Let there be Light”

E = mc^2

Energy and Mass are interconvertible. - Einstein

Your body is transient, only the soul is permanent. - Ancient Hindu saying