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I was recently given this advice by a person who hates his job and can NOT quit it (rolls eyes). That made me think of the times I have said this one line of ultimate wisdom to my friends. I think I owe them an explanation and I should define it for future readers.

First things first, I am sorry I said that to you. Now, ”love” in this context means different things depending on your current state. For an undergrad (the category most likely getting this line from me) its somewhere between “like” and “find interesting”. For someone in a sucky job, its simply “not hate”.

One thing people usually forget is that most processes are continuous and not absolute. Like the definition of “love” above. There is always a room to try something new and frankly trying new things is the only way I know of finding my interests.

You need to have super persistence. This is somewhat contrary to the point of continuous change above and thus interpreted as another snobby line we say. In my case, what it means is that every work has its ups and downs and usually after the initial rush of feeling great about the new thing in our life, we tend to loose interest and do not get rewarded so often. This curve gets steeper as you get better at something. The key is to judge if you do not like the work or are simply bored because of the lack of reward (There may be many other reasons but I hope you take the hint) If you are simply bored you should stick a little longer (hence persistence) but with it the ability to judge one’s chances of a positive outcome is also very necessary.

I could go on and on refining the definition but finally it’ll mean “Work on yourself to know what you can be good at and can keep doing for a long time”

I obviously have no memory of the day and, as you might have noticed, no intent of celebrating the day. I was rather annoyed at her excitement for the day. Now I see why she was so excited and it makes me feel so shallow to be thinking of just myself all this while. Its the day she did a huge level up in her life.

Happy mother’s day mumma…

But as the years went by and I “grew up”, the day started haunting me and now its fear of the awkward conversations and connections that will creep out of the blue. High school friends who were mean to me back then calling me up, ex-gfs who are on the verge of being full time stalker… Awkward silences after calls from relatives after saying the initial “happy birthday” asking questions without saying a word.

So this year I am taking control of things. 00:00 - 23:59 hours 13th October 2011, I’ll stay disconnected from everyone. No “friends”, no relatives. no internet. 24 hours of me in peace…

Perhaps I am the average gamer of a very different type of a game. MMO! Chat is the heart of these games perhaps. I would have quit EdgeWorld in like 2 days if it weren’t for the chat. (It still sucks with the censoring and all but thats content for another post perhaps) Its not the gameplay or anything essentially that makes this game different from mafia wars (I am not sure if they added it now, they hadnt when I quit playing it) Its the chat! The people to be more specific.

I see this strange move  in liking from the fast paced games to the slower ones which usually stretch long enough in time to let you play with work and other things and can be played all day long too if you want to. Your progress in the game hardly gets affected by these factors. Why is it engaging then? The answer is in the weirdos and people with same feathers you meet in the game! I have made a very long term relation with most of my alliance members and some global peeps too. Its really strange because we do not know each other outside of the game and yet feel so connected and tuned at a certain level… We cant see each other or even know if the other person is real, yet we can get so attached. Which brings me to 2 lessons of my life…

1. I was made to play MMOs only. The chat and slow paced games are a bliss for me
2. Its never the graphics or tech or gameplay in any game, its the people!

Uncle whom I haven’t met since I was 5: “This is your last year at college right?”
Me: “Nope! This year was my last year. Now I’m a free bird” (suspecting the next question already)
Uncle: “So, where have you been placed?”
Me : “Nowhere”
Uncle: in a sympathetic tone like I’ve lost an arm or something “Don’t worry beta, you’ll get one soon”
Me: “I do not want one yet”
Uncle: in an even more sympathetic tone “Its not a big deal, jobs are easy to find these days, I have a friend in XYZ co who can set you up”
I walk back into my room. Wanting to say “Grow some brains dude”. Not saying it as I know it is not yet medically possible. Or may be it is?

Is it just me or does everyone has to answer 1 such stupid question by friends, by relatives, by people whom I never knew, by someone who’s met me for the first time 2 minutes ago…

Career of an engineer in India, as the parent-generation of today sees it, comes in different packages for male candidates. For female candidates, this pretty much explains most of it.

Extra-Large-Indian-dream – B.tech in IIT/BITS, MBA in IIMs/any foreign univ (might be shitty as hell) or 12l+ p.a pay package
If you are on that track, you are golden. You are going to be sold in some 20-40 lakhs (may be crores if you are a south Indian) of dowry. You are the dream of every kid in your town/society.

Large-Indian-dream – B.tech in NITs and MBA in non-IIMs or just B.tech from IITs or a job with 8-12l p.a. pay package
If you are on this track, you are somewhere in the may-be-brilliant area. You can definitely sell for 2-10 lakhs. Kids will be in your awe till they get into their Higher secondary (11th and 12th), and then start thinking of you as a looser till they’ve screwed up their entrance exams and are getting into the management-quota or some state college.

Regular-Indian-dream – B.tech in non-NITs and an MBA or just B.tech from NITs or 5-10l p.a. pay package
You have little chance of doing anything in your life. You may sell for a lakh or two. May be just a motor bike in the dowry. Kids wont care about you, may be keep you as the one thing they do not want to become.

Regular-Indian-nightmare – B.tech from non-NITs and no MBA with a mass-recruit job
You will whine about your job(s) till your dying breath. Love marriage is a necessity for you… At least the Orissa government helps there with the 33% womens quota. (do not get me started with the name change to O-D-I-S-H-A)
From here on, kids wont know you exist. Your reference will only be brought up to scare them into mugging hard

Large-Indian-nightmare – Looking for a job
People will walk over you. You will be sympathized with. Some will try to fix up a job for you with their “acquaintances” in a company. The ones with a job will look like they are avoiding you while always denying it…

Extra-Large-Indian-nightmare – Not passed all papers and not looking for a job
Well, I define this category…

If you are feeling sorry for me right now, and are thinking of ways to help me out, I’m going to shove something up yours… DO NOT even try to do that to me.

You rank a college by the placement it offers, not by the education, teachers, research etc. You all knew they are a shit load of crap almost everywhere, didn’t you? Yet you pushed me into getting in a college and adding an Er. to my name. Or were you too ignorant? F*ck you guys, I’m never falling for that trap again. NEVER EVER again. Last I checked, its over a century since the Industrial revolution, can you please move on from that thinking now? Don’t even care to Google if you didn’t get the last sentence. Its too deep for the nut-brain of yours. Then there are those who get traumatized because of my having no job and can not believe it. Seriously? After all the blatant lies from your local MLA/MP and the religious delusions you carry around (and push on me), you find THIS hard to believe?

The truth is, I am trying to sort myself out. Do not go rolling your eyes, I wont even care to explain what and why because you can not wrap your head around the fact that someone might not want a job and people can take time to think of things they like and choose to do that for the rest of their lives and feel happy all the way…

</rant>

In a particular thread my friends teased Vicky Barik of being a “HOLY CHILD”. Well this has nothing to do with his religion / beliefs. Its the name of the school he went to before joining St. Vincent’s. I was also a student of HOLY CHILD. It was a small school with very few students in a class. I could then count the ones in my class on fingers.

I remember waking up really early and getting ready for school. I had absolutely no sense of time then (or now ;-)). Although I had learnt most of it, most of the times mumma would end up brushing my teeth or combing my hair, polishing my shoes or dressing me up. Laces were just damn difficult! I was fascinated and intimidated by them.

Then I remember Ansari, our rickshaw waala bhaiya. He was one smelly guy! I wonder if the present me would smell/stink more than him… He was a very happy person. He would talk to us about his life, race other rickshaw waalas on the way and crack all sorts of jokes with us. Those rides were perhaps one of the most fun times of my daily routine. I have not heard from him in years. IIRC he promoted himself to become a trolley waala soon after we left the school.

We used to wear red pull overs to school and I loved pulling out the sweater pills. In almost all winter classes when the teacher would be busy teaching, I would be busy pulling out little strands or pills from the sweater. Perhaps I always had my own little world in my mind in which everything had a completely different priority order from the real world which changed very frequently. As Sir Ken Robinson puts it “I think now they’d say its ADHD…” “but ADHD hadn’t been invented. It wasn’t in an available condition. People weren’t aware they could have that”

I remember a test in which we had to write some of the alphabets. I could not figure out that Q was the letter after P. I think I wrote i as Piyush definitely has an i after the P. Perhaps I wasn’t even aware of the existence of an alphabetical order, let alone the possibility of one alphabet preceding another…

I faced my first bully, Sonali Khatua in HOLY CHILD too. What’s worse is that she was my next door neighbor and was the grand daughter of the house owner (we lived in a rented house). Her mother perhaps deserves a separate post for herself. On one occasion, Sona(as we affectionately called her) had scratched my cheeks in school and I could not do enough damage (yeah I am a wuss from birth). When I reached home, my cheeks were bleeding and her mother was on our doorstep howling on me and my mum accusing me of having beaten her up. I would go as far as calling this as a perfect mini-preview of Indian mother child relation ;-). Mumma was perhaps the reason I never actually learned fighting (read: became a wuss). She’d always stop me and discourage fighting. But on this occasion it was too much for her too. Like a typical hindi movie hero, she was swayed by the blood and fought with her mother for me. That was perhaps one of the first times I remember having felt proud and protected.

I think the last clear memory I have from HOLY CHILD is of the day we passed out. I had somehow managed to stand second in class. I had no idea what being second in a class or what competition meant. I hadn’t actually realized anything worth noticing had happened on that date till I saw my mumma.
I gave the thing wrapped in a yellow paper to her. It was my prize(a katori, lol). That was the first time I remember realizing that she could bring up an emotion other than the frown on her face for me. I had no idea if it was good or bad. I could barely make sense of facial emotions other than those of anger (which were pretty obvious because of the accompanied beating or yelling).
That little katori had caused a smile on her face. It took me a few more years to understand that it was me who had done the magic…
Looking back I think it was one of the most beautiful times of my childhood with her. That is what you get when you go to a low-competition few-students school ;-)

Ashish bhaiya's second daughter :)

Yesterday morning at 7:55 a.m., while I was having a nightmare, a new little member joined our family. She looks a lot like Aakriti (Ashish bhaiya’s first daugher)