Working Title - Eliminating world senselessness: making college education work (please!)

A discussion document

Straight from hell's overworked kitchen: Jaadu ka Laafa. We can grin it. We can bear it.

The Sanju baba guy (hey I thought everyone called him that!) once said that foul mouthed and bad-vibes people need to be warmly hugged because, like the rest of us, they want appreciation too. To that thought we owe Jaadu ki Jhappi. I don't agree all the time with that. Some foul(er) mouthed people need to be tripped, called and directed to the next know-thy-neighbour group therapy class. Every warm hug given is time taken away from the important activity of slapping foul mouthed people. And so was born the Jaadu ka Laafa. JKL.

Definition: A swift full-face-of-the-hand slap placed tightly, forcefully, likely madly on as much surface area of receiving cheek as possible. I think I crossed the lines between "definition" and "technical description" there but I don't care. And yes all this is purely imaginary. Purely, 100%, home-grown imagination.

Who dispenses: Whoever is faster. Figures.

Who receives: Who had it coming for years. Really. Things got to such a pass. And of course, the slower one.

What's special: Its directly opposed in principle and ideology to Mohandas Karamchand's Gandhi's non-violence beliefs. It actively seeks cheek. Option to turn the other cheek is that of the slapee's. A singular slap should be ideologically sufficient, but more slaps will be more fun. Its also special because its totally a figment of my imagination and I can take it to any level of chutzpah I want. And the best part, you have the freedom to slap without prejudice.

Why: Oh, this should have come earlier in the scheme. The JKL is administered when you are pushed to limits of human endeavor in the field of tolerating totally inexplicable occurrences of

1. Rare Stupidity

1. One that is home-grown and not attributable to any incident, favorable or unfavorable, occurring during and around womb-stay, infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

2. Not to be confused with the exalted standards of Forrest Gump's Stupid-is-as-Stupid -does – that's good old-fashioned doltness and silliness (considered cute and rare in a good way); this is full-bodied defiance of available common sense.

3. This is best defined by the resulting symptom: rare stupidity is said to have occurred when upon someone's action or word, your eyes are spinning in involuntary and invisible circles, mostly inside your skull but sometimes, just dipping out. You are likely to gulp for air also.

4. Words we are looking for: random, bizarre, irrational, WTF, permafrost

5. Example statement: "People who keep their houses clean have very few friends" (fact, actually said, heard)

6. Type of JKL recommended: Instant, once, immediate exit, absolute memory erasure thereafter
   

2. Advice Hydration

1. So called because it is the opposite of dehydration, sort of. There is so much excess molecular-level advice-giving propensity in these bodies that the bodies are dying to give it away. I use dying in a scientific sense. Almost every opportunity not utilized to dispense advice pellets is construed by the pituitary gland as not good. They live because they can give it away. I mean advice.

2. Not to be confused with advice in general, which most people like receiving for some reason. This is more personal or what's-the-word-I-am-looking-for – person-specific? The person is intransigently linked to the cycle of advice giving and advice giving and advice giving, their nirvana wires totally messed up somewhere.

3. Portentously, heightened activity is observed around unmarried women with still enough teeth to have a go at the sacred institution, childless marriages, catered funeral arrangements, someone else's kitchen arrangements, choice of post graduation subject and international long distance calls.

4. Words we are looking for: Help, asphyxiating, compulsive, unsolicited, unwelcome, big polygonal proboscis

5. Example statement: "If you don't marry now, you will be lonely when you are old. Refer Aunt Cha-cha-chi." Who, by the way, by the way, is living it up! Advice hydration is special because rare stupidity is a necessary pre-condition for admission. And then you need to have that extra tashan.

6. Type of JKL recommended: Repeated soft assaults, such as to prevent the tongue molecules from regrouping to form words of advice.

3. Purple Pantese (act of being a purple underwear or a drama queen)

1. Behavior characterized by a strong wind of disproportionate, if not highly inappropriate, emotion, drama and kitsch last experienced in Shemaroo Video trailers in videotape format.

2. You know you have been purple panty-ized when you say, "ok, good, now pass me the muffin" or "ok, I did not have to see that," .

3. Rare stupidity is a necessary pre-condition of course, but purple pantese is specifically with a flair for drama.

4. Words we are looking for: Spasmodically painful, stomach-sickening, deafness and blindness-inducing

5. Examples:

   1. Shah Rukh Khan admirers whose DNA responds directly to any SRK criticism. They have restraint orders on them in some cases and are bombs with a loose-detonate reflex. There cannot be a tearless discussion on anything, not even SRK purported left chin cleft (there is not a thing in this world that is a left chin cleft).

   2. Office gripes (who are a subject of a dissertation I am right now pondering upon) who say -“I have always thought of you as my father, not my boss.” - what??!!!!, but you can’t prove it right???

   3. “I have never lied in my life – my value system does not allow it – my integrity is worth being on a postage stamp” – Oh, certainly, I appreciate it, but will you at least once pay for dinner this once??

   4. Any blatant, sniveling, two-bit, half-bit lies that you don’t need Superman’s X-ray vision to see through.
      

4. All auto rickshaw drivers, everywhere (all occurrences, without fail)
   

5. Make your own JKL: There can be other challenging conditions prompting the release of a JKL, but upon closely observing the last ten times I came close to the act, I think I have covered good ground here.
   

Accompanying risks and likely solutions: I know it's not politically correct to go, like all slappin' people and all. Its largely not good by way of retribution risk also. So I would say pick the targets well.

Used correctly and judiciously, the force of the JLT is immense. But hey, this is my imagination. I am not slapping any twits in real life. So I can be indiscriminate in my blog. I can, like, not stop ever. What a game of mental comeuppance. It wont make them go from your world. It will make them go, ever so fleetingly, from your mind.

Missing some big pictures makes for a very boring highway ride

Been visiting Peter’s blog often and two things stood out for me. His writing can be persuasive, without being laid on thick. When speaking of values, change, a better life-as-we-know-it, it is easy, almost expected, to fall into the pedantic trap. His blog is not like that, it is very real. Second, his response to cynical Joes and Janes taught me something. I thought silence was a good way to deal with active negativity, but there is something better. Dignified closure. “I understand you have your views. You could try and respect mine. Other than that, have a nice day.”

When talk veers to “helping self”, I have not found one single thing that has worked, charm-like, for me. There are several incremental improvements that one makes, as one goes about the business of living. But there has been no sharp change I would ascribe to a How-to book. Life is vicissitude itself, and snap-changes are few and far between compared to the continuous version-updations we clock.

Anyway, Peter’s style of neatly laying out his experiences in paragraphs appealed to me. Splicing life by paragraphs does make everything look like a précis writing exercise. I thought of writing up small things I have observed / experienced that worked out pleasantly (for me and others) from time to time. They don’t really fall into a very sharp taxonomy, more free falling.

1. One of the most under-rated joys in life is talking to children - as yourself and as themselves

Talk to children, and this here means you are not playing provider, giver, care-taker, explainer, teacher and responsibility-holder and even if you are, that’s all in the background. Person-to-person them. I am not a parent yet but I have known real joy with children. I have taken long walks with a nine-year old girl and our conversation has been equally poised between she listening me out and me hearing her out. I am not innately a Pied Piper with under-10s but this simple arrangement was working very, very well.

As soon as a child wants you to level with him / her, he / she will let you know. From that point on, just level. Show you are vulnerable, friendly and as eager to know things as they are. It will be a different world. Espouse this and for one reason alone – there are no better listeners than children. For all those who have not been parents, this is the most gorgeous preview you can have into that other thing which is absolutely not overrated: watching your child grow.

As if on cue, my iGoogle threw this out today “Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity and tolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.”

2. Let people finish sentences, listening can be a second step

It is difficult to listen-listen. No doubt about that. Our mind is drifting into daily could-have-beens and it is nary an easy task to refocus. But something needs to be done about the nimbleness with which we pre-empt the way people would like their sentences to end, and jump the gun. If on occasion, we do let them finish, our rejoinder is planted with the quickness, but alas not the continuum, of a relay-race cucumber. Hear out the way sentences end, and do away with the longing for one’s own voice. It does not have to recur with a vengeance every few seconds. It will be possible to live. When we start hearing the endings of more sentences, a few things in our life will sort themselves out.

3. Use humor, by all means, but first…

Humor has made great people God-like. It has also redeemed scumsters. Check any greatest quotations page. We all love ruthless humour till we are not in the business end of it. I can extol its virtues and concurrently say that there are other variants of humor which are decidedly not pointing you “directly to hell”. The plain-faced, seeking no-one but sparing no-thing, good laughs kind of humor. I have seen that this wonderfully charming brand of humor has one core element – self-deprecation. A sense of humour is nothing if not used well against oneself. If you can laugh at yourself, loud, full-throttled, then the world will be at your feet. Guaranteed that people bring their walls crashing down the minute someone adds unexpected humour. Make laughs and remember you laughed at yourself first.

4. Proven never to kill: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

No bottomless rice bowl of knowledge, beauty or other God given gifts can help anyone defy a natural law. For instance, gravity. I wish genuinely felt and extended mutual respect became a natural law.

We are an only roughish sum of our beliefs, intentions, feelings, world views, knowledge, absorptions and observations, and I am sure a triple hundred other X factors. With so much variability person to person, the only thing that we can assure every one is mutual respect. Respect that opinions will never be a single person’s dominion. Or that a single person’s opinion is just that – one person’s valid expression of his / her view. Accept it first, then respect it. Not the opinion specifically, but that this matrix will exist. No amount of name-calling or aggression can change that one fact. Our living is not a land-mine chequered with bombs waiting to go off at the slightest differences of opinion.

Extending respect, and of this there is no doubt, is a choice we make. It’s not a congenital ability or lack thereof. But so many times, it seems so. Our environment, upbringing and education shape how deep-seated “respecting” becomes, but beyond that, it is something most "of us" should be able to do. It's a pity if we don't.

5. 13 messed up expectations and nowhere to go: then turn

There will always be expectation-perception mismatches. And there is no easy way out - it will always be around people you care for, cared for, wanted to care for and thought had a good thing going. Till I discovered “Happy Corners to Turn”, I was a little disturbed by what I thought was, and here come the quote signs, "my reading of someone being insensitive, unaware and generally neutral to my sum total." Like an old school buddy you just cannot connect with. Like the autumning of a somewhat-great friendship. Like hard work unrewarded. Like love returned cold. It smacks of pain. And of course, on learning lesson 4, I respect that these mismatches are inevitable.

So I try and turn the corner before the horribles can come in. I tell my mind to think of all the good things - like open the floodgates of light - like the final scene of "Escape to Victory". And hopefully, within minutes, I have killed the horribles. But they are hydra-headed, so I need to keep trying harder. The mind has a staggering ability to do your will. Will it to stay away from pain and hurt. And at any rate, not seek it out. And it will. Startlingly, without any baggage.

As though on cue again, the funny quote on my gmail said today: “The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."







[Life]
[Happy]
[Change]
[Mutual respect]

Two years, lifetime, everything

Dear Juja

You know you died exactly two years back. I was not there but I knew. I had to go someplace and I knew when I would come back, you would nt be there.

Ten days before you died, you traveled on a train, your spirit vetoing your body, and I know the big-guy did it such that we could meet. These are exactly the kind of things that make you “believe”.

Nothing had changed. When you greeted me after long. It was just like it always is. In your eyes. I did not notice you could n’t move. I just knew we were saying “hello, I am so glad you are here.”. Then I did notice you could nt move. Mum was helping you out and you were looking pained at troubling her. Not pained, because you were in excruciating pain. But in pain because you thought you were troubling Ma for things you would do on your own otherwise. Mama still says she will owe you always.

And me? When I am alone, any long memory of you makes me very sad and quiet. The first two months after you were gone, I thought, I was, infact, not able to cope. I saw you in our regular haunts, by the grass, brushing past the bedspreads. I was hallucinating you were there. I did not know these things happened. My mind had surrendered to the wrenching pain in my gut. And that pain stayed. The deepest kind of pain, from the gut, and the one can make you cry so much you choke. Or make everything implode inside you, churn up your stomach and chest and intestines.

I did choke myself crying the day I heard you died. I used both hands to hold my stomach in, and put my back to the wall. And cried. Breathless and distraught, I felt I was exhausted. I kept telling myself you went away without eating. And that someone should give you something to eat up there. My head was spinning, my eyes felt cold and I just kept saying that. I held an old photograph of you, crushing it and extricating tears from the deepest reaches of my being. I did not know I could feel so much pointed pain. I did not know I loved you that much. These are exactly the kind of things that make you “believe.”

You were a dog. And somehow, I never noticed that. Besides being every bit the dog you were, you were extra sensational. You bit me more than you bit anyone else. No one was growled at more by you. And so many times, you stopped mid-bite. I don’t know if you guys could do that. But you did.

You loved everyone I loved, even if they took me away from you. You mildly snarled registering protest. And that was the last you would say on the subject. You did service to dignity.

When I was ill and cranky, you stood watch over me. You barked out to mom if you sensed I was uncomfortable. I could barely talk that one time. And I could not believe that you managed to fetch Mama. To this day, I wonder if I did tell you anything?

You so did not like Ma talking to me over you. Yet it was you who waited late into the evening for me to come back home. You waited upright and awake.

You stole things from my dresser. You left major teeth marks on them. You did not care that you were destroying property. You knew the exact hour of the day where you could come and bludgeon me with your head to take you out for a walk. Going out for a walk with you was like heaven hamburger. It was like removing the words agenda, purpose, objective, end from my life. It was like being in the doldrums, for a short while, by design.

If I raised my voice, it would ruffle you. I would at least tell you I need to be loud here. Somehow you were never convinced about there existing a sound basis for anyone screaming. You were just fretting when I was screaming. No explaining would do. Dogs don’t like their people screaming. Worry, anger, angst, grumpiness you could always handle. No screaming, we are dogs please.

You are so cool you could have knocked me down with a feather so many times. Your thank you was a tricky set of actions. Dig your nose into not-too-hard a surface and make sniff sounds. Not really sniff, but make the sniff sound. I remember that like my favorite teacher in kindergarten.

I thought I could never go through the gut-pulverizing, eye-freezing, insides-detonating experience again in my life, if I could help it. I could not make friends with a dog and see him/her die. Chances are if I keep a dog again, he/she would beat me to it again. My slam book entry under “greatest regret” had become “not being around when my dog died when I could.”

I know if I could help it, I would never go through that again. But I can’t help it. I erased my greatest regret slam book entry. There are no regrets. Your death is but small in the big, large, milky-way kind of time we had. It is but so small. You endured and guess what, I did too. In the weighing scale of things you can’t measure, you are an out and out 100 pound gorilla.

I will keep another dog. Goodbyes are not the end to anything. Today I know what I would give up if I was scared of goodbyes. I also know the more of you there are, the more fun we will have when I close my accounts here and join you somewhere at your rainbow bridge apartment.

Now all I need to do is live a life worthy of being called a dog’s life.

[Dog]
[Animal]
[Friendship]

Things I have lost and other things I have lost while doing nothing important

(Working title: Hindustan Leavers)

Spoiler warning: Not a self-help wise or spiritual growth-wise rich commentary, despite the whole “here come another 30 year old’s learnings on life” sound of it.

Office vacant
If there is a community on heaven and earth alike that evangelizes specializations, it must be the Greek / Roman Gods. There are Gods / Goddesses for the offices of corn, alcohol, wedding bliss, battleships, paper cuts, golden apples, shorter queues and shrubs. The affable pub in Harry Potter's first adventure, the three-headed cherub watching Hogwarts descent is almost a Greek God (love the sound of that). He was called Fluffy aptly, but, he borrows his stunning head-topography from his other world cousin who is at this present time guarding hell-gates. A fully itemized listing of these Gods/Goddesses/ other executives could run into a book. In fact, it is a book. Several books. But an indexed search could not get me the God/ Goddess/ Keeper of what I was looking for.

The God of Lost Things. I present myself for the offices of the earthly messenger of this said God/ Goddess. I can lose things everywhere. I have left symbolic bread-crumbs everywhere to demonstrate "I was here." Indian Railways, School libraries, Barista, Banks, Desk, Someone else's Desk, Someone else’s bathroom, Water Coolers, Taxis, Airports and what else is there. Losing is my thing.

I should take a bow. Break a leg.

Classic Seeta and Geeta

Walk into delicatessen with three pigs, figuratively. Walk out with three gips, figuratively. The point is you are short three figurative pigs. I stepped into above delicatessen with red bag. Red bag has Dr Spock book (the baby-poop-is-not-all-bad guy) and funny book on baby bloopers and some Calvin & Hobbes merchandize. Former two items were wrapped as gift items for a person. Walk out the other door and away with Red bag. Somehow reach destination (that much wits Iooks like I had). On a random hunch, check Bag. Bag has, ok, no kidding, "Spanish to English" dictionary. Red bag gets swapped, someone has his / her next baby shower gift ready and I think I got the worst deal of all. Seeing as how I already had a cheap "Learn Spanish in a day" book rotting with my other Neural Network books. And a parallel track is explaining to the giftee how this has come to pass. "Sorry I don't know how this happened. I need to be left alone for some time." And what about that other guy? He thinks someone actually stole his Spanglish dictionary. At least that’s worth some laughs.

No bank left behind

I have four bank accounts (and any maths whiz will tell me that is not a proxy measure of current wealth holdings). Right now, I have registered "Lost Password" requests with four of these banks. These passwords are safely encoded and mummified somewhere. No one will find them. I am probably staring at them now and don't know these are my passwords. What else can explain these 16 post-its at my desk? These are my passwords.

River does not run dry

There is no discrimination based on value. I have lost gold, money, wallets, phones, watches, blankets and debit cards. Have dropped

1. Gold jewels in office break-outs
2. Mobile phones in window displays of malls
3. Debit card, and hold the socks, in the ATM machine
4. Handbags in McDonalds. The whole handbag, the whole nine yards. Walk in with it. Walk out without it. (the 3 Pigs situation, minus the Spanish dictionary)
5. The old favorite is back. Mobile phones in gas cylinder units of longish cars.
6. A blanket, a shawl, a bed sheet, a woolen scarf (dhobi-list special) on the upper berth of an AC 3 tier coach of North Western Indian Railways
7. All kinds of food everywhere
8. All kinds of papers/ documents/ ID cards/ passports everywhere
9. Chargers, cables, wires, cords at the last place I used them. So everywhere. And sometimes I lose it in the same place twice.

Game, set, match, championship.

How do I fix this?
This last month I lost my mobile phone (this was the gas cylinder event). I got it back. That is the subject of another dramedy. In the most corny, Bollywood style possible, I retrieved it. For a day during my rescue-phone project I was (and the joke is on me, not these stalwarts)

1. Nirupa Roy (sickening appeal to conscience with excessive grovelling)
2. Pran (unbelievably hammy threats)
3. Prem Chopra (rambling threats with little meaning, focus on dialogue delivery)
4. AK Hangal (really tragic appeal to conscience with excessive grovelling)
5. A Sony Ericsson representative sending death threats to phone thieves

But most of these stories never have this providential LOST&FOUND conclusion. It’s LOST&….wait up, MORE WILL BE LOST.

My mom asks me to make a mental note every time I leave point A for point B to check if I got everything on me (this does not cover losing online passwords for obvious reasons). If my mental note-taking was so good, I would never be so mental about these things in the first place. It is also ironic coming from her because she is down some 19 tooth-brushes. Every year when we went home for vacations, she would leave her toothbrush behind. People would prophesy that Mom will leave her toothbrush behind, and ba-bing, she would.

My personal opinion on all the jokes / humor targeted at my losing things is that those are in extremely bad taste. They are not kind to people with Alzheimer’s and there are definitely not candy floss for me! But that’s just me. Here is one serious lunacy claim I have, and of course, I don’t want people laughing about it.

On the other hand, however – it’s not possible to say this with a straight face – “I am witlessly losing my things everywhere, sometimes same thing twice. I know I am cursed. But you are cruel to needle my misery with cruel jokes.” I tried but I can’t say this with a straight face.

You ask so have I lost my mind?
COULD YOU PLEASE, PLEASE NOT USE THAT WORD, A LITTLE SYMPATHY PLEASE?

Update Oct 30, 2007: Lost phone charger, ID badge (within a day of each other, dont let my pace disappoint anyone)