Since when I can remember, I have rebelled against being moulded by my surrounding. And for this reason, I never learnt to speak colloquial Tamil although I grew up in Chennai, I never stayed for long in the hostel when in college and I didn't become a software engineer after graduation. People at home always had a problem with what I chose to do or be, not because they understood my thought process, but because I didn't confirm with their notions of 'being normal'.

Of course, now I understand that everything evens out when your life is all about making and saving  money. Your hobbies, interests, pastimes and everything that YOU ever did is spoken of in past tense. And it is this past tense that is links you back to what you are. Because from the confines of like minded friends and smoke filled bachelor rooms, you are thrown into a world of managers, deadlines, responsbilities and everything that they can make you do while holding your job for ransom. That is the first do-or-die situation you encounter. And it is the first agent of change. 

But this phase of confusion for most slowly dies down. Because some day you are gonna have people under you. Some day you'll have people snarl at you, talk behind your back and curse you for making their life miserable. Some day you gonna hang your gloves, get married, have kids and all that. And by this time, the memories that link back to what you are no longer make sense. Because you are not what you were anymore. Suddenly, the 'you' has changed. Or in other words, life has changed you. 

Life has inevitably changed a lot since the days of college, and for that matter the first few months of work. For a long time, my ideas, fantasies, castles et al where intertwined with my age. But it is not so today. Many of the things I do now, because of where I have reached in the process of change, don't make sense. And when your actions seem redundant, and don't make sense anymore, you gotta move on. Moving on is something I have been very good at. 

But suddenly moving on doesn't sound easy. And this is because the castles I have built have their pillars on the ground. So it is not easy to move to new ground. Hell, it is not even easy to find new ground anymore.

Then there is the variable called 'growth'. As long as you are a student, growth happens pretty much by itself. Whether it is academics or otherwise, you are constantly learning and hence growing. But after graduation, growth suddenly stops being something that comes naturally to you. Growth becomes a matter of survival. You are forced to show growth. You are forced to prove it. Else there is someone else ready to replace you. But growth is good right? Yes, it is. As long as you are growing at your own pace, and in the direction you choose. How many can claim to have this built into their jobs? This is the second do-or-die situation that you encounter. The second agent of change. 

Right now what's happening to me is the exact opposite. Can't say that I lack oppurtunities to grow. But the means to the end everywhere else but here suddenly seems shallow. And the more I hold on to what I think makes more sense than being a number in some manager's excel sheet, the more I realise that this is not what I want. This is not what I want because I have always been averse to mediocrity. And mediocrity is what I am surrounded with. Yes, as long as you had the choice of chosing friends and as long as you had the luxury of getting away with being selective, you didn't mind the world. What happens when you no longer have this choice? This becomes the third agent of change. But I don't know what will this bring. 

So I thought having a job was only about making and spending money. So I thought that once I have money, I can own the entire Pink Floyd discography. So I thought with all the money I earn, I can be what I want to be, go where I want to go and do what I want to do. 

How ignorant of me.  No one told me that I have to be very worried about saving money. Of having to run from the taxman. Of having to travel on bad roads that never get repaired even though I sweat it out and pay for it. How can you sleep at night knowing that you are being robbed?

But I see a waking nation around me. Maybe the TV channels are doing it to increase their viewership, but I see more of these talk shows happening. People ask tough questions. Politicians are grilled by able interviewers. There is an awareness and it includes the fact that people are pissed. 

But i'm as guilty as you are. The gap between the rich and the poor widens, politicians take advantage of this and in the process the country is plundered. But we continue to live for personal ambitions. And what does that mean for me? It means that I will never have the satisfaction of paying my taxes. And as Infy turns 25, I cannot but wonder how long we are going live off the wealthy Americans and Europeans.

On a more micro level, what worries me is the overall gloom that surrounds me. On one hand, if I celebrate the economic high that we are currently riding, I feel guilty of turning a blind eye to dying tigers, corrupt politicians and rising pollution. On the other, when I start worrying about what I see around me, I fear missing out on my youth and the oppurtunities it brings. Which means, any way I look at it, unless I wear blinders or be terribly optimistic, I cannot escape a feeling of apprehension.

Such thoughts come to me often. But I move on with life. Like many, I silently hope that things would work out by themselves. I am weak in my optimisim, but I pray for a day when I can feel a sense of security and happiness even without my blinders on. 

The fact that I am writing about these two words is indicative of a certain progress I have made in my life. Whether I like it or not, the past one year or so has seen me participate in many of my company’s team building exercises. This includes Leadership workshops, Quality initivatives and a whole lot of other things. I think at this rate, I will be just one step short of conducting or paticipating in a course on hypnosis.

Well, what is my team? To be very direct, it consists of a majority of fools, and a minority of ‘good’ people who are sandwiched between layers of upper management optimism and political manoeuvres by people who have nothing better to do. I guess such things are true of most companies, so I have nothing new to say here. But on a personal front, I have been actually seeing the difference between proactive folks, and reactive ones (and unreactive ones but nothing new to say about them either).

Proactive is good. Reactive is bad. But what makes a person reactive? Is it a trait? Is it an attitude? Is it a cultivated habit? Or is it something education brings out in a person? Oh well, education actually doesn’t do any good for most people AFASIK, except for maybe it makes you hardworking when you are forward caste in a school full of OBCs and your dad is a salaried bloke in some private company. But I think hardwork is an inborn trait. Back to the P and R in question.

What I have observed is that proactiveness is an attitude. It can be cultivated, and it can very much be applied to everything else beyond work. Sometimes it is born out of necessity too. But most times, the people who try hard to potray themeselves as proactive do a very bad job of it. Also, proactiveness is not appreciated everywhere and by everyone. Being proactive always is bad too. Sometimes you got to wait and watch. This is where the wannabes fail. They don’t know when to shut up, coz they don’t know what they are doing in the first place. And then they kiss ass.

Another interesting thing I have noticed is that people don’t act proactively in the different roles they play. Some are very out going at work, but sloths at home. And the other way round. So this means that there is something which make these people tick. To find what makes people tick and get them going is an art. Some people just don’t tick right. They have their priorities wrong and can be pretty anal. You have to watch out for such people and not waste too much time on them, lest you ignore the people who’d really benefit. That is true people management.

In a team, you need both proactive and reactive people. In the team I belong to, there are very, very few proactive people and the rest are unreactive. This is a bad combination because there is some terrible imbalance here. The reactives ones are the ones who don’t wake up unless situation forces them to, and then scurry around setting things right. Reactive people are either lazy, or incapable of foresight. They don’t know how things could turn out, so they don’t know what to do before shit actually happens. Generally, such people have time only for themselves in a critical situation, because obviously they have not done any planning and have no crisis management system in place. Maybe it’s my past experience, but I would be glad if people are at least reactive, rather than dead wood. Also, if you are unreactive, please ask yourself if you have an attitude problem, if you have are not in the right job or if you were beaten up too many times as a kid.

So there it is. My thoughts on two kinds of people I have come across. Most companies don’t take pains to identify the proactive and the reactive. It’s usually managers who pick the former as close alies for obvious reasons. Maybe I’ll write about Quality sometime. Some good lessons learnt there, too.

Jim Morrison said that. There was a time when I saw him as a messiah, but now I think he was just a drunk fuck. Anyway, nevermind him. May his soul R.I.P. But today I saw death. It was just after crossing the intermediary ring road, as I was approaching the yet-to-be-inaguarated airport road flyover. Ahead of me, a little pomeranian was trying to cross the road and a big white Sumo ran over it. Sure, the dog was a little dumb, but just after it got run over, I passed by its side. It turned around in pain, as though crying for help, whining in a feeble voice. And I just moved on. It was tragic. A couple of cars behind me slowed down to avoid running over a dying mutt, and that’s all I saw in my rearview mirror before making a turn.

 It was only yesterday, when I was waiting near that very same Airport road junction, that I saw a street dog, all smart and integelligent, standing right in front of a traffic cop waiting for the traffic to stop so that it could cross. I was amused by the dog’s patience and  intellegince. Did it know that the traffic cop was the one who’d stop the traffic? It waited for saying a minute of two and then realised that the barrage of vehicles isn’t going to stop soon, so it just walked away to find something else to do.

When I was young, I used to feel very emotional at the sight of dying animals (or cut trees). I felt the same today, especially with the sight of the dying dog turning around, playing over and over again in my head. I was no angel. I just moved on.

Thanks to BPC, I finally managed to sell my Adorama Slinger bag for a good price. I am now contemplating on what next. I have a choice between the Lowepro Micro Trekker 100 and Lowepro Nova 2 AW. The former is a backpack, the later a shoulder bag, and has a rain cover which makes it ready for ‘All Weather’.

With a shoulder bag, I can quickly reach for my camera. But the load is not evenly distributed so carrying heavy lenses all day can get painful (not that I own heavy lenses….yet :p). I won’t face this problem if I go for the Micro Trekker, but then I would have have to go through some extra steps to take the camera out. But the good thing is that the Micro Trekker doesn’t look like a camera bag, so is less likely to be stolen. But then, it is not weather proof. Aaaaaaaargggggghhhh. Difficult choice. I need to sleep over it.

Update 

Looks like the Lowepro Mini Trekker AW Backpack is a good alternative, although a tad bit more expensive. 

Or have you become immune to this?

Yes, do you think? If yes, here are some thoughts of mine which have been simmering within since ages, but which are stronger than ever now:

• Do we Indians find our identity in our chalta hai attitude? Or for that matter in the swalpa adjust maadi attitude?
• Are we ready to accept that we have taken this attitude far too long? Do we realize that too much of it is not good for us, for our country and for the general future of our world (example: people talk about traffic congestions. But how many talk about the pollution?)
• Don’t we realize that we are stuck with the holier-than-thou attitude of the British Raj? We look down upon people who don’t have as much as we do. We look up to/envy who have more than we do. And more here applies to power and money.
• It is common these days to compare ourselves with developed countries and find solace in the fact that even they have a pretty fucked up society. They are fucked, we are fucked…everyone is fucked so who cares! But isn’t that just an escapist attitude?

Well, life goes on….but hey, I have answers to the above points myself!

• The chalta hai attitude is because of many complex reasons. Well, the reasons themselves aren’t complex, but the combinations and permituations in which they occur are pretty complex. For example, all Indians are born into a society which has arcane rituals. They teach you to think logically at school, but all around you see logic and rationality disregarded to the least. You can do nothing but shut your eyes, close your mouth and pretend to be deaf. As you grow, the stupidity around you also grows. And you soon began to ignore them. Yes, you have to learn to see 101 sights, and ignore 100 of them to stay sane through a typical day. Of course, all this is just one of the myriad reasons for the chalta hai attitude. At least, this is what I have realized looking at my own life.
• We have succeeded in creating the most opaque, foggy, complex and irrational system. Hangover British Raj? Yes. But more than that. Our administrators have chosen to keep it this way because they are power hungry. A transparent system takes away power from them and gives it to the common man. Hello? Have you lost your mind? Why would anyone allow such a thing? So we respect power. We respect money. Cause both are something you and I commonfolk cannot achieve without thinking like Shakuni.
• The West has always been a symbol of success to us. So we idolize the West. Now given all the problems we see around us, isn’t it easier to point at the West and say, “hey, nobody is perfect!”

Now, do you think………well, forget it

I wish I had a book that explains how to not get run over by people. If I had one, I would have given it to a few people I know. Of course, in the times we live in, you could sleep with the person whom you want work done if you are not big enought to run them down (being bisexual helps). I get this particular thought after reading "One night @ the Call Center", where Esha does just that.

Anyway, coming back to my point, I cringe when I see people who a) Wish to run over others b) Choose to get run over by species a. C’mon, there is enuff for everyone. Why dwell in the myth of scarcity and not move on from retards and hopeless situations? Why do you want to be either of the kind? Yea, now I am thinking of the character Shyam, from Chetan Bhagat’s book.

Luckily I have been quite a loner in life, and I have been able to see abundance, although lately I feel like the walls are closing in. Yes, when you start working for a fixed amount of money that you expect at the end of every month, scracity start creeping. The more the money, the more the scarcity of time, original thought and choice with people. The more the scarcity, the more the need to run over, or the chances of getting run over.

Time will tell where this leads to. But deep inside, I yearn to get back to a simple life.

There was this period in my life when a friend and I were dissecting life-patterns in great detail. Given the time and circumstances, this dissection was time better spent. Better than some inane things others with the same time and lack of anything else to do indulged in.

We started off by first identifying patterns. For this, we had to look at our own lives. It was like a discovery. Wisdom gained. Then we began naming the patterns. Naming helped identify not just our patterns, but patterns in others. And this pattern identifying also helped see through people. Some folks shallow and cheap. Some deep and profound. Some shallow and simple. Some deep and complicated. As time passed by, pattern-identifying came easily to us. And it was saddening to know how limited in thought, character and action people got.

But then, man is a pattern seeking animal. Sometimes and for some people, it is too much to leave things to chance. The loss of control can severly hamper people’s judgments. It is safe to know. And to measure is to know. Thats why we have interviews, reviews, arranged marriages and all that.

Great many things have been achieved by intense planners. And great many things have been achieved by happy-go-lucky souls. Seldom do these two kind of people understand the other, and this has been the crux of many a marital discord (which I want to avoid talking about). And somewhere along the way, I soon lost track of what actually was happening - was I only coming across people whom I could put into boxes for which I aleady had labels, or was I only looking at people through the limits of my measurement.

To put it simply, just after gaining knowledge of patterns and people, I stopped meeting interesting ones. Interesting = someone who could blow away my yardsticks. Someone who came as fresh, genuine and with a story I had not heard before.

I am begining to accept that it is not a coincidence that this happened after I joined work. Joined the software industry, in particular. Hell, let me rewind back and say I am not suprised this happened after moving to Bangalore.

Smug in this wisdom, I was taken by suprise when I met an old friend recently. He not just smashed my pattern of trusting a known devil over an unknown angel, he also showed me that there are things as sorrowful as losing a friend to the emptiness of an escapist attitude. Our frequency mismatch was quite high. I was hardened by the daily routine of project deadlines, status updates and 9-5 mental stiffness. He hadn’t known home, and only hostels for 5+2 years. Oh yes, I easily found a pattern for him too. But he exposed mine big time. And that had not happened since college.

I don’t want to patternify living things around me. Modern life, dull and drab as it is, doesn’t need any more forceful discolouration. But then, how can I take it as it comes?

I rather pick up my camera and go looking for something nice to shoot.