imagine...

V-inu got Jispa a Rubik’s snake from his recent overseas trip. Quite a cute thing. I remember it being the rage while I was a kid. And obviously the first thing I ended up making with it was – you guessed right – the ball (or the truncated octahedron if you want to be scientific). It is impossible, not to make it once you lay your hands on it. And then onto hours and hours of pure pleasure. Making all sorts of funny stuff.
Should be fun for Jispa as well. Yesterday morning while she was it she made this.

Now you have to tell me what this is. You are obviously disqualified if you have read the little prince. Jispa hasn’t read it yet. Which makes me think that it is time for me to dig it out of somewhere from my pile. I clearly remember buying it and reading it around five years ago. It was truly quite a lovely story. It’s worth buying it as a spare copy even if I can’t find it within my pile. I was only introduced to the first chapter as a kid when I read it in my school English text book. I remember being completely fascinated with his drawing and his meeting of with the Prince.
This image will forever stick in my mind.

I can still feel the excitement that I felt when I first read that there something much more to the image. I think it made me think that all adults are stupid and they really can’t see what’s completely obvious. And that it need not be obvious for it to be pretty. Now that I think about, somewhere from the deep recess of my memory, a speck is standing out. I think I remember a time when I had gone to Ahmedabad to visit a cousin’s place. Somehow I remember raiding the bookshelf and reading the little prince there. I think I might have been in fourth or fifth standard or possibly younger. It’s all fuzzy now. But it’s funny how I remember the pleasure in reading it. Come to think of it, it’s made quite an impact on me.
So coming back to the answer to the drawing from little prince…

Now you will get the answer to Jispa’s creation. Only just.
It is a snake who has swallowed a tree stump.

The next one is my creation as an answer to Jispa’s creation.

As Jispa says, it is a snake that has a stone dropped on it. Here the inspiration as she says is Tom and Jerry. Well, from my little prince to her tom and jerry, life follows pop... pop??… pop… art?

Burn the negatives from your heart

I was in Dubai till the third standard and we moved into India when I came into the fourth. One of the fun things that we could do in India that we couldn’t do there was burst crackers. I remember mom and dad taking us to the main market for crackers in Mumbai, the Mohamed Ali Street. It had so many shops that convert themselves into cracker wholesalers for the Diwali season. Mom and Dad realised that we were in this respect at least pretty deprived. We hardly saw crackers and hardly ever got to burst anything more than the basic sparklers that some Indians had smuggled into Dubai. I wonder why someone would smuggle something that is essentially a fun thing at such bug risk into Dubai. I wonder. But did and we used to use them with great care and caution. Take the case of cracker loom (tadaphadi is another desi word). It is basically the cracker that makes a noise like a 1944 WW2 machine gun. Not that I have heard one, but from all the research that I have done watching those movies, I can tell you for sure. I set would have around 40 small crackers. We would dismantle them and use them one tick at a time. That really time consuming and fun.
So in Mumbai, we went berserk and I credit my parents for allowing us to go berserk at the cracker store. We bought sparklers, atom bombs (loud raasi bomb), tadaphadi, flower pots, and what not. My brother’s favourite was the snake. It was nothing but a small black pill on which you put your sparkler or matchstick. From it a long black ‘snake’ would come out. It would emit a horrible smoke and would forever scar the tiles. You could see tiles on the staircase of many buildings scarred thus. One black round mark, where the snake once burned. It was fun and still is but I have no clue why.
Soon we graduated to getting a diwali allowance to buy our fire crackers ourselves. We spent wisely on bombs, rockets and the lot. Carefully avoiding girlie stuff like sparklers and zammen chakris. Though my eternal favourite has always been the flower pot. I have no clue what fascination I have for it. But I remember it being the cracker of choice for me and I would spend a little more on buying the big special flower pot. I would keep it safely and preserve it. The Diwali bursting starts a week before Diwali and we would conserve our crackers to last the whole week. The piece d renaissance would be lit by me at the special moment at the peak of the diwali night. My night / festival was made.
The next day after Diwali was the traditional New Year’s day for us gujjus. And that meant going from cousin’s place to another wishing and greeting each other. It went on for a few years till some politics developed between cousins. One side of the cousins was a squabble over property which gave rise to sub texts in relationships and on the other side was a struggle for dominance. All in all it made for a bitter after taste. Soon enough, the family Diwali tradition changed to getting out of Mumbai during Diwali. If you are not there is no reason to visit them, wot say?
Now many years since … there is no tradition in our family to visit relatives on Diwali or new year day. So we too have followed the tradition of getting out of Mumbai for diwali. This is something that seems to have worked in our favour. Get out of this place. The noise and the pollution has significantly increased over the years making the space completely inhabitable. The one year I was year many years ago made me make up my mind of celebrating Diwali out side in the peace and quiet. When a teeming metropolis like decides to celebrate noise and pollution the only choice you have is to run.
But contrast to that is the Dusherra celebration that happens 20 days prior to Diwali. I love the focal point of the day, which is to make a huge effigy of thr ten headed demon king ravana and burn the hell out of him. This to was something that we were first introduced to while in India. Till then it was just a chapter of our social science text book.
The first one I saw was a huge figure five seven stories tall and full of crackers inside. Bursting it would take all of 30 minutes or more and give a great thrill to many of us. It was clearly one of the high points of childhood celebrations.
Now that Jispa has grown up a bit we tried the last couple of years to take her to Chowpatty and witness the big celebration there also. That too was good fun. For 50 bucks we got the VIP tickets at the RamLeela that was being staged there. And then the end point was the big effigy being burnt.
This time around a couple of months before I saw this kit being retailed at the book store. “make your own ravanna”. A kit that had color drawings and instructions to make your own three dimensional effigy. That was cool I though and bought the kit. I promised myself to make it and figure out if we could burn this ourselves. I missed the Dusherra deadline but I saw and remembered it on the night we were to burn it.
I removed the covers expecting to simply punch out the perforated stuff and assemble it in 20 minutes. How tough could it get.
To my chagrin I saw large sheets with color prints on them. No perforations. I had to cut them all. The prints were nice and detailed which meant even more time in cutting them. The hair, the moustache and the head gear and to add to it, Ravanna has ten heads. What a pain. Some of the stuff was to be cut across circles, which meant plenty of small cuts on the paper so that thy fold in a circle and lots of irritation. The hands had to be stuck to the body using glue, his skirt to the legs, his head to the neck and what not. Very very painful. Jasmine had joined me soon enough and both of us were figuring this big mammoth task. Poor Jispa who I thought would love to do it was quickly sidelined. We had to give her simple cutting work. After some time we realised that the glue wouldn’t be enough and in came in the artillery. The humble scotch tape and the even humbler stapler came in. a stick there a tuck here and a punch in there somewhere.
We had to abandon the project for the night to catch it the next morning. Jispa was unwell and was at home. We tried to take it up again and try to get the pieces to all add up. It was so frustrating and tiring. Jasmine remarked that ‘she is going to love to see this guy burn’. I concurred. It was a real pain putting it all together. I guess we just don’t understand what it is to make life easy for the customers. I mean the least was that they could give was pre-cuts or perforations. I don’t visualise anyone less than a 14 year old managing this. In fact I am planning to give this project to my new team in order to help them get a hang of what it means to have bad design, bad instructions and bad user experience.
Five hours and 15 man hours later the Ravanna was up. Finally standing. The big boy with all his ten heads and a menacing smile with a sword and a shield. There boy. All that sweat was worth it. Here the BIG FELLA is in all his glory.

Since Jispa was a bit unwell, the week passed by with the man remaining on top of our book case. Today we got the opportunity to burn the fella. We called in Jispa’s friend, bought 100 bucks of sparklers, and set the fellow on fire. Like all dad occasions, this too passed by without me really sitting back and enjoying it. I was busy making it stand, then setting it alight and then managing the kids so that they don’t get burnt. But it was fun any ways.
Here is he just before he was burnt.

The last bit was the clincher – Jasmine said “not bad eh? Its worth doing it the next time as well. Lets buy one and keep right away. I don’t think it will be in stock.”
I agree. Haha. After all that work, it did turn out quite a nice experience in the end. A sweet ending is just so important. With the Ravanna, we burnt all the ill will we had towards the guys who sold the dam thing. At the end we were left with sweet memories. I was telling Jasmine that "these things are the best projects. You spend time to make them and then you just have to burn them. You enjoy the process and then the thing also does not take up any space in the house. "

Jai Lankesh!

butterflies

Change is a constant yet we are scared of it. In b school, we had an organisational behaviour professor – Deosthali. Over smart guy. He was a good guy but he tried be over smart. He taught the first lecture and then he told us to form groups and gave us all one chapter to make a presentation. That way the portion is done. Smart ass. He did some over smart for the exams. I don’t remember what, but something he announced and the students just lost it. We staged a revolt.
In class there were two natural hotheads with natural ‘leadership’ abilities. One was yours truly and the other was a guy called suraj. He was from Delhi and made a big noise about how he was a great gift as he was from Doon school. Not too popular but he had a tough streak in him. I too was an ass with a large ego. Naturally we both did not get along and rarely spoke to each other. I think it was as a result of a silly altercation which I don’t even remember.
So this time Suraj took on the mantle and revolted. He got the students all roused up. But there was one hitch. Would I support him? I was the second hot head and he needed me to be there. I could easily move opinion the other way and he revolt would not be unanimous. It would have been seen as a one faction tirade or something.
These developments happened over the evening and I came to know of it the next day morning. We did not have internet or mobiles you see.
The bets thing was that I did not know of anything. Anything as in – I did not know that students looked up to me. I was seen as some kind of leader, or that my opinion counted. I was possibly to busy preening my mane or something. I knew I was a good speaker and in B schools you are known by your presentation skills, which I had in plenty. So I walk in to college to see a bunch of students rushing to me to explain things. They spoke about how Suraj has led the revolt and how he met the dean and blah blah. And today the dean has called all the students along with the prof in question. Ok. So? So will you support Suraj? Will you be there? They wanted to know.
Ok I hated Suraj but the answer to me was simple. Sure I will be there. I might have been an egoistical maniac but I was definitely not political. Thank god for small things. Having ang an ego is enough. Having a political bone on top would be disaster. Everybody was relieved. So many came up and thanked me for supporting the cause. Everybody seemed to know I hated Suraj. And that he hated me. But that was all superficial hate. It’s not like he was sworn enemy. Silly people.
So we led a mass unified revolt. I helped him gather the crowd and got the prof kicked out. People kept thanking me and I heard stories of how Suraj orchestrated the whole thing and was worried that I would not support it and he would get victimised if the uprising failed. Hah! I couldn’t even think that far. It was only after the incident I realised that I had some influence on the batch. I might have been too busy fighting my own insecurities to even notice.
But whats that got to do with change. That prof had taken one lecture at the start. He spoke about change. He spoke about how change is something we are all scared of. How the fear of the unknown is greater than the fear of the known. How the greatest scare is when you don’t know how your dad will react, will he slap you or scold you. If you know you will get a scolding or a slap its easier, but anticipating the shit is the toughest.
In 8th standard I wanted a cycle and something led to something and I got promised a cycle if I crack a certain percentage in class. I think it was 75%. Wow. So I did not really end up studying anymore, but I ended up praying more. Like all good religious boys I guess. This was the second unit test and not the final exams. We kept getting the papers. In the hindi lecture the prof walked in and gave out the hindi papers. Out of a 40 mark paper I saw my scores and my heart jumped out. It was a 11. THAT WAS A FAIL. Forget the 75%. I failed in the unit test. The only time in my life. I failed a test. Man. That was the biggest disaster in my history as a student. I was so shit scared. I tried to explain to the teacher about something in the paper that could get me more marks. H brushed me aside and did not want to even consider. This was the male prof from the heartland. They were always more irritating than the sweeter Mumbai female teachers. I couldn’t believe that he did not even consider that how I, a normally bright student could fail. It did not matter to him.
I think I cried and I cant even describe what I felt. I knew what was shit I would get at home. I reached home and sat in one corner all quiet. I started to hit my desk and study. Now that was the most abnormal thing in the world to do. That was a give away. Dad was at home. In some time I gathered courage to tell him. I still remember the moment when I spoke to him. He got so pissed. One lesson I learnt that when shit happens to your kid, think a bit before you scold. The kid is feeling like real shit in any case. I probably needed a hug more than I needed a scolding. That would have been equally effective.
Needless to add my cycle dreams went poof for the time being. And my prof was right. Waiting for the reaction is worse than the reaction. I think he also said – change causes stress. Man will change when the stress associated with the status quo is greater than the stress associated with change. I have remembered his words though I have been instrumental in kicking him out. Only if he decided to use his brains to teach us properly instead taking the short cut. I have tried to think about it all the time. I try to change and accept it and even look for it. Change is a constant but it is also an essential for growth. Growth is a given.
Right now I am looking at change in the face. I am moving to a new role. It is something I have pushed for and lobbied for. Yet when it happens, the butterflies get activated. Slowly they pop out of the pupa and make their presence felt. Over time I have learnt enough to control them, to understand them and to tackle them. But have I managed to eliminate them. Not a chance.

give me more

When you are doing what you love doing or if it excites you, then you can work for long without complaining. Yesterday my day started at 7 am when I left for my teaching stint at Lonavala. It’s a nice location to have a campus. They also have a nice bunch of students. This is the second guest lecture I am taking there. But they have this really stupid habit. They have the course mentor or the dean sitting in your session. Oh shit man. I don’t need the pressure of a 55 year old veteran sitting in and listening while I am teaching. The last time around there was no dug dug from the dean. The mentor who sat in this time was a bit more active.
I don’t have the expertise of a veteran and I don’t claim to be. But you cant really teach and be as fun as you really want to be in this case. The best way to get your students attention and be one of them is to be anti establishment. What’s the point of being anti establishment when you have establishment sitting in your midst. The students will clearly peck you with him and that’s not a rub off I want if I want to connect to the students. Someone asked something and the bugga ticked her off for asking something silly. HEY IT’S MY CLASS. Let her ask. But I had to diplomatically ward off the pain.
But it is shit that I don’t necessarily need in the class. I need the class to break into chaos, infighting and arguments. I engineer them if they don’t happen, I challenge them, scream and shout. All this hits a subdued level with Mr Establishment. And then comes lunch which I have to eat with more Mr. Establishments as opposed to have some with the students. There is so much to learn from them. I look forward to interacting with them on a longer and informal setting. That’s how one learns. That is one of the important by products of teaching. I hate the Brahmin table for lunch concept.
Then post lunch I drove back to Mumbai and went to attend a meeting for some brand launch. The trepidation that I was feeling for this brand for the last few weeks gave to a good night’s sleep. The assurance that we could crack the ad and the proposition relaxed me a great deal. Over a period of time I have moved into a good work3ethic with my scores being low on the procrastination level and high on the planned level. This one was a brand within the group that required me more as a consultant than as a direct guy in charge. This created many layers of approvals, and a labyrinth that I was not totally in control of. That caused me great stress. Now that that is well out of the way and the focus is on execution, I can breathe.
Yesterday I reached back home at 12 midnight. So I totally drove around 200 kms (4 hours in total), taught for three and a half hours, attended meetings, solved a near crisis and cracked a campaign. All in a days work. But I loved it and at the end my adrenaline was flowing so much that I couldn’t help noticing that before going to bed I didn’t feel tired a bit. When there is a purpose to your day, fatigue stays at bay. There are days when I have got tired doing far less. Far far less.

Jispa and me

Imagination

Jispa loves her silly bands. Among the others, this one is her favourite. Why… it represents two animals

Did you get the two? One way is the rabbit; the second is a penguin/duck kind of a bird.

Competition
Jispa did well in her swimming. She now got into the advanced class. There was a big trial and 6 kids were selected to progress. I think Jasmine was tense, or should I say eager. I was eager but to a lower level. Probably I was fooling my self by pretending to not care. I wanted her to make it but I did not want any pressure from me wanting it. not on myself and not on her. But I am so happy. The competitive batch trains for competitions and demands focus and dedication. This is something that I want her to learn at an early enough age. To focus well and learn well.
Here are the anxious mothers at the selection

Stunts
This is Jispa doing her stunts. She started climbing walls.

I clicked a snap and Jasmine got into the act to click from her camera. Very cool. I warned her that she would look silly if she got too excited. I know myself well enough to know that whenever I do something interesting and there is an audience watching, I invariably make a fool of myself. She started climbing and bang… she hit her nose against the pelmet of the door. Only now she is old enough to laugh at it. that’s my girl. She got hit hard but realised the fun of it!

Tables
I am taking this genetic thing too far. But I can’t but notice the similarities. Jispa now has math tables to do. So it’s me and her in the car learning tables. Four one sa four, four two sa eight.... I was really bad at it and I regretted it my whole life. But I only regretted it and did not do anything about it. for Jispa I am keen to get her to learn them. She got the 2,3,4 and 5 tables easy. Like me she got the 6 times table till 6X5 after which she fuddled. Same thing with 7. I still struggle with anything beyond 7X5. so with her I am learning them myself. Sure I can count fast enough to say them but the fact is that I count, while the magic is to know them by heart. She misses the identical ones that I miss 6X7, 6X9, 7X6, 7X8. These are the nasty ones. I don’t know why I miss them and why she misses them as well. Even what I struggle to a lesser extent – 6X3, she does the same. The only reason I know 6X3 is because I struggled with it and I have burned it into my head. I still need to think. It’s painful. Entrance exams later in life need one to get the tables right. I cant understand how I can get 99% in my math and still struggle with tables. Outside of tables math was my favourite table. Possible that was the only illogical thing that you have to learn by heart in an otherwise highly logical subject. But I keep at it everyday in the hope that it will make her do well. Its justa question of burning it in her head isn’t it

true charade

Am I as good as possibly my blog makes me out to be? While some readers probably felt so but the truth is known to me. I know the size and the placement of my warts. I may not know the ones that are behind my face, the ones that are known to others. If Johari windows are right, as I believe them to be then, the following is probably true, which I believe to be. I agree with what is being said.

"So maybe we feel the need to perform ourselves in some other way. And if you think that what goes up on people’s blogs is really the full content of their lives, of course, you’re quite wrong. It’s what they’re doing in the spotlight. It’s their turn. And this spotlight they can shine it on themselves and they can go in there and sort of dance about and create a persona for themselves. Of course it’s not the whole story." - Margaret Atwood. you can see the video of what she is talking below. This quote comes towards the end.



This blog is a persona. It is what I want to write about. It is what I want to see. Even if it is truthfully and smattered with critical introspection, it is at the end that – a persona. I don’t believe it to be anything more. It would give an insight only to what I would want to reveal / say. Only one of the Johari windows.

Sigh…