dekho - magar pyaar se

One of the reasons that I don’t often blog these days is that my mind seems to be in a complete state of neutrality. I am unable to have strong views or even give importance to my normally strong views. All my life I never had the problem of strong views. I have always been hot headed and relished the chance to express my views. I guess if one were to see my writing style at the start of writing this blog one would possibly see the change over the last few years of my life. I believe I have changed a lot. One of the things that I have become is a … a bit of a cynic? As in I don’t really mean it in a negative way. I can possibly appreciate and understand a lot of stuff that goes around… it’s nice to see a nice play or a good movie or a lovely painting but… it’s not the same unbridled joy that came along with it when I was much younger. When someone did something nice to me or spoke nicely or gave me some importance I would attach a greater deal of value to it. Now I am more… I would like to say circumspect rather than cynical.

I have learned the hard way and the cost of innocence that the world is round. It is interconnected. People do what they want to because of various different emotions, reasons and compulsions. I have realized that no one is doing things just for giving me joy. It gives them joy as well. And I am not being holier than thou here. Even I am party to the same fallacy. I thought I did things for others, selflessly, but I too have my own reasons for doing so. Hence now I see things differently. It does not mean that I don’t enjoy the good things in life. I love movies and I love good friends, especially when they are nice to me. There are so many friends who are genuine in their care for me and my family and I thank them, I appreciate them. Only thing is that I try not to expect a lot of joy to be served to me unilaterally. I hope I making sense, without offending too many people.

Let me rephrase my thoughts – life is nice, people are nice, everything is nice. But I must take care not to take it for granted. I must do my bit to get my share. I must grow up and not expect things to be served to me just because I served it to them. Every person is different. Recognize that. Understand that and love them for who they are and not what they do to you or why they do what they do to you.

Hehehe. I said what I thought was essentially the same thing but with a more positive twist on it. I should get into preaching. The first two paragraphs is what I tell myself when I am in a mood to talk to myself in absolute honesty. I try and be ridiculously blunt to myself. To the point of a scolding. But when I talk to others, I realize that they may not be ready for some real badly said honest feedback. I too hate negative feedback. So at least I hear it from myself rather than hear from others.

One wise man told me, not to look at God also too closely; you will notice even God has blemishes. That is so true. When hold people in high or even exalted status, invariably you try and come closer and then you see them with all their dark spots. And you are left disappointed and even bitter. Things are not what they seem to be. Sometimes as the big marketing guy in office giving all that gyan, or in college lecturing, I am expected to keep an artificially high image that people hold in their hearts of me. I can see it in many eyes or possibly I imagine them in many eyes. The pressure to be a great guy is too much. I am supposed to be a great guy in so many things, that I soon start believing that I am a great guy. Over the last couple of years I realized that I am not such a great guy after all. I need to work hard like everyone else on every issue, being a good dad, a good husband, a good boss, a good friend. Everything. And all the time. It’s tough. Especially when you know you are working hard. That when you expect something back, just because you are working hard. But from the opposite perspective – its simple – that how you are supposed to be – a good _____ (fill in your role).

So life is a really tough thing to live, if you are hard on yourself. The trick is in being hard but taking it all with salt. It is to attempt to live to your values and morals and know that everything is subjective. Jispa can love me just because I let her play with the iPad and hate me because I stuff the banana down her throat before her workout. That’s ok. I have to keep trying hard and be what I think I know what’s best at the time. The trick is not to push too much as what I think is best is transient. It is subject to change, all the time.

One of my role models I realized was my brother. I think my blog writing helped me realize that. A lot of what I do in many places is what I have seen my brother do. Though I would be at loathe admitting it but a lot of his gyan in some way has found itself into my life. One of things he said was I never interfere with other parents and their children. I don’t discipline them or anything. What they do with their child is their problem. I thought that was a pretty good gyan and I try to follow it, to some extent. Of course it becomes impossible to follow it entirely when you are with so many kids as we invariably are. But I saw my brother always follow it and he never interfered with my fights with Jispa. Recently we were in dehra dun at my sisters holiday home and they have a cute pup in their premise which is looked after by the servant as my sister is not often at Dehradun.  My brother has decided not to have kids and they have a dog instead. They take care of Angel as if it’s their child. Now seeing an untrained pup, my brother took it upon himself to train the pup. He spent his time disciplining the pup and explaining my sister and her husband on how to take care of it. At one point he seriously admonished them and the servant for not letting it sleep properly. My brother really scolded the caretaker. Now I was at the sidelines looking at this. How different does one behave when one is confronted with something close to one’s heart? Wasn’t interfering with the dog master relationship the same as interfering with the child parent relationship? Surely its different in many ways but its also the same in many ways.

That’s what I believe by being a little bit more circumspect. Reality is not what we see or perceive it to be. It changes, people change. You only believe what you see. There is so much you don’t see. And in all this what blog do I write – what I see or what I don’t see. All my blogs will start looking like this. This is what I see but there is so much I don’t see. I find it difficult to hold a strong opinion and that is critical to writing. But then that is also a bad excuse, there is still so many experiences to share. They may not be worth writing about in the long run but strung together they are what I have lived and tis blog is about what I have lived so that Jispa many moons later will know what I have lived. It will just be that – a chronicle not a tomb on greater gyan. So with that I hope to write more often. I hope I have admonished myself enough, destroyed myself ego and broke my wall of excuses. Atleast I am my biggest critic or cynic!

role model? look around

Once a friend came out from an interview and was talking about it. He said that he was asked a question on his role model. His answer ‘my father’ was dismissed as being boring. He then proceeded to narrate how he explained that actually, there are many role models, in all walks of life. If one person bats better, then he is role model for batting, if another presents well, then he would be my role model for presentation.
This was in college during my management when Shoppers Stop had come for summer interns. And the friend in question was the affable Cherian Varghese. God bless you Cherian. I don’t know weather he meant it or he was being sharp in an interview, but he gave me the wisdom that I have held for a long time.
Every one, everything can teach you a thing or two. No matter how bad they are, they still can teach you.
I have learnt to learn from everything and everyone. Everyone is good and look at the good side of it. It’s easy to be critical and find fault with probably anything. I have learnt that fault is a way of life and most of the time it is important for the fault to be there else the good will not be there as well. A simplistic example – a great painters vanity may be his driving force, another aggression might lead him to do great work but also is responsible for burning his team. Etc etc..

This is a video of Orhan Pamuk, 2006 Nobel winner in literature. A lot of us fail or have many failures. What do you look at? What do you look for?

emulate

On yesterday’s ramblings on rebel behavior and breaking norm, here is an email from one of my friends. She is petite French lady, must be around 25, doing her bit to know the world. Now that’s a role model for Jispa.
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“I'm going to try to make it short cause many things happened since the last emails we've exchanged!I left Istanbul after working for the World Water Council who was organizing the World Water forum (one evry 3 years) in Istanbul in March, as a communications consultant and had the greatest time of my life there, because of a crazy life with a group of funny friends from all around the world. And I managed to fall in love 2 weeks before leaving lol. His name is ----, his father is Turkish (but grandparents are Spanish and Russian), his mom Dutch. I flew to Paris and he was flying to Amsterdam 15minutes later, we left at the same time! A few days later I visited him and his family in Holland and he came back to Paris with me, flew to the USA a few days later because he studies ecology and permaculture and has some projects going on.A week later I flew to Monterrey (Mexico) where my brother is a student, it was just after the big story about the swine flu started. He was supposed to meet me in Cancun but given he was in the middle of the Californian desert without phone or difficult access to the internet, I couldn't reach him! And the swine flu was a lot exagerated by the media, they were talking about closing the borders with the US and I didn't know if he could make it and even if he booked a flight ticket, it was not sure it wouldn't get cancelled. But he made it and we met again in Cancun :)Then we travelled the whole Yucatan and Chiapas regions together, he was supposed to stay 2 weeks. But he postponed his return every week and finally stayed 7 weeks with me, until last Monday. We've done all the Central America by bus: Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, staying on average a week in each country, awesome experience! And on Monday I flew to Colombia where I am now and he flew to the US to get a certification in order to teach permaculture... So we'll see what happens.I'm going to Peru next, then Bolovia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Easter island, New Zeland, Australia etc etc. I'll be in India in February 2010 after Asia and to be honest I keep talking about my love for the country everyday!”
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Role models are important in our lives. I have firmly believed in the fact that monkey sees monkey does. A lot of what I have been able to shape my life has been thanks to the many role models I see around me. For me there is no concept of a singular role model. We learn multiple things from multiple people. I would have role models for different situations and different actions. There is inspiration from everywhere. From the taxi driver in the earlier blog to the this French lady. There is no dearth of it, only a limitation of our senses.

On inspiration here is one lovely article I read today in the Times Of India (TOI). I am not normally easily inspired by business leaders. I find them shallow, petty and stage managed. But I like the way this man has spoken, the way he is not bitter and his ability to joke on his past. Everyone has gone through tough times. I too have had my share I am sure I would have some to come. But today I can look back, laugh a bit, not be bitter and wish them well. I hope I can do so in the future as well. Normally newspapers and specially the TOI, are pretty crappy in their reporting and would rarely have gems within. Here is one such happy exception.
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‘Will we sleep on the streets now?’
Yesterday, we brought you an interview with JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon on finance and economics. Today, we bring you a story from his life that’s poignantly funny — and yet inspirational...
Vikas Singh TNN

JPMorgan Chase chairman Jamie Dimon’s life could be straight out of a Jeffrey Archer novel—he was hired out of Harvard B-school by a billionaire who became like a father to him before they parted ways; he went from being heir-apparent at the world’s largest financial services company to working at a smaller, struggling bank; a few years later, he returned from Chicago to New York in a blaze of glory and now heads America’s largest and most influential bank (with assets of about $2.3 trillion). Today, he is arguably the world’s most powerful banker (at least in the private sector). It’s an empowering tale in an era of job losses. Dimon’s dramatic falling out with Sandy Weill has passed into financial folklore. The two men had worked closely together for about 15 years before they took over Citigroup. Dimon was widely seen as Weill’s successor at Citi, but in 1998, Weill fired Dimon (speculation has it that Dimon passed Weill’s daughter over for a promotion). When TOI met Dimon in Mumbai, we couldn’t resist asking him about that episode. ‘‘Sandy told me you have to resign. So, I said ‘OK’. I called my wife and told her, ‘I have to tell you something, it isn’t a joke.’ I was concerned about my three daughters, who were then 12, 10 and 8. I didn’t want them to hear about it in school, or read it in the papers. I sat them down and said, ‘Girls, I want you to know I resigned...I was fired.’ ‘‘The youngest one said, ‘Dad, will we have to sleep on the streets now?’ The middle one asked, ‘Can I still go to college?’ And the eldest said, ‘Can I have your cellphone now, because you won’t be needing it?’’’ After we’d finished laughing, Dimon turned philosophical. ‘‘It was my net worth that was involved there, not my self-worth. I remained the same person that I was the minute before, and I was determined that my values and behaviour wouldn’t change. Of course, there were times when I was depressed. I would walk into a room and people would treat me like a leper. But often, while jogging in Central Park, I’d be asked, ‘Are you Jamie Dimon?’ and when I said yes, they’d pat me on my back and say ‘Yeah!’ as if I was Robin Hood. ‘‘Everyone has their ups and downs. Tell me one person you admire, not just in business, but in life, and you’ll find they had their share. Nelson Mandela walked out of prison after 27 years, magnanimous to his captors. You have to get up, brush yourself and move on.’’ Dimon moved on to Bank One in Chicago, turned it around, and merged it with JPMorgan in a deal that ended with him becoming chairman and CEO of JPMorgan. Then, in October 2006, he decided to pull out of sub-prime loans even as other banks bet huge amounts on them. The result: JPMorgan was the only bank with enough cash to acquire the ailing Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual when they were on the brink of collapse. Today, JPMorgan has surged far ahead of the crisis-ridden Citigroup. So, is revenge sweet? ‘‘No,’’ he said promptly. ‘‘I still have a lot of friends there and what happened was so hard on people. I could play a sport with you and want to beat the hell out of you. But if you break a leg or have a heart attack, I’ll take you to hospital. I truly want Citi to get better. Citi’s problems are bad for Citi, for the people there, for America, and not good for JPMorgan. Also, it’s a terrible mistake to measure yourself by someone else doing badly. I want us to grow for us. Like Mandela said, ‘If you spend your life on revenge, then you are beholden to the prior people.’ You haven’t moved on, you’re still responding to them.’’
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Well, while we are on stories let me give you another one. We stayed at this man’s place in Jilling. His name is Steve Lall. There are very few instances that a vacation can have an impact on your life. This is that one place. Steve has not let a road come up to his estate and has let the hill remain a pristine place, free of evils of development. An absolutely amazing place. With just three four cottages to stay spread across 50 or more acres on a hill in Kumaon, it is as quixotic as can get. Steve is a man who is so full of life and very open and welcoming. We truly felt like we were staying as his personal guest as opposed to plain tourists.
He is one man you would want to meet. A lot of people know him in Nainital region. He is everyone’s friend and everyone’s uncle. He has no hang-ups and a simple uncluttered approach to his life. He even pressed and clicked my back bone into place!
After I came back and raved about it to a few friends one friend sent a link he found about him. I reproduce the content. Source - http://www.flickr.com/photos/markdmartin/3476360167/.
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Squadron Leader Steve P. Lall Ace MiG 21 pilot, Rebel, Environmentalist, mountain biker and Tony Curtiss Look-alike.
Squadron Leader Steve Lall or as we call him in India “Uncle Steve” joined the Indian Air Force along with my old back in 1966. Not only were they course mates, there were entry mates at the time of enlisting and also fought the 1971 war together.Steve was a born pilot, he was amongst the first bunch of guys who took charge of the MiG 21 when our Air force got them and in no time he mastered that aircraft. Steve was a kick-ass pilot and was too good at what he did which was air combat maneuvering or “dog-fighting” during the days when air defence was a critical strategy. Steve always stood for what was right no matter which class, creed, stature, race and caste he backed. While he had admirers, he too had a bunch of guys who despised him because he was good and they tried their best to find an opportunity to screw him. No one could touch Steve when it came to flying, so the only way to get him out of their way was to create situations which made life hard for him.And with this, Steve turned into a rebel, stretching the law, defying rules and every time he broke a law, he made that a milestone as he went along.Steve, sometime in 1974 got into a situation in which he was court martialed from the air force and was made to leave. While the Air Force lost an outstanding pilot, this changed him. He took over his old man’s property called the Jilling Estate which more or less is two whole mountains in the Himalayas’, married a mountain girl and called the hills his home ever since.Steve over the years learnt and realized the meaning of life and that meant finding happiness, peace, solace and serenity in the little that he had and made that his world. The mountains made Steve a whole new man and made him realize what it meant to live. He took up biking, became a nature and wildlife conservationist and got into eco-tourism by subletting cottages in the estate to the adventurous. Today Steve owns 6 bikes, selectively gives his place up in the hills on rent, bikes across the whole of India and derives happiness at every single step of the way, or hairpin turn on the mountains.Steve and my old man were close and some of the stuff they did back in the old days I’d personally never ever think of trying even today.Some of the wacked out stuff that Steve did back in the day were:• Taking his dog Kanchi (a wire haired Dachund) up for a sortie in a Mig 21; he had Air Force Sergeant Unni make a special harness that strapped Kanchi to his G-suit and took her for 1 sortie below 10,000 ft and did a few high speed passes across the tower.• After a binging session in the Air Force Mess and Club, Steve and a few folks decided to drive a steam roller back home and during the way, decided to say a quick ‘hello’ to the station commanding officer. Steve, while being an outstanding pilot, miscalculated the turn ability of the steam roller and flattened the commanding officers front gate, lawn and porch.• Steve and my old man created a band in the air force and in the day, many a damsel swore that Steve looked like Tony Curtiss, my old man looked by Charles Bronson and another lad they had on the drums resembled Dean Martin. Steve was awesome with the Trumpet but being short-tempered, when he did not get the right note he wanted, he threw the German made trumpet on the floor and stamped it on the stage.• The station Steve was posted in came out with a rule that dogs were to be leashed always at the station(!) so Steve to defy the rule, took Kanchi his dog, on top of his Harley Davidson he had, wore his swimming trunks and rode his bike straight into the swimming pool. That pretty much ended the rule.(!!).If there’s anyone who at any age wants to learn and know the true meaning of life and that too with biking maintenance techniques thrown in, and aint that crazy in the mind to take up smoking weed at 35 or joining the sex oozing Osho Ashram, I recommend spending a week with Steve.To know more about an outstanding human being called Steve Lall, visit www.jilling.net
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More stuff about him and his paradise
http://www.hindu.com/mp/2008/01/07/stories/2008010750890400.htm
http://www.jilling.net/articles.html