Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Tests time takes


The day has just begun. The birds chirping and flying in groups are making exquisite, amazing formations with an orange rising sun making for a spectacular background. Plus the cool and wavy breeze is leaving nothing to chance in contributing its part to make the entire setup breathtaking. On some other day, his mind would have started pondering over the observational and artistic understanding these birds have and the even more astonishing communication and coordination these beautiful birds put up with the meagre quack-quack or crow-crow uttering abilities they are provided with. But today he is far more absorbed in the ugly affairs of his life, to give any thought to this lovely alternate reality. Such is the maze of life, that these are the only days he is getting up early enough to witness these picturesque, cheering, heartening views , and he has no heart left to savour the cheer.


He had been a lazy fellow throughout. As a kid everyday in the morning his father would wake him up to get him ready before his school bus arrived. His dad would pack his schoolbag according to the day's study schedule and get his other affairs in order like polishing his shoes, putting his I-card in his shirt's pocket and his mother would prepare a delicious lunch for him, something new everyday, while he would just hurry himself through the bathing and other morning activities in the super-squeezed time left before him. Harjeet was almost in his third year of engineering now, but these things had hardly changed. 'Some things never change', he would jovially say now and then to his friends telling them about his morning routine.


A certain Susheel was the ultimate fan of the tasty food prepared by Harjeet's mother, and happened to be his best friend as well. Day after day, he would lick his tongue over his lips in delight at the sight of his lunch and eventually grab the lion's share of his lunch which had many ardent admirers in the class. He would make up for Harjeet's appetite by offering him his hostel mess' not-good-at-all food which he would have missed anyway. Why Harjeet would gleefully accept this trade policy, was way beyond Susheel's understanding. But he wouldn't push for knowing this too, apprehensive that Harjeet's realisation of common-sense would imply his starvation. Perhaps Susheel needed the sensitivity of understanding what bestfriendship was, apart from the common sense - something he thought he was so rich in, maybe rightly so.


Its summer vacations in the college and these two guys have been out of touch. Surprising it seems considering the two are best of friends, but not so much considering the distance between their residences and Susheel's reluctance towards telephonic conversations. Infact 'out of sight, out of mind' is what he had always been like. Yesterday when Susheel came somewhere near Harjeet's house in connection with some child welfare event he was associated with, he rang Harjeet up. Well frankly, Susheel's primary motivation behind calling and meeting him was bragging about the kind of gracious stuff he was associated with.


"Hello! hey, Harjeet I am here at district centre, how far is it from your house" he roared loudly, the screeching sound of buses and cars in the backdrop making for difficult hearing.


"Just five minutes", Harjeet replied.


"Great, then just come over, I am here at district centre"


"Okay, I'll see if I find time", Harjeet said.


Susheel cut the phonecall abruptly, annoyed by Harjeet's reluctant attitude towards meeting up, that too when he had already travelled some twenty-five kilometres in the scorching sun while Harjeet just had to stroll for five minutes outside his house in order to meet him.


"Who the hell wants to meet him anyway"

"I wont even pass a smile at his sight, he deserves a royal ignore"


These were the thoughts swinging in his mind after the phonecall, an egoist's ego had just been hurt.


The day went on, and Susheel did all sort of work this day. Secretly he was ecstatic about the kind of good deeds he's been doing these days - child welfare and all. And when the day's work was over started leaving for his home, chin up, head held high, shoulders broadened - all signifying his new found pride in his very existence. Standing at the bus stop, he was thinking how bogus some friendships can be ,thinking about Harjeet; and had just begun musing about how he'd narrate on gtalk the day's events and his heroics to a new friend after reaching home, when his mobile phone rang.


"I am outside McDonalds, where are you", Harjeet it was.


"Well I was just about to leave in fact. Anyway, since you've come, ok I am coming, McDonalds right ?", said Susheel, giving himself airs.


"Okay, I am waiting."


Susheel sauntered slowly back to the district centre, his intention being to keep Harjeet waiting for a longer time.


He was a little put off with Harjeet's reluctance in the afternoon but at the very sight of his friend a smile beamed over Susheel's face as if all of that anger vanished instantly into the hot air around, and he started humming in parody spontaneously "Happyian di Happiyan di gal ban gayi" [Mr. Happy grabs a bounty, oh yeah!] as he'd usually tease this Sikh friend of his by calling him Mr.Happy Singh and blending in this nickname in some weird punjabi song he'd little comprehend himself. And he was surprised himself that his anger had disappeared automatically.


Susheel was back to normal, to sum up. And kept cracking jokes and passing funny comments on ambling lovebirds around and every other thing. Harjeet would usually appreciate his knack of making everything look funny and laughed heartily at his jokes, but was unusually silent today. As if he understood no context, he understood no laughter.


Quick to gauge this, Susheel remarked ," aaj tere totey kyun udey hue hain bhai" [Why are you out of your wits, dude?]


"kuch nahi yaar" [Nothing, mate.]


"abe tere chehre pe to baara baje hue hain, bhai bata de kuch hai to", Susheel stuck on. [Then why's your face a stuffed astray today .. don't make a fuss .. just bring it up]


"aise kyun bol raha hai, tujhe pata to hoga". [Why do you act oblivious, you must be knowing everything.]


This was enough to sense something really undesirable had occurred, Susheel hastened to ask, " please tell me yaar,I don’t know".


"My Dad expired a week ago", Harjeet said, the strong boy's lips and nostrils vibrating with agony, with painful memories. Just the other day he was telling Susheel that the only reason he wants to strech the limits, work hard and crack the CAT and enter the IIMs was because he wanted to make his dad proud of him, because he wanted to give his Dad every happiness in the world.


And the world moved full circle for Susheel in these last two seconds. Gasping for breath, struggling to take in this hell of a fact, his throat dried as if it had never tasted water. Speechless, out-of-wits, out-of-words, didn’t know what to say, how to console, and if all that is even meaningful now in the first place. Ashamed of the things he'd been thinking about his friend's reluctance. Ashamed that he didn’t even know about it when almost every little known, hi-hello acquaintance from the class had already paid him an assuaging visit in his difficult time. Ashamed that he wasn’t there for Harjeet when it mattered most. Ashamed that half an hour ago he was mulling over why Harjeet wasn’t there for him.


In five-ten minutes, Susheel came to terms with what had initially been a horrible shock. Gathered courage to console, extend help and enquire about the how? and now? of things. The sun set, the days events far forgotten and they left the place to Harjeet's home. Susheel sat on a stool, in two minutes Harjeet's sister came in with a glass of water, and then Harjeet's mother with a glass of lassi. Spellbound with their hospitality at this hour of hardship, he asked, "Aunty, what's the need, you need not take the burden, just sit down, please"


Harjeet's mother, who had maintained her calm could hold her tears no more and broke down, " Had his father been here he'd have left no stone unturned to make you feel special, whenever any of Harjeet's friend came home he'd just pace here and there just trying to offer whatever nice thing he could, we've got to carry that forward. But we can't be like him" and a tear just dropped and ran across that serene, motherly face.


Susheel tried his best to calm things up, his own heartbeat at its all time high with the surge of emotions. And Harjeet all this while, remained quiet as anything. Almost non-living. Then he brought himself up, calmed his mom, and some twenty minutes of memory-living coloured the conversation that ensued, in which the boy and his mom strived to live those happy moments again, trying to make sure they don't let these moments slip this time. Susheel was overwhelmed by the simultaneous utility and futility, the simultaneous everlasting and shortlived traits of this exercise.


Some half an hour had passed and Susheel's mother was getting worked up since she didn’t expect him to be this late. She had called him up meanwhile a couple of times and told him rather firmly to get back soon, since they had to leave for a cousin's birthday party. Susheel was far from interested in attending the party, but also wanted to avoid the conflicts at home that could arise from his absence, he had the task of not letting his mother get too worked up; she is a hypertension patient.


"Aunty, I guess I'll take your leave" he said.


" abhi nahi , kuch kha ke jaana, dal roti hi hai kuch aur thodi banana hai, koi nahi khaa ke jaana, koi ghar pe rehta hai to phir aasaan rehta hai, akele to bahot kamzor ho jaate hain", she said in a soft tone dressed in affection. [Not so early, at least have your dinner first. You know, when there's someone here, we're still okay. Alone, it gets unbearable, really.]


" please aunty abhi nahi phir kabhi", he mumbled. [Please, Aunt, some other time.]


" achha, hamare yahan nahi kha ke jaoge" [Oh I see, you won't eat at our condemned place!]


Susheel uttered, '' nahi nahi , aaoonga main phir , aapke haath kaa hi to khaata raha hoon do saal se roz, itne chaav se" [No, no! It's the food lovingly prepared by you that I have been nourishing on full steam, for the last two years. I'll be back.. ] and rushed his way quickly out of the house before he would too give in to the emotions, and his characteristic loud weeping took over their deeper, prolonged tears.
.

Apni Marzi Se Kahan Apne Safar Ke Ham Hain
rukh havaon ka jidhar ka hai udhar ke ham hain

pahale har chiz thi apni magar ab lagta hai
apne hi ghar mein kisi doosre ghar ke ham hain

waqt ke saath hai mitti ka safar sadiyon tak
kis ko maloom kahan ke hain kidhar ke ham hain

chalte rahte hain ke chalna hai musafir ka naseeb
sochte rahte hain ke kis raahguzar ke ham hain

gintiyon mein hi gine jate hain har daur mein ham
har qalamkar ke benam khabar ke ham hain


- Nida Fazli

Sunday, June 10, 2007

friendship harvest

Wrote this when I was 14, for a little competition at school:



If in whom you invest,

Your time and passion,

To harbour a bond.

In whom you confide,

Of whom you're so fond.


He turns a blind eye,

As if your woes are just a lie.

And turns a deaf ear,

When you most want him to bear.


Bear with your boring qualms,

Bear with your sorrow.

And he yawns, bored,

And wryly says "tomorrow"


You pass it all okay, but alone,

And good times do come back.

With good times back he comes again,

To say 'we're still jill & jack'.


How can he be so cool again,

How do you hide the remorse,

When your heart isn't a fine jelly,

But has doubts, thick and coarse.


If it was just all about,

Having a good time and some fun,

Wouldn't you rather open the fridge

And bite into harvest-gold-ka-bun.



p.s. : Its so yummy tasty, the bun.

And yes, this one is a poem.

WB Yeats ka naaati.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Errrr…


Hmmm, the net was taken out the other day, and today it is back, again for reasons beyond the scope of this blog. It feels a little shameless writing this but has to be written anyway. So all the pains I took and some of the things I wrote in the previous post, as it happens usually, turn out to be meaningless, inconsequential, unadulterated bullshit.


Apart from that, spending a lot of time outside the confines of your home, in this deadly heat can be real bad for your physical health and your mood. And dermicool will always be in business. In all summers I mean, it works.


And I have been feeling a little bored of late, in case someone has the time and intent , you can please tell me about the good shows on TV because I didn’t seem to find any whenever I’ve tried it in recent days. And I already watch laughter challenge. Anything better than that will do. No challenging yardsticks, you see.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

useless updates

Hell, i am writing this from a cyber cafe and slowly realising the pains associated with blogging in a cyber cafe. with such a meagre space to move my hands and my elbow constantly pressing against my stomach as i type this, this is already a physical discomfort sufficient to keep my mind away from delving into the other discomforts i thought about grumbling today. this cyber cafe just won't allow you to. just as you strain your senses a little bit to bring out your lachrymose self, the next guy shoots up the volume of his 'pak chik pak raja babu' on his winamp or real player whatever, and you are suddenly reminded of the days when heroes could have oscillating tummies, and heroines found every little irritating prank of this tummy taqatwar cho cuute. and hopes replace angst, even though for a short time.

and the reason i am here is because i no longer have the net at home. for whatever reasons that are beyond the scope of this blog, as they said after all difficult axioms in class X mathematics refresher by RD Sharma. and i havent had the energy to turn up here in this suffocating little cafe regularly, so the posting thing is almost nil from now on. so it'll be in your time saving benefit to not check this space for updates. i hope to keep it alive with post a month routine, lets see.

as for now, i am slowly turning serious for cat. its still seventeen months so i can afford to turn serious 'slowly'. infact all i am doing at this stage is mentally preparing myself that yes! it is cat that i should do next. i think i'll start actual preparations by november or december. and i'll be going to some ngo in jungpura delhi, an environmental one, i hope to learn driving in the next 15 days, and mummy keeps pinning me to join a gym, so i think i shall oblige her too, and its getting hotter by the day here in delhi, unbearably hot. and now all my core group of friends have managed girlfriends, other than me. the last one to have hit the jackpot is adi, and he was as happy as mayawati yesterday. and i was as happy for him as mulayam is for mayawati. that means, hardly. selfisshh.

pardon me for the spelling mistakes, i usually type in msword at home and it tells me about the mistakes and corrections, the msword here is in a state of paralysis and hence the spelling blunders that must have been.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

surrender !


Here at home, each day passes like three days. I thought about writing a decade, but then, why exaggerate for nothing. But its true that after hopping all day and night without any rhyme or reason during my stay at the hostel, it is a little tough to behave like ultra civilized human beings who keep vigil of everything, from when to wake up, when to take a bath, when to go to play, when not to, when to have the meals, when to go to bed, just about everything except of course, when to go to the loo.


And yesterday I went to the college again, not because I was missing it, but I had a room to be surrendered. Yeah, that’s right. This is what we call it when we formally close the pot of evil and shift its keys in the hostel attendant's butt. When I did reach there for a supposedly 5 minutes affair, the attendant put on his James Bond cap to have a sharp look at my room, and take the prizes for catching the 'wanted'. He poked into every little portion of every little drawer while I wrote the required application he is supposed to collect and forward to the warden. 'Shrewd me!', he must have patted his own back.


''Cigarette!'' , he shouted as if he saw an anaconda, one Godzilla and a dinosaur all fighting each other for a chance to kill this attendant.


"kya", I exclaimed rather tensed since a cousin was around this time.


" cigarette! cigarette! cigarette!", side effects of watching too much of Ekta Kapoor stuff in the TV room were already showing on his face and his language.


Now, I do not smoke. Yes, even after a good two years at hostel. But I am not Ramdev-ish enough to stop each and every guy who comes around, in my presence or absence, to this room to stop doing things he loves to do. Besides, quite often the guy with a cigarette in one hand he has a can of beer in the other, with which I have nothing to do either. Oh no, not all people who don't drink beer are dumb. Its just their choice. Choice, you know. The thing which those who drink it have. Similarly these guys who don’t have it too. Infact its this choice that they are exercising. And they don't need to visit paida-kyu-hua.com. Not really. But equally often he has a fountain pepsi with him , and I never said I never sip into other folks' pepsi. Yeh dil maange more.


"arre bhaiya kisi aur ki hogi, mujhe nahi pata".


To make matters worse, I have no official roomie. The one who stayed with me was another hostel's inmate, whom I called to live with me since I was alone in my double-room.


"arre tumhare room par padi hai ye, aur koi saath bhi nahi rehta yahan to ladka, to ham kya pagal hain , ya tum zyada hoshiyaar ho.", he retorted.


"kisi ne fenk di hogi yaar, main kya karoon"


"yaar kisi aur ko bolna, tumhe hostel se nikaalne ki taakat rakhte hain hum", he said. At first it seemed he was trying to pump himself with an ego-boost, but then I realised it was nothing but just another ekta-kapoor-effect taking its toll on him.


But suddenly, something got to his head. He said, 'ye saara samaan jo akhbaar, photosatat vagehra hai, ye le ke jaoge?'


"nahin"


"achha main le ja raha hoon phir"


"le jao, aur kya", I said.


" chalo, theek hai, ye saara samaan mere room pe rakh do, baaki main dekh loonga, kuch nahi hoga , apni tubelight bhi chhod dena lekin mere room pe", he said.


"achha ( hoshiyaar you are - I thought) ", I was losing interest in the unnecessary delay.


Then I forwarded my application on a desk he was standing next to, and started packing my bag as he pretended to read the contents of the application. Just when I was done, he hit back. " ye tumhara lock hai na, mere paas chhod dena, le jaa ke kya karoge ab kya lock karna hai, main dekh loonga baaki to, kuch nahi hoga ".


"Kuch to vaise bhi nahi hota." but I left my lock with him anyways, too pissed off with his unending blabber.


Shrewd he was. No doubt. What chance would James Bond stand before him ?.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Guys with beard aren't necessarily weird.


People are very apprehensive of other people's intentions. I don't know why but they are. I know that. There is this very disturbing lack of trust syndrome the people of delhi carry when they leave their homes out for work or play, anything. Parents clutching their kids' hands more firmly as someone approaches, is commonplace now. Here if you ask someone what the time is, the She thinks you are not asking the time but trying to ask her out, the He gives away the facial expression that he thinks you're asking the time just because the girl with him is a good looker. Interesting. And two out every 5 boys, without anyone with them, you happen to ask something in the middle of the road, or just talk some pointless point, would wonder why is he being told this, as if thinking - why is he being beaten up. Ok I look a bit thief-like with my grown up beard which might just mislead people into imagining my lack of finances to throw at the barber bar bar, but I certainly don't look like an eve teaser. I don’t think so. Atleast. I don't know why grown up beards only remind people of osama bin laden and never Vir Sanghvi.


Just yesterday at c.p , as I was sitting outside block b's pavement bookstall, as I usually do tired from the three-fourth college to home journey already carried out, I saw a couple going quite all over in the parking space next to it, and they were not inside their car. And just as they were gearing down the momentum and were barely done with, a tired looking must-be-collegian, emerged out from beneath the ground ( he was on the metro's escalator). At first sight he garnered my soft corner for his unkept beard. Dadiyal dadiyal bhai bhai, I affirmed to myself. And the first thing he did was ask this couple the place he'd get an auto for whichever place he intended to go to. He could be called dumb, rather unaware, but not a criminal. Well, he didn’t ask them the time but he would have figured out these were bad times going on for him. He got to hear abuse from the master and his mistress. He was made to feel as if he did something unimaginably evil. All that and more for asking a simple question. I felt like getting up, sympathise with the poor chap, and throw abuses back at the raja-rani. But better, or maybe worse, sense prevailed and I held back the desire. I usually refrain from getting into other people's woes. You usually get the wrath of both sides in most cases. Whatever. As far as the couple goes, I won't go into discomforting territory by rejecting them outright, as a majority of people I knew, and hence possibly some of the people who happen to read this text, considered 'public display of affection' as a turn-on, a fact I discovered after going through their orkut profiles. Now I completely differ, and I deem it bad manners, to put it as simply as possible. But okay that’s a personal opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own. Okay. But the way they then abused this guy was as if smooching in the open spaces , in pure public place, was their fundamental right, birthright rather. To top it, they considered that it was the fundamental duty of all other public present there to turn their eyes the other way, or still better, close them. Bahot sahi. Maybe they are promoters of the gandhian philosophy - Bura mat dekho. But if its so bura, why dikhao it in the first place.





bearded






befuddled


Bearded atleast better than befuddled. much much better. ( proudy neck swing follows )

Friday, April 27, 2007

jeetendra aur yash chopra.... aur unke bete

Reasoning is a difficult thing to do. Because some things are beyond reason. Like why tushar and uday chose to do what they are doing. And they are doing it so miraculously well, you already know which tushar and uday I am talking about, and what they do, and well, the nation knows them. They do not know the last time they massaged the inner walls of their aching nostrils, but they know tushar and uday. Such is this medium. And it is this medium that has caught my otherwise fragile attention ever since I was a little boy who would swing his neck in pride saying as meaningless a thing as " jo kehta hai wohi hota hai " whenever some smarter and wittier class fellow would taunt me with some copybook one-liner like " zindagi jhand hai, phir bhi ghamand hai!". Ofcourse this fellow would impress the giggling girls and nose-mending boys in the process, but its films I am talking about now, if you still haven't figured it out.


I had always been this really film buff sort of a kid, resolutely insisting Dad to get a cable connection at home. This was in 1992 I guess. And there was nothing even on cable TV other than Zee and Prime-Sports, that showed some things that I didn’t understand at that time. So, I would stick to the 2-films a day routine, watching the films our local cablewallah would roll for us. That’s a time I really cherish, not all actors of the time were exactly stupendous, but I think it was the childish sanguinity that I could stand the funky chunkey pandey two times a day and still say : dhaaasu. I don’t think there were many entertainment fronts those days, no internet, no computers, no dvds , no ipods nothing, and just the two second rate 1980s bollywood stuff gave me the sort of completeness you would expect to find in Shakti kapoor when a beautiful and ambitious young lass knocks his door hoping for a shot at the next yash chopra epic drama. Hopes! They are uffff.


This extremely-psychotic-craze-for-2nd-rate-hindi-films was on an alarming rise until I saw those two milestones of hindi cinema - 'neil and nikki' and the fantabulous 'jeena sirf mere liye' and so you know the root of my irritating bitterness.

God ! Get me out of it.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

My Ride

I wanted trust, Which wasn't there.
I longed for it, But they just didn’t care.
Such indifference, I thought was rare.
But what I thought, They'd never care.

I wanted to show I could pull it off
And back I got a cynical laugh
I laughed back and went ahead
Only to find, a motive dead.

I look back now, Time and again
All those hopes, That died in vain
Still hurt me where it hurts most
Still makes me feel what I lost.

I stare at the ceiling thinking every night
All that's happened, was it right?
Should I be thinking about giving now?
Or for selfish desires should I fight ?

I really want now to just rise back
To get the powers that I'd once lack
To throw my flaws rather than hide
To guide my ride on a dreamy tide.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Stay Hungry. Stay foolish.

Nothing from me.

This is the speech I think is the best piece of wisdom that would fit in 15 minutes of time. Like all things I deeply admire, I felt like sharing this one too with people I feel connected too. You know this feeling when you come back from watching a great movie, and then you really want your friend to watch it too. just because you liked it soo much. Its like that. So if you haven't already been through with this speech, please read it now. You won't repent these 15 minutes, you'll cherish them, hopefully.

So lets get started with the iconic Steve Jobs' words itself :

<

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

>

Saturday, April 7, 2007

bas kuch idhar udhar ki baatein

A lot has been happening around me. And suddenly I am working more and more. I didn't expect any immediate changes in my lazy work habits, and am pleasantly surprised myself. I know I have been sharing a lot of observations these days, this is something I usually refrain from because it gives away a very wannabe-gyani image, which I don't desire. So this last observation from me. The more I started working, the more I found was there to do, the more I started learning about new things, the more things I found that are needed to be learned about, and the more all of this kept happening, the more I found I had a time shortage, and the more I sensed this, the more I pushed myself to work more, learn more, try harder. So there was a time, not long ago when I wasn't working or learning, had all the time to do these things, but still wasn't doing anything. I was free, but not happy. And now, I am working hard, more than I usually do, trying to manage every minute of time I have into something more useful. I am not as free, a lot more occupied, but still happier. I spent my entire teenage fighting with habits, analysing them, trying to incorporate some, trying to get rid of some. Looking back, I think this past fortnight or so has been right up there, alongside the most formative times of my life, the time-periods I think I gained a lot. A lot of insight, a lot of work habits, a lot of knowledge.


So much so, my mummy actually asked me to take it easy two days back, and I think such a thing has happened with me after four to five years , so I just spent the day roaming around, and on the internet where I also created my webpage, and watching television. And I am liking it too. Apart from the Chappel-Tendulkar drama. BCCI can beat Balaji Telefilms anyday with their kahani-mein-twist antics. Just that they have been kind enough to Ekta Kapoor. Or may be they dread her. God knows. Together with Tushar kapoor, I think they are the most dreaded bhai-behen pair in the world. A pair that, when at its artistic best, can put the most vigilant of owls to sleep at nine pm sharp. Only if owls had T.V sets. Poor human beings.


Meanwhile I've grown really fond of the kind of work ethics google and apple practice and preach at their workplaces.


And it took me two years to realise it completely, to realise it confidently enough to belt it out in writing - I just hate my college. I just don't feel like I belong there. Everything about it is so superficial. There is more originality in Uday Chopra's acting, more of it even in Anu Malik's tunes. They just stacked up big concrete structures here and there, while nothing absolutely goes on inside them. Things are going on just for the heck of it. Teachers feel they are being ultra generous if they take a class of two hours for two hours, students think they've been ultra generous to the teacher if they actually sit through it. And leading both students and teachers, are the staff-workers who are impartial in their lashing-outs against students and teachers alike. With the kind of slowly-slowly state of affairs with which things progress here, I seriously think I could wrap the remaining two years of the course in six months and move on and be happy, but they wouldn't let that happen. Just two more years, I keep telling myself.


I've been hitting dcetech lately. For those of you who are not aware of it, and that’s the way it should be for all of you I guess, it is a web forum where the future engineers of my college just quarrel over any topic under the sun, and most of the times it can be associated to their future and their plans and their goals. Although anything constructive hardly, if ever, comes out of those 'uski kameez meri kameez se zyada safed kaise' discussions, the gist I get is somehow, everyone's quite concerned about their respective lives-to-come. So that in a sense was an eye opener for me, because it hinted me to sometimes think of future too rather than dreaming and analysing the past all the time of the present. So, for a change I did some future planning as well. I thought what I would name my kids. Not that I zeroed in on any names particularly, all I could decide was I wouldn't name them Tushar if it’s a boy or Ekta if it’s a girl. And some short term future planning about what to eat for dinner, and which movie to watch this weekend also ensued. Here i zeroed in on 'dum-aloo' and 'zaalim bhootni' in keeping with my polished and cultivated eating and film-watching habits.


I've never been to kumbh mela snaan or suryagrahan snaan at kaashi, but there are two snaans I know are splendid. One is when you make the switch from cold to hot water at the onset of winters and the other, when you switch from hot to cold water on some day of early summers. I made the switch a week back and I was happy like a pig on a honeymoon to outer delhi's central sewer. Perhaps even more. Grrrrrrrr..


Thats it for now.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Difference that Indifference makes ..

Midsems are over. To be really honest, after all the talk of starting the prepn 6 days in advance to 3 days prior to 2 days, I finally began those preps exactly six days back i.e. Sunday evening. Monday was supposed to be my first paper. So that makes it starting half a day in advance. Yeah, finally I could still complete my syllabus, but it wasn't 30 minutes before the papers started, as I mentioned in my last post. This time it was infact 2 minutes into the exam durations that my prepn continued. I was ready to trade that amount of time for prepn rather than writing the exams as I was sure, with not much knowledge to throw at the answer sheet, I'd anyways finish these tests 15-20 minutes before time. 5 days 5 tests and they are over now. I will score, I think, more or less the same marks I have been for all this time I have been in college. I am not worried about staying in the 65-70 percent bracket. Infact, I am not worried about the results part of it. What worries me more, is that I have lost the urge. I just don't feel like going for the kill. I never find myself motivated so as to say - oh I am gonna master the concepts of kinetics of machines course. Or - I am gonna make sure I get all my doubts answered. I have never been this results are everything guy. And maybe that’s why I never got them. I don't get any pinch of pain when I discover just out of the exam hall that this silly mistake just cost me five marks. I never did. But that is one trait that still does not worry me. Infact I am never keen on discussions outside the exam hall about the exam that just got over. All that said, what really concerns is this, That I have lost the urge to learn. I have lost the urge to do well in what I am doing. I am doing an engineering course. And I am doing nothing else. So in a somewhat distorted sense - its my only and full time occupation. What worries is that I am not doing it well. What worries more is that nothing motivates me to want to do it well.


Speaking of results takes me into flashback mode. The only time perhaps I really craved for a great result was when I sat for iitjee. I remember being shattered to tears and silent screams when those red lines on the website read - the candidate with roll no. xyz has not qualified. I felt I let my parents down. Because I knew I could have done a lot better. Because I did not do justice to my own potential, and my parents' pains and support. But this is still not a memory that would worry me. I tried to go for it again, this time getting a no-good rank which offered the worse of iit courses and some pretty okay ones of it-bhu and some good ones of ism-dhanbad. Ofcourse you are not bound to be familiar with these last two college names unless you've gone through the iitjee grind yourself. This time I had done nothing great either, but I didn't feel any shatters. I didn't feel sorry for anything. I was indifferent. This is precisely what worries more.


An indifferent man with dying urge to excel.

Apart from that, I am really disappointed with india's performance at the world cup. I don't know what went wrong. But this performance certainly means I won’t be watching the rest of the world cup except, maybe, the finals. Ok, add the semi-finals too. :)


Hai nahi jo dikhaayi deta hai

Aaine par chhapaa hua chehra

Tarjuman aaine ka theek nahi

Saturday, March 10, 2007

what this budget means for you ?

I really don't know yaar. nothing about the budget. sorry folks.



Just came here because I hadn't really blogged for some while except for that holi gesture in between. So thought to just go and start typing. I do not have anything in specific to talk about as of now. Lets see if something meaningful comes out as I keep on hitting the keyboard's keys. But one thing is sure, I will post no matter what mumbo jumbo comes out of it. So, read it at your own will. There is no risk here, though.


Midsemesters are a week away. Haven't started anything at all. This is a rather oft-heard phrase in college and school circles. But a lot of the times when people say they haven't started anything, it actually means they still have to revise some parts of these three subjects. And the second revision of about two subjects will be impossible to carry out. But with me it means I have no idea of the syllabus, don't know what books to refer, what portions to do and what not to. But I still don't change this habit because it has never really harmed me very much. I somehow manage to pull it up half an hour before the exam. Maybe this habit is a 'disaster waiting to happen'. I hope it never does.


I have been reading quite conflicting and mutually contradicting stuff lately. While I have been reading a lot about work ethics and all by stephen r covey, at the same time I really enjoyed bertland russell's praise of idleness. I read a bit about psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, subconscious mind and NLP. I don't know why, but whenever go through this stuff, it fascinates me more and more. Also went to a bookstore for Jagjit singh's biography but the in-excess-of-thousand pricetag gave palpitations to this guy of limited resources and unlimited wants.


By the way, it was my birthday yesterday. Thank you thank you. Bas bas theek hai. I have been eating a lot of outside heavy food these days and I think its now showing visually as well as kinetically.


Watched star news after a long time. And thought that the time could have been longer. I mean what was the hurry. I could have made my case strong for the sensible-boy-2007 award for keeping away from this nuisance. But I did watch it today. And these are the headlines - mallika sherawat burqey mein !!! Dharmendra mishra - call centre employee ya Bhagwaan !!! bhai bana behroopia. Aur kya saari bataun ?


Yes, watched some films too. Most notably forrest gump. Liked this one a lot. Had been thinking of watching it for some time but never had the availability, time and mood together at one time. Didn't understand a few things though. And to let you a little insight. The makers i.e. paramount didn't pay the original's writer - winston groom - any royalties explaining this film was a failure commercially. And it won 6 oscars. All this just to tell I also surf wikipedia. Goodboy.com.


And am just thinking about mba preparations sometime in near future. Although there are people who advice me - pehle kuch kiya karo phir sabko bola karo, aise bhompu mat bajaya karo. Badboley kahinkey. - but I still don't get it. I still can't make myself come to terms with the suggestion that saying it prior to starting it will make any difference. Adamant. Stubborn. Obstinate. Dekha maine do teen synonyms seekh bhi liye. Woo hoo !!!

This song's playing on itunes :


''apna gham leke kahin aur naa jaaya jaaye

ghar mein bikhri hui cheezo ko sajaya jaye

ghar se masjid hai bahot door, chal yun kar le

kisi rotey hue bachche ko hasaya jaaye''


I like it.


Chaloon phir.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Lets play Holi

Do me a favour lets play holi !

Here’s wishing all of you a cheerful and pepped up Holi.


And don’t waste your paani ke gubbare on drunk strangers who just don’t mind getting wet. Rather lash them out on neatly dressed shipshape ones, because they just might feel like getting into the groove then.

As for non-strangers, you know them well to decide whether they are the gulaal aficionados or grease enthusiasts.

But do play it.
And don’t get into troubles.

Rang barse.