Where will we be when the summer's gone?

I almost feel bad for this blog. Sometimes, it seems to me to be like an old girlfriend: for the first few years you tell them everything about everything, and then there is a long drawn-out period where you are convinced that you still being with them is more than ample generosity on your part. Some other times, it reminds me of aged grandparents who you never think of except sometimes when you are sad.

I was 19 when I started this blog, I am 33 now. But when I think of the days around when I first started writing here, they seem just a short while ago. In between were long periods of depression and long periods of spiritual satisfaction, long periods of stasis and of growth, long periods of turbulence and of boredom. And yet, I am still essentially the same person, closer now to my 19 year old self, than my 23 or 28 year old selves, by a long shot.

Much has changed, of course. Recently, I got married. I am still figuring out how to be a good husband. Some times, in the middle of an animated exchange, I find that my eyes well up. That is as much a matter of respite for me as it is a matter of concern. Respite, because I realize I am still vulnerable to human emotions, something I had become unsure of for many years now. Concern, because I must not fall into the kind of emotion-driven and intellect-devoid patterns of many years ago that I had to then meticulously rid myself of over several years.

More recently, in a large-scale downsizing of the small firm I worked at, I was eliminated. So these days, I am married and I spend my time at this apartment overlooking the Hudson river that I had rented in more economically friendly times.

Tomorrow, I move out of this apartment, back to good old Plainsboro that I had called home for four years prior to coming here. My brother now has an apartment there, and I will move in with him, while my wife and I do the 'long-distance' thing with her job in another city some hours away. Her folks don't know that I am out of work now, so I'll still see her, like a busy man, only on the weekends.

Day after tomorrow, who knows where we'll be.

Commotion

On Friday evenings after work,

while walking to the Subway station,

brushing aside pangs of anxiousness,

I stand outside the Rockefeller,

and look at the people

looking at the famous X-Mas tree.

It’s a swarm of selfie sticks.

At every step,

I hesitate.

I wouldn’t want to ruin

anyone’s holiday picture;

“Who’s that in the background?”

It would be a minor shame.

I am not exactly a festive scene.

On 2018

I know we are not through yet, but I have a history of writing end of year posts a fair bit before the end of the year, every year. In these posts I feel impelled to hope as much as to take stock, and sometimes hope for what this year wasn't but could still be in the few days that remain.

Very early in the year, something happened that made me experience the greatest physical pain I have in my life, so far. I was hospitalized for the first time in my life, and my brother came to Princeton to take care of me. It is acute and excruciating in the moment, but in hindsight I think a physical debilitation invariably seems less daunting than a mental one. In the end all that came of it was I started appreciating my brother more than I did before.

Earlier this year, I quit my prior job, a relatively relaxed affair, living in a relatively laid-back town, and started working at a new, clearly competitive place, and with it, moved to a new, clearly fast-paced city. Mostly, I was seeking a change from some sort of stasis and stillness I had started feeling. I cannot say that I am loving the change, but I should also confess I do not quite have a solid conception of what it is that I would love.

The one thing this change has ignited, though, is to seek more change. Although there was another, probably more potent catalyst for that. Soon after I had moved, my parents came visiting me here from India. I would work from early mornings to late nights (I still do, I don't quite have an option, at least as long as I am in this job) and feel bad about not spending any time with them. In my previous job, the two or three months they would live with me used to be the highlight of my year. That 25% of the year in time, I estimate, carried 99% of the year, in terms of meaning. In any case, they did not stay the entire three months. In the second month, my mom was diagnosed with a serious illness, and my parents left for India for treatment, with my brother accompanying them, to take care of my mom. 

He spent four months in India and to be able to abandon his businesses in the US for such a long time, he had to sell them. He returned a week ago to US, my mom's recovery is now progressing well. In the months that he was in India, I felt great gratitude for him. I also questioned deeply what I was doing with my life. Now, he has returned, to what can nicely be called, not much. And again I question what I'm doing with my life. What role am I serving in my family? Why have I been so unable to help?

I still have dreams (literally, in sleep) I do not want to have, those I have had for years now. It is very disconcerting when I think about the fact that I'm still having them, although I have gotten marginally better at not entertaining that thought.

A good and a bad

For the last couple of days, I've started coming to Starbucks for getting my personal coding things done. And so far, it has been so good that I have wondered why I never tried this earlier. True, sometimes, you need the intensity of being alone in the quiet of your room and your bookshelf next to you, but a great majority of the time, you don't, and what's much more crucial is that your practice is more habit-forming. To that end, I think, a kind of quasi-alone state that you get in a cafe where you are surrounded yet by yourself, is a lot more conducive than being in a locked up room. Or so I feel, for now. We'll see.

The other thing I've realized is that good textbooks are a way better way to learn something new, or even re-learn something, than video lectures. At least for me.

I've been thinking a lot about the pursuit of money and what it does to us, lately. I've long held that the utility I, and in my opinion others too in all likelihood, derive from accumulating money tends to zero, even negative, after a certain threshold. The threshold, however, where you feel like you should stop caring about accumulating still more comes much later, and for most, never at all.

I have been thinking about the second stage lately. On the one hand I feel convinced that I do not care about any pursuit the only payoff from which is more money, I think I still have some ways to go before I can say the same about external recognition, even though from what I can tell, it is entirely frivolous, whereas having money (a reasonable amount of it, at any rate) is actually pretty darn important. And yet when I see an old classmate on LinkedIn I've always thought of myself as much smarter and hard-working than, and see that he is head of so and so fancy thing at so and so fancy company, something tells me that I cannot stop running after external recognition just yet, not until I "right that wrong". I know it is immensely ignorant and small of me, but where would I confess it if not here, to nobody and everybody?

Inflection

This is the 15th of September, 2018.
I took a decision today.
I decided to decide.

नयी नौकरी, पुरानी यादें

मई में नयी नौकरी शुरू की थी, तब से दिन भर programming ही कर रहा होता हूँ. ऐसा लगता है की पिछली company में जितनी सवा चार साल में programming की थी, उतनी यहाँ 2 महीने में कर ली है, शायद उससे भी ज़्यादा. पिछली जगह काम थोड़ा subjective था, यहाँ ज़्यादातर बस programming ही करनी रहती है. वैसे अच्छा ही है, दिमाग पर ज़्यादा ज़ोर देना पड़ता है, focused state में पूरा दिन निकल जाता है, अच्छा लगता है.

सुबह आँख खुलते ही काम पर निकल जाता हूँ, और रात घर पहुँचते फिर सोने का ही समय हो जाता है. उसके बाद भी हमेशा deadline की race में थोड़ा देर से ही code ship कर पाता हूँ. इस सब का क्या मतलब है, ये सोचना छोड़ दिया है.

मम्मी को बहुत miss करता हूँ. भगवान् उनको बहुत अच्छी सेहत दे. 

Inflection

This is the 30th of April 2018.
I took a decision today. 
I decided to never be dishonest with myself again. 

Two species of aloneness

On days that I would be alone in India, in the sense of not being around family and friends, I would still run into small, individually trivial but in aggregate meaningful encounters with auto drivers, bus conductors, tea vendors, shopkeepers, ironing guy, vegetable vendors, cows, temple pujaris, street food hawkers, internet cafe owners, and random dudes on the street that I knew from one time and context to another.

On days that I am alone in the US, I am alone.

And then again, days that I'm alone in the US are much more frequent than days that I would be alone in India. And since there is this completeness to the aloneness of the US variety, I'm compelled to intensify my search for what to do with those times.

Mostly, it has helped me explore areas of study, habits of self-sufficiency, and patterns of self-development, that I probably never would have had I continued to live in India, and for which I am grateful, but once in a while, it leads you to a dark place that you either dread in the moment or an escape that you regret later.

Dread alone, and regret alone, too.

Inflection

This is the 18th of July 2015.
Nothing happened to me today.

Some more things

It was sometime last month that I wrote I'll leave it. Yesterday, I thought I'd better do blogging rather than indulging in things that were doing me no good, and made me feel somewhat bad about myself too. So, like always, I have no clue what I'm going to write in the post. But, visitors kindly bear.

Sometimes one wishes all sorts of things, probably out of a ingenuous childishness in all of us. When these wishes fall flat, it hurts. But if you can stand up when it hurts, you can at least be content with yourself, though not necessarily accomplish your wishes. Anyway, enough of the philosophizing.

I learnt a few lessons over the last one month or so. Not from the textbooks though, I still have to learn those. So I think I shall be making some modifications in my mindset and the way I perceive things, if I am able to. To start with, I feel I need to shoot my expectations with myself on the professional front to something may be just short of dead high. Equally importantly, I need to keep the expectations on the personal front to something may be just a notch more than zero. And if instincts are to be believed I think I am already well on my way in this process. Though this agenda sounds a bit like making a robot out of oneself, but you'll agree that robotic is any day better than moronic.

The other day I was having a discussion with a classmate about what separates truly successful people from potentially successful ones. No prizes for guessing where I fit myself in these two things. After about an hour of talking I finally arrived to the conclusion that what we lack is that we want acknowledgement for whatever good we are before proceeding to enhance ourselves towards greater excellence and betterment. While the truly successful people, I assume, never aspired any recognition or acknowledgement midway. And may be that is what kept them going to follow their dreams through to their conclusions. In this respect a key area, I feel, that needs working on , on our part, is developing a sort of comfort with solitude or rather a love affair with solitude. None of it might appeal to the readers, but I'll just let you know this is one thing I'll be trying to work on.

Finally, some minute updates. Got selected in Mensa. Bhai left for his MBA and is doing very nicely, I hope he continues to make the most of his strengths and that God bestows upon him all the health and wisdom he'll need.

Anyways, I hope to keep coming back once in a while.