Jwalamukhi

Long time. I was not busy. But was in a deep observational mode, watching people, conversing with people, watching Sachin score a sensational double hundred in this very place. Bangalore is blessed.

Had a brilliant Benne Masala Dosa this morning in CTR,Malleshwaram which finally enthuses me to write this up. God lies in details, they say..I still maintain it's Masala Dosa and I have a companion who agrees on it.

ok boiling down to business, I was closely watching the evolution of myself and others likewise.
Sail through....

"Where there is smoke there is fire" - a mere proverb which has transcended from a form of expression to a philosophy that drives the world we know of.

The cause is supplanted by the effect. As the world gets more complex by the day with little time and means to delve deeper, smoke has replaced the fire. The effect has become the proof of the cause even though there may not even be a direct correlation between the two. But the beauty is - once we can disregard this nagging fact of causality - life becomes simpler. Just look for the smoke and conclude on the fire. Conjure up the smoke and lap up the credit for the fire that never was. In due course of time there is no need for fire at all as long as there is the mesmerising pall of smoke. We are the products of the Smoke Metric.

As a child my first experience with seeing-the-smoke-and-concluding-the-fire was with my report card. A high percentage is all it took to keep teachers happy, parents smiling and relatives idolising. Where there are marks - there is understanding and there must be talent! It was quite fascinating to see how success is built on essentially the failure of the system. Failure to establish a correlation between the real cause and the effect. I had a hope that in the higher echeleons of education the system will be refined and tuned to beat the haze. Little did I realise that the lesson of childhood will only prove itself over and over again for the rest of the life. I learnt of the Marks Metric.

On the professional field good work results in learning, I am told. It generates ideas that can be shared with the community as papers in journals and technical conferences. So better the work - the more is the possibility of number of publications that it can produce. The smoke descends. In the absence of time, intent and means to really evaluate the worth, we measure the merit of the work and hence the person(s) involved from number of papers produced. The smoke engulfs the fire - if there was one. The objective of good work is supplanted by the metric of maximising papers. With the plethora of conferences and journals and paucity of time and reviewers - it is not a difficult task to get the "paper-work" accepted. I am learning about Paper Metric.

The idea may not be ones own, the thought may be borrowed but ones ability to present gives him an ownership that the hardworking, toungue-tied originator does not seemingly deserve! A bit thicker skin and little lesser moral qualms and the idea belongs to the one who articulates it the best. I learnt of the Talk Metric.

Then there are Car Metric, Foreign-Travel Metric and host of effects that we all are happy to let our lives be ruled by. After all, metrics are easier to "achieve" than what they originally meant to measure.

Over time, I am sure the canvass will grow larger. Will get involved from individuals to companies. Solid revenue, solid profit year on year will make way for the obsession with growth - year-on-year and eventually quarter on quarter. Stock market darlings are the entities with sharp growth. The smoke of growth made the the the fire of revenue and profit a superflous niceity. Stars are over shadowed by meteorites. They vanish as fast as they come but then there are enough born everyday to latch on. Every now and then the inevitable happens - bankruptcy, pink slips and broken dreams. But there is just enough time to forget but not enough time to really build to last. Why build when growing just long enough to catch the investor fancy is all we need? I am and will be learning about the Growth Metric.

There are many more metric that I sure will pick up as I struggle to join stream of 'metriculates' - sometimes in, mostly out. I wonder if we will ever have the fire that does not need the smoke to manifest itself. Or will I lie impaled in the in the maze of smoke metric - never knowing if there ever was a fire within.

Why all this?, ok for a 22 year old guy writing this, one might infer the guy would make money to say, buy gifts to his girlfriend and relatives.
Gifts to girlfriend?....ok expensive gifts.

Moorkha, gifting is for the unimaginative. The more expensive it is, the more it speaks about who you are, not what you feel for her. It’s untrue to say people don’t like gifts but to assume that gifts can substitute for love is plain arrogance. That’s what Sahir meant when he called the Taj Mahal not a symbol of love but an emperor’s way of boasting that he could afford a love his subjects couldn’t. From weddings to V-Day, every occasion is now becoming a test for love. You can buy your neighbour’s wife a red Porsche convertible on her next birthday but will it win you her heart?

Gifts are never a substitute for love. Expensive gifts, even less so. They only reveal your own lack of ideas.
Learn the Salsa for her instead. Write her a poem. Mail her a song. Open the car door for her more often. Take her for a walk on Sankey Tank/Marine Drive. Play with her mastiff. Challenge your imagination. Surprise her. Enchant her. Woo her. Seduce her. Every day can be V-Day. You only have to make it so. Fight with her, argue with her, make love to her. Make her laugh more often. That’s what love is all about. Not what you buy her.

As I sat in a dark hall, surrounded by so many bored young couples munching popcorn and staring at the screen, watching an unbearable movie called Valentine’s Day, I am reminded of how beautiful and ephemeral all love is. To preserve it, cherish it, hold on to it, you need imagination, courage, adventure. You need a heart that can beat fast and a pulse that races every time you are near her.

Well, I really took the topic to a noman's land.
Coming to the point, ya IT. Agreed that IT has been the middle class Nirvana and all those vaakyaas. But I fear, what might happen with this smoke replacing the fire within.

Lets talk about Bangal0re: What has changed in recent times? Nothing much in terms of the city apart from its natural wear and tear which, with growing corruption in our political system, is becoming more apparent.

No wonder the Bangalore of today is becoming breathlessly greedy, unbearably obsessive about money. Success is no more measured here by the yardsticks of excellence. It is measured only by cash. Be it art, movies, music. Be it enterprise. The nurturance of talent, the celebration of excellence, the respect for wisdom has all given way to the greed for money. And, as we all know, cities that stop breeding talent and creativity and begin to respect only wealth end up as Gotham City. So the fact that Bangalore is deteriorating so fast is not because people from UP,TN,Andhra Bihar(Atleast they dint runaway overseas) are desecrating it but because it is attracting the wrong migrants.

We are no longer attracting poets and musicians, brilliant academics and young, bright-eyed research students. We are attracting hustlers and carpetbag.

And the smoke replaced the fire. It's no longer fire in the belly. It's just smoke in the mind and a lighter in the atm card, lesser souls. And smoke's getting huge like the casual increase in the font size as I am descending.

Thookadisi thookadisi beeladiru thamma, nanna thamma...manku thimma.
Thookadisi thookadisi biddaruu, nannajja ninnajja mutthajja. Dosa is working.

Restless,
Infectiously Impatient,
Jd.