Wanted ?

Rainy season! Hot Samosas! Sleeps! K'taka politics! The confused life as it is. But it's good.

Dravid is back in the ODI team! As a Bangalorian, what else does one need! But I believe since he's inducted, the no. of overs might be escalated. It might be 75 overs match instead of 50.

Saw Zindagi na milegi..something. Liked the company than the movie.
I watch only comedy films which make me forget some mess for sometime. But I do watch serious movies but that need to be exceptionally good to catch my attention.

The film I like the most is Manhattan (Woody Allen's ofcourse). If you ever want to catch a movie that captures the magic of a real relationship, watch the story of Ike and Tracy. The movie starts with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and quick shots of the jagged New York skyline. And as the camera zips across the city showing you its incredible energy, you hear Woody Allen talk about New York as the Philharmonic swells under Zubin Mehta’s baton, and you arrive in Manhattan, inside Elain’s Café. Ike and Tracy with their friends, as the movie introduces you to their world, their relationship.

But the most memorable part of Manhattan is the end where Ike, sprawled out on a couch as geekily as only Woody Allen can, wonders darkly whether his life is worth living at all. That’s when he tries to list ten things that make him happy. Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong’s Potatohead Blues. Swedish movies. Flaubert’s Sentimental Education. Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Cezanne’s Apples and pears. The crabs at Sam Wo’s. He sighs and then adds, almost as an afterthought, Tracy’s face. And that’s when everything changes. Instantly.

Ike tries to call Tracy. Her phone is busy. He runs out of his apartment, onto the street, tries to hail a taxi but they are all occupied. He runs faster. The music picks up. He tries a phone booth. The number’s still busy. He keeps running, running till he arrives where she lives-- just as Tracy is about to leave for London. The dialogue between the two is possibly the most amazing bit of writing I have ever seen on screen. To repeat it is impossible. You have to watch it to understand why Manhattan is one of the finest films ever made. Its simplicity, its poignance changes your whole take on life and love and everything that comes in between.

But this is not about Manhattan. It’s not about Woody Allen either. It’s about that soliloquy where Ike asks himself about the ten things that make life worth living, and chances upon the eleventh-- Tracy’s face. How often do we ask ourselves this question in the privacy of our most lonely moments? How often do we think of things that make life worth living? At different times, I have listed different things. Then I have stopped midway and changed a few. I have paused, pondered, argued with myself every time over every one of those ten things but never hesitated for a moment when I had to think of the eleventh.

Every one of us has a Tracy’s face secretly tucked away in our hearts. It takes courage to acknowledge that, as Ike did, and run out to where we need to go to touch base with our deepest loves. (Mine was simple though - right click and add on comm) More often than not we are running away from it. The only way you can ever see Tracy’s face is by sitting down, asking the first question: What are the things that make life worth living? You will be surprised at how many there actually are. I have to pick and choose every time. It’s not about permanence. The ephemeral will do just as well like say eating the world's best Dosa at CTR? You can change the list as often as you want. You can make mistakes. But every time you reach the end, Tracy’s face will appear before your eyes, almost as if by magic. That’s why good films are so important. If you allow them, they can actually change your life. They can make you see things you have not seen, feel stuff you have not felt. And, if you are brave enough to open your heart to them, they will teach you how to let go of your fears and run for it. Like Ike did, down the maddening streets of Manhattan, the moment he remembered Tracy’s face.

Think over it. And regarding Zindagi Na Milegi Dubara, I am glad I was the pillow.

Jd.

The Silver Thread

Death is such an intelligent entity, isn't it?

It was Winston Churchill who said that one mark of a great man is the power of making lasting impressions upon people he meets; and another is so to have handled matters that the course of after events is continually affected by what he did. A.V.Subramanyam - loved and respected by hundreds as Subbanna - fulfilled both these hard tests.

If greatness consists in the combination of character and intellect of the highest order and if it is to be measured by the lasting value of the solid work done in the fields of thought and action, my maternal grandfather - Subramanyam was beyond question one of the outstanding men.

The man died in 2007 because of Cancer.

Flow through -

I am luckier than most people. I knew that he was dying. I was, you could say, ready for it. He was old, but could have lived a couple of decades more. He was born in the third decade of the last century. He had seen everything the world has forgotten now. - the coming of the first radio; typewriter.

We had provided the best medical care. Multiple degrees holding doctors, state of the art medical equipments - I believe the journey will be over at the predestined hour, irrespective of the medical care which money can buy. He lived with his grief for 2 long years till the Cancer mercifully took his memory (and to an extent, I guess) his pain away. He stopped recognizing me and all those around him and lived, like a frightened child, in a dark fearful world of his own surrounded by phantons he alone knew and could recognise. Once in a while, a window would open for a moment and the light would come streaming in. He would recognise me and say a few familiar words. Otherwise, he would lie down in a dark corner and cringe. Nurse after nurse came and went. Likewise, the doctors. It was an unbearable duty.

He would be hospitalised now and then. But I can never forget those terrible days when he lay in bed, a small, crumpled, little figure, shrunk to half his size, combating pain and suffering without anyone by his side. For he recognised no one; he did not even understand where he was and why there were so many tubes and needles poked into him. I could see the fear in the eyes. I could see the pain, the helplessness, the complete lack of understanding as to why he lay strapped to a bed for days and none of us around him would set him free.

Everytime he was admitted to a hospital, he came back home smaller in size. And even smaller in spirit. More lost than he ever was. More confused. More bereft of hope than I had ever seen him. The big banyan tree under whose shadow we all played and grew up had shrivelled into this tiny, dry plant whose twigs seemed as if they would break off at the slightest rush of wind. He was so frail, so frightened that I left him alone. There was no communication possible between us. It was only love that kept us bonded. When he cried out loud we would go up to him and take his face between our hands and he would keep quiet. Even though he did not recognise us, there was something in the way he responded to our touch that told me he knew he was in safe hands. It was like hiding under a bed during an earthquake. It gave him some hope but that was all. Fear hijacked his entire life.

Fear of what? I do not know. Doctors say that it is a strange, all encompassing, never leaving fear that all patients suffering from a mysterious cancer feel. An inexplicable, unknown miasma of dread that eventually destroys their will to live. I could see that happen to him. He would occasionally disappear for days inside a huge, ugly smog of hopelessness and not speak, not eat for days. We would plead, beg, shout, scream, threaten him. In fact, do anything and everything to wake him up to the world around him but he refused to budge. You could describe his world as virtual, sick. An imaginary world induced by the illness he suffered from but for him it was the only world he had, he knew.

I sat beside him for long days, watching him die. It was an experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The helplessness, the pain, the desperation of watching someone you love more than yourself dying before your eyes and not being able to do anything about it. I prayed. But what can prayers achieve in the face of death? I could not even cry. I cried, in fact, a whole week later when I realised that I would never ever meet him again. He was my best friend, my only confidante..

He is gone now. He died yesterday or was it today, who knows? All I know is he is dead and I am left no wiser about life and death, happiness and sorrow, joy and anguish. The pain, ofcourse, will ease.

My Grandfather personified the courage never to submit or yield. You could truthfully apply to him the great words of Milton:

"...Unmoved,

Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,

His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;

Nor number, nor example with him wrought

To swerve from truth or change his constant mind"

I wish his mordant wit runs like a SILVER THEAD throughout my life.

Jd.

Inter-Alia

Phew!..That was some week. Happening one.

It’s been business, as usual these days. Everything’s so hollow upon closer scrutiny.

Meanwhile, I had my b’day. Celebrated with my relatives at an Elephant Training Camp, about 90 kms from Jog Falls. It was awesome. Then had one more bash with my closest friends. Got lovely gifts.

Birthdays usually begin with resolutions. The most common resolutions, I have noticed, are to give up some forms of addiction or the other. Over the years I have seen many of my friends resolve to give up smoking, drinking, chocolates, caffeine, speeding, hash, carbs, transfats, going late to work, etc. The list is long but, luckily, most resolutions don’t last that long. They are not meant to.

My birthday was on a Monday. I did my usual. I switched off my everyday life, pondered over things that matter to me, none of them of any earth shaking importance to either me or the world at large. I went into what I call a retreat. It’s a space I occupy for a couple of days. Yes, there were things I was supposed to do which I didn’t, much to the disappointment of my friends and family. But then, this is one day I keep for myself. And no, I have no desire on that day to contemplate any kind of denial. Ergo, I don’t make any resolutions. On the contrary, I try on every birthday to acquire some new addictions, live my life richer, fuller, learn something new.

Dad had a silly request asking me to pursue MS abroad. I laugh when I type this too. I said No, much to his disappointment but I have promised him that I would study something else in the best school here. At 56, I don’t understand why he wants me to follow the standard template dream which the others all did. It’s a silly idea to spend the best years elsewhere enduring a hundred thousand pains, missing a hundred lac fun. I don’t wanna get into the logistics (laughs). I am very direct and the details can pain the readers (the standard template readers).

Well, I had an interesting TO-DO (a hundred things to do before I die) list made recently. I wanna have everything ticked against it. Everybody will have this list, isnt it? We just don’t work towards it. All the big things I set out to do, I am pretty much done with – (I successfully got out of Manipal (laughs)). But all the small things, the ones that really excite me, I have missed out on the way. It’s no use trying to climb EVEREST if you can’t make a perfect Masala Dosa. Most of us don’t figure this out till it’s too late. And the reason is: We have all been programmed to perpetually hunt down and fulfil the big tasks of life. By the time we get down to the fun stuff, the successes have taken their toll and we have lost the ability to see the smaller things, let alone enjoy them. Would Mukesh, after breaking all those world records and making all that money, get time to go back to his childhood stamp collection and find a Penny Black?

That’s the problem with success. In fact, that’s the problem with our lives. We are always chasing The Big Dream. It’s only when you fulfil your larger than life ambitions that you realise how hollow they actually were. Ask Bill Gates. Or Warren Buffet. When they realised how boring it was to reach the pinnacle of wealth, they turned to charity. They are now spending double the time and effort they spent on amassing their wealth on trying to get rid of it in the name of philanthropy. They should be actually wondering why they didn’t do it in the first place, like Mother Teresa. She created the biggest empire of charity in the world with Rs 10, a pair of blue bordered white saris, a bucket and a mug to call her own and she did a damned good job of it. Dr.Devi Shetty is doing the right thing, isn’t it?

It’s these small things in our written list that are the most important. You miss them even more when you succeed with the big ones. And if you don’t succeed with the big ones, it’s worse. You consume your whole life chasing them. In the process, the real stuff goes missing. And those are the things that make life worth living. Any idiot can make lots of money, and many do. Just look around you and see if I am wrong. Would you really like to spend your whole life migrating from a BMW to an Audi or a Dior to a Bottega, or would you prefer to take a chance and choose a life that allows you to experience the magic, the vastness, the excitement of being on this amazing planet? One of the things in life I miss out on doing is what Bear Grylls keeps doing all the time. Like entering the Mojave Desert hanging inverted under a biplane at 8,000 feet. Since you can’t skydive from a biplane, the pilot flips the plane upside down and drops you out. Now that’s something I would like to experience. I would love to be lost in the middle of Bandipur forest or Kodachadri mountains trying to find my way out. Or find myself in Aokigahara, the Sea of Trees at the base of Mount Fuji, where not only wild animals but also the great demons reside.

I would have liked to play chess better than Bobby. Or solve the Riemann Hypothesis or exact a bank robbery as written in Artemis Fowl – The genius intelligent criminal he is, problems that cleverer men than me have struggled over unsuccessfully for years.Or argue like Sorabjee. I would have liked to challenge Blake Edwards, film director and brilliant card shark who died to a game of blackjack. He had boasted he could take anyone to the cleaners in a game of cards and make love to a woman at the same time. I am sure, with practise, I could improve on that. I wish I could converse better with dogs, particularly the ones roaming the street outside my home. Or go boating in the Bhadra river where legend has it that there are many whirlpools which has sucked in hundreds of men. Or sing a Kishore Kumar song for her to the perfect tune. Or pour coffee 180 degrees from glass to glass like the Sukh Sagar fellow does it. These are things I always wanted to do.

They are not really all that small, when you look back at them. But then nothing on your bucket list is ever big or small. It’s what you make of them. Life’s not transactional. Life’s about choices. Most of us are so busy chasing our standard template dreams that we never notice the ones on the sideline. It’s only when you get back to your list or update it from time to time that you notice all the stuff you missed out on. And then, all that you actually achieved looks so trite, trivial and unnecessary that you wish you had another shot at life. Life is definitely not VAT-69.

Have fun. Gotta study.

ISB calling? Ssshhhhh..

Scale, speed and silence.

Vintage Jd.

Days.

Long time - again and again. Not busy though. Just deteriorating on the ‘drive’ front. Doing useless things more often these days - pleasing people etc.

Had been to our South Canara. Looks as heavenly as ever. The neatness. The charm. The beauty. The people. You can find me post 40 probably there. Sitting on an armchair with a glass in hand and watching my wife telling the neighborhood gossips. Growing exotic fruits and vegetables. Whats the fun in following a conventional protocol in life! Study,work,work,work,invest,insure,breakyourhead,regret,work,work,work,doctor,astrologer,doctor,work,doctor,retire,join laughing clubs,sleep,die.

A female who looks and talks like a dream reminded me of my school days last night while talking. And incidentally I learnt about a IX Std. boy committing suicide because he got beaten by a lecturer and was made to kneel down for a couple of hours for not doing his homework. It was on news.

Flow through,

Corporal punishment is always a silly idea. It achieves little, hurts a lot. Depending on which part of your anatomy gets the stick. In our time it was the posterior.

Sardar Patel High School was the only school I ever went to. I joined it at 4 and passed out completing my Std. – X.

No, I wasn’t caned for not doing homework. In our time, students were far more irreverent. Not doing homework was the least of our transgressions. But the ecology of schools was so different then that even when we were punished, we took it easily in our stride. Studying was never a big deal. Learning was. And the real things I learnt out there were either on the Cricket field or in the King’s ring and, yes, I made a few friends who have stayed on for life. That’s what schools were about in those days and SPHS was a fine example. It was there that I learnt music, theatre, writing, and how to whistle and wink. Geography I learnt much later while travelling the country. Poetry I found after I unlearnt Tagore and D.V.G. History I picked up from the movies. But the subject I hated the most, maths, is the one I love today thanks to KNM who taught me the art of artfully resolving any complex mathematical problem.

Caning was commonplace then. No one gave it a second thought. If anything, your classmates saw you as a hero if you got whacked. Like the time the watchman caught me and my friends climbing down the waterpipe behind the school at night trying to steal a workbook as it had in it my friend’s love-letter for his sweetheart .The work-book was lying on my teacher’s desk for correction. A sudden burst of pigeons from the corner of a ledge woke him up and almost killed us. Well, we paid him Rs.100 and bought his silence. Rs.25 each. Another time I was caned for scribbling notes and sleeping simultaneously in the classroom. I was also whacked for helping a friend during an exam. The notes in his underwear had fallen off. The hardest whack I got was for locking up a lecturer in toilet. Yes, me and my friends did that. It’s a long story though.

Yes, we were punished for many reasons. But we never felt humiliated. We went back and did the same things again, just making sure we were not caught. Caning was like a badge of honour. We were heroes every time the Principal announced our names sternly at the morning service and called us to her office. We knew what that meant. But it never embarrassed us. In fact, I took bets on how many whacks I would get. Three was the max. I always got away with one. I suspect we were caned only because the Principal felt it was her duty to do so. It was an intrinsic part of the Coming of Age ritual. There was no viciousness there. Nor a mistaken belief that caning would make better young men out of us.

Today, the entire ecology of schools has changed. The charming irreverence that made our years there such great fun has all but vanished. What we have instead is a strange combination of fear and stress. The love, the warmth, the humour, the camaraderie that was an intrinsic part of our growing up years has gone. Everything is judged purely by academic performance, the marks students get. It’s an edgy, competitive scenario where you perform or perish. Everyone’s under great pressure. When I got a first division, I remember how disappointed I was. It was not what I wanted in life. I would have much rather run off with the female under question long ago. That would have been so exciting. I am not liking what I am doing now as well. Growing up sucks, believe me.

It’s this ecological breakdown that makes corporal punishment look even uglier. When a young boy in Class IX kills himself for being caned it can only mean one thing: A total breakdown of communication between him and the world around him. School is not where you go just to get some good grades. It’s a place where you grow up, make friends, learn a few sports, discover yourself and the world around you. And if someone whacks you once in a while, you take it in your stride. There’s a whole world out there to be conquered. You can’t give that up so easily.

I am on my way to conquer. How about you?

Thanks and Regards. -- Shit, see this. This is how I am supposed to send mails at office with this signature line. The habit continues here.

Lets get rid of it. I dunno why I should thank for every email that’s sent. It’s my effort. The recipient should thank me instead.

Impatient and (offlate)useless,

Jd.

Now this looks perfect.

I dunno!

Nearly a decade ago, a relative of mine asked me to write down my goals – short, medium and long term. I don’t exactly recall what I wrote – But I clearly remember the most crucial part of his brief – Be as detailed as possible but keep it to one page. I was a dashing youngster back then – I simply thought he suffers from some disorder. A wiser man today, I realise how prescient he actually was, how ahead of his time.

Meet my relative-uncle. I have always looked upto him for crucial decisions of my life. He is my unofficial crisis manager. But I have found one more potential manager – Displacement and progress are so interlinked, isn’t it? – When you are continuously displaced, you make friends easily. You have low expectations from the unfamiliar; hence you are more pleasantly surprised than frustrated when faced with life’s many ups and downs. You explore everything around you-develop curiosity-new lands, customs, food, and ways of doing things begin to draw you in. You learn to survive on the strength of who you are, for this day, today. You build ingenuity in order to survive. You trust strangers and hence, strangers trust you. You build intuitive capability to sniff trouble-which can tell you when to leave a bar! You become an interesting person, cause you have lots of stories to tell.

Finally, you learn to move on?.

Alright, I took the plane to a different land.

Speaking business,

My uncle told – keep it detailed yet restrict it to a page!!

His advice has stayed with me? My preferred means of communication is the SMS but since I do not give out my phone number that easily, most people email me, directly if it’s personal. Long emails invariably pile up unread. Short ones are swiftly acted upon. And when I choose to talk to the world, I go on twitter where all messaging is restricted to 140 characters. No, not alphabets; characters. That would include punctuation and spaces between words. Think it’s funny? Try it. People effortlessly convey the most complex, convoluted ideas in 140 characters. That’s all it needs if you are a smart communicator. And, as with SMS, people on twitter hate tweets that spill over. No, no one out there has the time or the patience to read a message that’s not complete in itself. So much for the silly snobs who think twitter’s a waste of time and meant for unemployed pre-teens or prematurely retired seniles. I am no longer on Twitter though. I chose my blog as a replacement.

Verbosity is widely despised today. I guess it comes from our deep and enduring disgust for pompous, windbag politicians, garrulous chat show hosts, bombastic journalists, rambling academics, prolix bloggers, loquacious gurus, chatterbox celebrities with nothing to talk about but the tedium of their boring, over exposed lives. The sheer dread of having to listen to them forces most of us to put on our earphones and listen to Black Eyed Peas instead. There was a time when the Silent Mariner could transfix you with just a stare. But the tyranny of words took over. Luckily, what man messes up, technology often heals. So, quietly, almost unobtrusively, we are slowly returning to sanity, rediscovering the art of saying things short, simple, succinct.

In the turgid, turbulent Age of Verbosity, brevity had almost died. Poetry was in purgatory. Silence was misread as being dumb or dumbfounded. People were admired for not what they said but for how long and how often they said it. Our Yeddy gives out the same speech wherever he goes. Our Kohli doesn’t know how to face the press. He repeats, trying to be stylish. Our Gowda doesn’t know what to speak in the Parliament. He speaks for hours which can be regarded as worthless shit.

But it’s not just politics that has become so wordy. Look at business contracts. When Mani Ratnam began making movies decades ago he signed one page contracts and rarely had any disputes. Today Johar signs 120 page contracts-Numerous clauses and shit. Lazy, loquacious legalese has taken the place of precise English. What we tend to lose sight of is that loquacity is usually a cover for the vilest of intent. Hidden amidst a million words is a boobytrap you could easily miss. My own belief is that the more verbose, the more convoluted a contract is, the more the chances of it leading to a bruising court battle. When Nani started to debate in the Bombay High Court, people from all walks of life sat and appreciated the man. Palkhivala is the real man. No one comes close too.

What legalese hides, love flaunts. My biggest dread has always been those painful long love letters that bleedings hearts send to each other. Look at the lyrics of a few love songs – How many times I have slept unknowingly thinking of pathetic wordings. I have always believed that a simple, well delivered kiss and meddling her hair is worth a thousand tired phrases.

Do I miss words at all? Yes I do occasionally. But as long as they are few, I’m fine. It’s the avalanche that scares me. Excess is not my scene. I respect the simple, the short, the hint of things to come. I like the play of imagination. Imagination’s what I think this century is going to be all about. So my choice is clear. Twitter over War and Peace. Haiku over James Joyce. Cinema Paradiso over Star Wars. The Bhagwad Gita, The Bible and The Quran over the intimidating religious theories.

Did you know?

Jd

Cutting Edge.

Long Time. Sometimes, I get so busy that I dont even know what I'm so busy doing. But the fear of what if am busy with the wrong things always scares me. Few things are as disappointing as investing all your time, energy and potential climbing a mountain only to find-once at the top-that you climbed the wrong one. So I am getting back to the business of thinking and reflecting to ensure I am on the right mountain. There's something about being thoughtful and strategic that I love. You can keep things clear and simple. And clarity and simplicity precedes SUCCESS. I will get back to the caps-on word.

That apart, having a lovely time watching around, thinking around, strategizing to pinch someone, sleeping more, taking things to the next level etc.

Speaking business,
I was thinking about Sachin Tendulkar. I was thinking about Ricky Ponting. I was thinking about my Federer and was also thinking about Nadal. Likewise, about Nani Palkhivala and Harish Salve. And I am so confused.

Times are changing honey,
The Search for Excellence that once fired the imagination of the best and the most gifted among us has been edged out. What we now celebrate is the Search for Success, that amazing spirit which powers the dreams of soldiers of fortune, gold diggers and carpetbaggers. The other day, when I was in Gangarams digging for books, well thats one place am found if am not found anywhere else. Long hours, dissecting something in Gangarams, M.G.Road. I was however disheartened to see the shop stacked with books that teach you only to win. Winning is not just everything, they warn you, winning is all. If you don’t win, everything is in vain. What you have learnt. What you practise. What you strive for. They add up to nothing unless you win. Winning is no more a process. It’s the goal, the only goal. You can lead a race all the way but if you don’t breast the tape before the rest, you don’t even count for a footnote. Excellence, on the other hand, is what you spend a lifetime seeking. It’s an art form, a faith. It teaches you to align yourself with the best. While success teaches you that you get only one shot at winning. Blow it, you’re gone.

The distinction between the two is clear. Yet we are all confused. Excellence and success are treated as synonyms today. We forget that the winner is not always excellent. We also forget that excellence doesn’t always ensure a win.

I probably grew up listening to my mom's words that if I played my game really well, there was no need to fear defeat anywhere. Never has she told, go win your life. The focus was and is always on the process when it has got something to do with me, not the end.

But today, everything is a gladiator sport. Sachin is an artist of his game. Ponting is a statistics hunter. Style defines Federer, the sportsman. Winning or losing was part of the game. In fact, they were even taught how to lose well. After all, there were always more people rooting for the losers. The underdog was the hero. The cocky winner, today’s role model, was everyone’s pet hate.
That’s changed now. The winner is a hero today. The only hero. The word loser is loaded with shame. It symbolises not someone shouldering the heroism of loss but the ignominy of defeat. A batsman returning to pavilion with 99 rarely gets a spirited applause. There’s only space for one team on the field after the game, the winners. Even if that victory is but by a whisker, the losers go out shamed. As if they have let everyone down. Even where a win is merely the outcome of a popular poll, in all probability fixed, the winner takes it all. There’s instant amnesia about the other participants. The winner too is only remembered till the next season when another winner steps in and grabs the limelight. We forget past winners so easily that they even forget they were once winners.

We are slowly forgetting that a world without losers can be dreadfully boring. Strutting, boastful winners are not easy to live with. Look at our bollywood stars. They buy fame overnight and project themselves as a success. Look at the SC verdict in the Ambani gas row. The excellent businessmen all lining up to win. Look at Dhirubhai and Nusli Wadia. Look at Dr.Devi Shetty and any road end clinic-doctor. Look at Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

The Search for Success leaves the streets littered with corpses. Teen suicides, homicides, financial scams, white collar crimes, family break ups are the tragic consequences of the winner takes it all worldview. The pressures around us are too scary. No one’s allowed not to win. By making defeat so ignominious, we are forcing losers to lose sight of life. Courage, heroism, dignity in defeat, the power to learn from one’s mistakes are the ingredients in the making of a real man. Not quick fixes in the hope of victory. Not shady deals in the hope instant inflated accounts.

I wanna be an excellent employee, an excellent son, an excellent husband, an excellent father, an excellent friend, an excellent citizen, an excellent all..and an excellent death in the end.
SUCCESS? History is only sweet to the excellent. Never the successful.

Simple,
Jd.

Real Letter.

Ask anyone: I am often found discussing about chocolates, Sachin Tendulkar, hill-stations, animals and off late I have been taking the name of Dr. Devi Shetty and Narayana Hrudayalaya too much. Getting to know more and more about this individual and his organization is only making me a devotee of him. I am working on a massive article on this man with a real example. And it's known that I am so choosy about everything I do. All the people who are associated with me are all literally hand-picked by me at some point of time in my life, be it wherever they are and whatever they are. And all this implies to the clothes I wear(not always, but still), the food I eat, the places I roam around. I am constantly watching, observing, making notes silently, drawing inferences till I am comfortable. I will be failing in my duty if I dont say that I was also handpicked by many into their lives and I have always lived upto their thought and belief. Afterall, they have chosen me over others. So it will take some real long time before I can come up with words to describe the knitty-gritty of Mr.Shetty and Hrudayalaya given the time I take to evaluate anything. But till then, let me share the below letter with you. This letter was written by Dr.Devi Shetty to all the 4000 or 5000 odd children who have went under his knife successfully. And interestingly, Dr.Shetty was the personal cardiologist of Mother Teresa. I dont know..There's something about this man.

If at all your eyes could get a lil misty after reading the below written letter......

Sail through...

A LETTER TO 4000 CHILDREN WITH A SCAR ON THE CHEST

"My Dear Children:
I have been planning to write this letter for quite some time. May be I just waited for you all to grow up to understand what I am trying to convey. The story goes back many years. When God sent you to this world it was perhaps the best thing that had happened to your parents. Every little nudges and kicks in your mother's womb opened up a new world of happiness and expectations. Then one day, a miracle happened...You were to begin a new journey. From the warm, happy, secure world of your mother's womb to a world that is cold and full of insecurities. Nevertheless, the joy that your parents felt after this journey knew no bounds.. They were on top of the world. But, unfortunately, this happiness was very short lived. That very day you started turning blue in colour. The doctors had found a hole in your heart that shattered the dreams of your parents. They were devastated and could not understand why they were being punished in this way. They had no choice but to accept the inevitable reality and decided to give you the best possible medical care.
Before that they had to overcome two major hurdles. They could not afford the cost of your heart operation and they could not wait since you were turning blue every time you cried. I guess this is a penalty you have to pay for being born in a third world country. Yes, when you were ten days old you had a price tag on your life. If your parents paid the price, they can have you, if not you would have to go back to where you came from. Your mummy and daddy went through phases of self-pity, denial, mutual accusations and anger towards the society, which was indifferent to their problems. Your daddy was most upset since he knew that the price tag on your life was less than what his boss would spend on a Saturday evening party. But that is life and one has to accept it. Time was running out and your daddy was getting desperate until he came to know about me. The first thing he told me when we met was "I heard you love children". Yes, I love children and I have four of my own. My profession is giving hope to people suffering from heart diseases and giving them a chance to start life in a fresh new way. I am essentially a technician who can cut and stitch people's heart; they call me a heart surgeon.
When I met you first you were barely 10 days old, cuddled in a warm blanket close to your mother's heart. Except for a bit of rapid breathing and bluish nails on your finger, you looked like an angel. I am sure you cannot remember but I asked you a question "do you want to be my friend"? This is the question I ask all the children I see. I did want to be your friend and I worked so hard to gain your friendship. I clearly remember your mother's face when she was handing you over to the operation theatre nurse. She kissed you and looked at my face with an ex-pression that she is handing over her most precious possession to me; also with the total confidence that I will take care of you. It was a different sort of love triangle between your father, mother and myself with you at the centre. We would have done any thing in this world to get you back. It took me six hours of intense concentration to operate upon your heart and so many sleepless nights before you started smiling again. God was kind to you that time and you made a marvelous recovery. It was a big day for your family when you were being discharged from the hospital. Both your mummy and daddy would have thanked me a million times before they left the hospital. But they didn't have to tell me anything since I knew every word what they wanted to say. Tears of joy rolled down their cheeks. But you were blissfully unaware of what was going on clinging on to your mother's chest. My eyes began to swell with tearsand I turned my face the other way since a cardiac surgeon is not supposed to cry. Through the corner of my wet eyes I saw your face one more time and I knew I found one more friend. Your friendship and love is the only fee I expect for treating you.
As a heart surgeon I have performed more than 4000 operations on children like you suffering from heart disease. Most of them came from poor families.Despite their backgrounds, I treat all for free. I think this is the best way I can repay God who has given me everything I wanted, a good family, a wonderful wife and loving children. For me this world is such a happy place to live in and in my own small way I strive hard to make it happy for others around me who are not so fortunate.
You must be wondering what inspired me to take this path.I guess, I became a doctor because of the recurrent illness of my parents.My childhood was spent with the fear of losing my mother. My father who was a diabetic had multiple episodes of diabetic coma. In the life of the nine of us God was a distant image and his clear image was that of Doctor who could save the lives of our parents.
Another childhood incident left a lasting impression on my young mind. I remember, it was a Saturday afternoon; I was trying to build a car, I think, out of matchboxes and sticks, like all the other children in my village. My mother was speaking to a distant relative of ours in Bombay. This lady was telling my mother about a particular surgeon who apart from saving her child's life also offered his service completely free of cost. I could hear my mother blessing the mother of that surgeon for giving birth to such a wonderful person and ended up saying that this world is still a wonderful place because of people like him.

That was the time I found the purpose to my life, the purpose of bringing happiness to all the children of this world. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.I was trained to be a heart surgeon at Guy's Hospital, London. My colleagues there called me an "operating machine" since I loved heart surgery.

I left England in 1989 to start a state-of-the-art heart hospital called BM Birla Heart Research Centre at Calcutta. It was a great experience to set up a heart hospital, which soon became one of the best heart hospitals in India. And almost immediately after we set up the research centre we started the pediatric cardiac surgical facilities to take care of children suffering from heart diseases. Little did I know that this centre was to rewrite medical history? My mother at that time was living in a small town near Mangalore. It was my father's death anniversary and she spent almost the entire day in the prayer room. In the evening, my sister who was watching the news at the national network, all of a sudden screamed out for my mother. My mother hurried to the living room to see her son on TV with a nine day old baby who underwent a successful open-heart surgery.He was the youngest baby at that point of time in India to undergo a successful open-heart surgery. It was the beginning of heart surgery on newborn babies in India. I guess at that time many mothers too would have prayed for my mother's well being.
Let me tell you about another incident.Do you know the definition of a paediatric cardiac surgeon?The dictionary says he is a surgeon who specializes in the treatment of heart ailments in children.A few years ago, when Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack I was put in charge of her heart care. One day, Mother, who at that point of time was convalescing in the intensive care unit of the hospital, saw me examining a blue baby. After few minutes of thought she turned towards me and said; "Now I know why you are here. To relieve the agony of children with heart disease, God sent you to this world to fix it". To my mind, this is the best definition ever given of a paediatric cardiac surgeon and perhaps the best compliment that I have ever received.

One day you will become an adult and probably a very important member of our society. You will have lot of responsibilities and commitments. All I ask you for is, can you spare few moments of your precious time every day for someone who needs it? And that too without expecting anything back in return. Do you know, to save your life, a few hundred people worked sincerely without expecting any remuneration other than the joy of making your family, friends and relatives happy?

Dear children, we are all creation of the God and He is in control of all the events happening in this world. Unfortunately he is not supposed to be seen, heard or felt.So, he runs this world using people like you and me. And when you do your work without expecting anything in return, just for the joy of bringing happiness to others, that's when you'll realize it is not your hands, which do the job, it is the hands of God.

Yours lovingly,
(Dr. Devi Shetty)

"

Restless,

Jd.

Seasons thoughts.

Happy Pongal to all! The celebration of prosperity traditionally associated with the harvest of crops. Proud to write that I am infact the grandson of a farmer who did his duty as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed music or as Shakespeare wrote poetry. Increasing affluence has transformed the wonder years. We are going to concrete offices now trying to please people around and making our way. Clear that farming is a bygone profession. But I shall always look up to my Grandfather (of farming) just like I look upto Keith Richards of accounting or Jimi Hendrix of human resources. Yes, they all gave the performances of their lives.

Anyway, I don't know why we are still celebrating when there's no reason. We are the IT/BT products (with a shameful undertone). We are planting seeds and looking after them and some one else is eating the end product.

Anyway speaking business,

I trust the new friend I made recently,(actually, it took some time and effort to make her understand that I am not insane, I might be eccentric). My mother trusted Dr.Dibanath Chakraborthy of Manipal Hospital when he said he can operate me and save my life two years back when I had a devastating accident. I trusted Dr.Shridhar.N of Wochardt when he repaired my dad's heart. And I trust Madhu who prepares some wonderful Bhel Puri as soon as he sees me approaching towards him. He is so happy to serve me. And I trust so many people with whom I might have just broken bread once or had coffee once. Only to note that this is not the case with the world right now.

Welcome to the world shortage of trust!
Last week I read about a cab driver who was picked up as a suspect for raping a minor. Well, if it's proved, I will be the first to shoot him..but it's yet to be proved.He is still a suspect and the evidence against him is next to nothing. But even though he can get bail, no one, not even his friends or family, is ready to stand guarantee for him. He has no money to pay the bail. His wife has run away and promptly married someone else, saying she couldn’t live with a man suspected of such a heinous crime. His family has abandoned him out of fear of being ostracised by the neighbourhood. He can’t even return to his home as he fears he may be lynched. And the evidence against the man hasn’t even gone to court! But his life has been destroyed by the news of his arrest. He has been punished not because he’s been proved guilty of a crime but because we, as a society, suffer from a trust deficit. We are always ready to believe the worst of anyone.

When I was in Cuffe-Parade, Mumbai, to meet a friend who lives in the 22nd floor of the apartment, I was startled to see the security everywhere more than the folks living there! He said that no one is allowed inside without a Photo-Id. Yet, how long has he left his front door open?Never. Look at myself!..How often have I left my car unlocked and run out for an errand? Never. How often do I stop on the street and help someone in need? Not as often as I ought to. How often do I stop and feed a hungry stray dog? Not as often as I could. Why? I am programmed to fear it may bite me. How often do I help an accident victim? Rarely. Why? I worry about being drawn into a police case. How often do I give money to an urchin? Not as often as I’d like to. Why? I fear I may be encouraging begging. Behind every small act of ours is a deficit of trust.

It’s this new thing that makes us enjoy stories in the media about romances breaking up, friendships collapsing, marriages wrecking. We always turn around and say: I told you so! We are always warning friends, associates, colleagues, spouses, children to be wary. Never take candy from a stranger, is every mother’s first tip to her child. Never hire a great looking secretary, is every wife’s first threat to her husband. Think twice before you marry a great looking or successful girl, is every friend’s advice to another, she can always ditch you for someone else. In fact, the moment you ask someone for advice, on anything related to a relationship or a health issue or a property deal, be sure to be warned. Our first reaction to everything is: Watch out! We even sign off, saying Take Care.

Even the media is so enthused to show up stuffs which involves them.The more they show up trustless relationships, the less trustworthy our relationships become. It’s not only marriages that are breaking up. So are romances. So are families, homes, communities, states. Yadavs in UP don’t trust Dalits. Dalits in Bihar don’t trust Brahmins. Sunnis in Pakistan don’t trust Shias. Shias in Iran don’t trust Sunnis. The locals in Bangalore don’t trust anyone. Elders in Haryana don’t even trust their daughters. They brutally murder them to uphold family honour!

Anyway, nim karma. Everyone’s becoming increasingly lonely simply because we can’t trust anyone any more. It’s true the world is not as simple as it once was but the moment we abandon trust, for whatever reason, we shut ourselves in and become lonelier. We love less. We fear more. We imagine wrongdoing even where there’s none, simply because we all live in a constant state of paranoia. Anything, anywhere can be misread, misunderstood. The problem gets even worse when we mistrust everyone and start seeing wrong everywhere. That’s what makes us all unhappy, scared, suspicious.

I am happy. I bet on people. I bet on relationships. I treasure some deep human connections. Some of life's best pleasures are its simplest ones. So go ask for the best table in your favorite restaurant and have a chatty evening with that special one. Nothing really happens until you move. Shake hands, do lunches, show genuine interest. Spread your goodwill. Evangelize your message and Business is all about relationships.

Woke-up to a Pleasant Morning,
Jd.

Answer!

Alright, I have some 1000 friends. And I have been heavily gunned by some bullet questions like what's your new year resolution bla bla.. Sail through folks.

I am actually getting fed up of this high voltage life in Bangalore. No, this isn't an indication that I will be stepping out abroad. Strange!...folks around are always asking me when are you flying abroad..Nonsense man! People have lost perspectives! Irrational souls, I must say.
At worst I might step out for a naughty honeymoon with my wife after marriage. And for nothing else. India will be my home. It gave me birth and rebirth. Anyway, happy to note that 11,000 of the 65,000 mandated H1-B visa slots are still available and went obviously a waste. Big reason to celebrate.

Well, coming to Bangalore...Everyone here is so busy running around that I often wonder when they actually get some work done because most real work demands a certain degree of stillness, contemplation and thought. No one has time for that any more. Everyone feels that if they don’t rush around, they will miss out on something they can’t afford to. This fear of missing out drives the new consumer obsession.It persuades us that the absence of that product or experience from our lives lessens us. Today we are yoked to compulsive ambitions forced upon us. Like Pavlov’s dog, we run on a treadmill that won’t stop. What’s worse, we pretend to enjoy it! Nodi swamy.

Bangalore’s energy is now boringly predictable. Perfectly decent roads are being messed up to build walkways in the sky that no one uses. Exquisite old villas are being torn down to be replaced by highrise apartments, where you pay monthly maintenance bills that could fetch you a fine 3 bedroom flat on rent. We pay fees for clubs we seldom use, gyms we never visit, doctors we have no faith in, time share resorts we will never go to. It’s all part of the same syndrome. Keeping up with those who you think are better off than you. It could be a friend, a neighbour or that guy in the office you hate the most. You want what he has without figuring whether you really need it. Or even want it.

We are idiots, blindly responding to the stimuli of commercial messaging.

Can we escape from this shit? Yes, Surely we can..and how?

The answer lies in breaking the sameness, deconstructing the routine of our lives, finding new things to do. None of this costs money. What costs money is staying on the treadmill, constantly running. Migrating from your Nokia to an iPhone may be expensive but leaving it at home and hanging out at the local bookshop is not. No, it doesn’t diminish you if you carry last season’s jeans or drive a Nano. You don’t have to afford that paint job in your house every Ugadi. Instead, frame those family pictures and hang them up. You may recall many lovely memories that a spotless wall can’t offer. Skip some episodes of Bigg Boss; learn to play the guitar instead.Go have a Pani Puri with your girl. Drop that Ceasar’s salad; try a vada pao with your loved one. It won’t wreck your diet plan. Even if it does, it won’t matter as long as you’re happy. Feed a street dog. Buy a flute from that young flautist outside the national market in Majestic. Go trekking. Skip the newspaper. Stroll in a park and give a flower to that special person. Put up a sparrow shelter outside your window.

Live easy folks. It's much more fun. Why are we always rushing around with strategies and plans and insatiable desires all the time? Can you carry it to your grave?! I cannot for sure. I don't know about you. The resolution is I walked/am walking/will walk my above talk.

Angry,
Jd/

heegu unte? ..... heege untu.

New Year! A very happy new year to all the beautiful men and women who have made my life beautiful and beautiful. I am using the word 'beautiful' very frequently off late. By the way, I had a beautiful new year celebration with my closest friends in a beautiful farm house indulging in beautiful activities. Christmas bash with a close friend in a church, followed by the new year; followed by shhh....'loose lips might sink ships', they say.

Ok speaking business;

Word on the street has it that, girls nowadays are getting strange guys to their startled parents!? Ok, I will blame both equally. Itseems that they are narrowing down to a metrosexual lover who you can smell coming in from a mile away, soaked in Axe woodooo. What he wears may disconcert you. But what should worry you is that he swings every which way, like a baboon hanging from the root of a banyan tree. Even more worrisome may be those young girls who hang out at strange places at twilight in search of a vampire lover like Edward Cullen or a werewolf like Jacob Black who they imagine will give them the kind of love normal guys would baulk at. Then there are the rich lover boys in incandescent purple velvet jackets who drive over pavement dwellers at night, snorting on coke. Or nerds with phoney firangi accents who propose online to girls they have never met. The options are many. But where have all the good guys gone?

namage yaake swaamy...but still:

What happened to the gigantic, plain and handsome stranger kinda men? ok first lets see what is meant by gigantic, plain and handsome stranger....Well, gigantic never meant 6 feet 6 inches. Gigantic simply meant someone to look up to with admiration. Someone who’s dark, admiring eyes you could stare into and think exciting, even wicked naughty thoughts. Similarly, plain did not mean a Moorish boy. Dark was never about complexion. It stood for mystery and enchantment in a roguish kind of way. Someone in whose strong, powerful arms you could get lost forever. Handsome also never meant dumb good looks, the kind models sport. It meant someone you could take around without feeling embarrassed. A companion who made you proud, whether you were in front of your friends or your family. Finally, stranger did not mean an unknown man, someone you pick up at random from an internet chat room or a speed dating centre. A stranger meant someone who would come in from nowhere into your life and transform it almost serendipitously. Do you see this kind of guys around any more?

Itseems yes. Someone told me.

Infectiously impatient and restless,
Vintage JD.