Do I need to be Serious?

"Life is not a cartoon film Anirudh! You have to learn to be serious. Grow Up !"
-- Old chinese proverb .Recited to me by everybody around me.

Huh ? serious ? I am serious.I am seriously serious.wait a minute.why do I be serious ?

Looks like there should be shops selling the "british-stiff-upper-lip" all over the world from the backwaters of Kerela to the red waters of the Red sea. It would sure run up seriously roaring sales.

Maybe the world thinks being serious is the same as being responsible. A guy who looks grimly stiff must be very particular about his work. The world thinks that a guy who looks straight faced is thinking about something deeply important and philosophical. In reality, he may be serious due to the constipation he has   been suffering from. Or maybe from diarrhea which makes him shit like a camel. If you look serious enough to be paid to haunt a house, you are thought to be responsible.

In fact , its the way kids are brought up around here , enjoyment is linked to all the useless things. Pappu enjoys playing cricket .Pappu's mom orders him to burn his cricket bat and study how gandhiji screwed the british. Pinki laughs a lot while playing with her Barbie dolls. Pinki's mom comes in , wrings the neck of her doll and tells her to find out more about the pythogoreas theorem. Little Sachin loves driving his cycle around the colony streets. Enter sachin's mom. She bans the cycle. Orders him to read about the water cycle.

Its like if you are enjoying, if you are laughing, you are not making yourself into a bread winner. The entire Indian society is designed to make enjoyment a very ridiculed thing , just after Saurav Ganguly.

So Pappu , Pinki and Sachin grow up to be fine young men/women/whatever who think anything they enjoy is basically as useless as a porous condom. Success is not about enjoyment. Its about sweat , struggle , competition , hard work as hard as a steel condom.

And this makes success mutually exclusive with enjoyment. If you want success, don’t waste time in enjoying.

Pappu , Pinki , Sachin all would die one day . Poof . Gone. Hey guys , you left your dollars , cars , mansions , flat screen televisions , microwave ovens all behind down here. Do I call the Blue Dart guys to send all this up there ?

When it all has to end a day ,whats the point in living life so intensely ? Why take it so hard ? Why crib about your job , about a broken relation , about a wrong that has happened.By the way ,my computer seems to have got too slow these days. Anyways. Life is not about living in the past or future.Live in the moment.

All of you will die .If you drink cheap wine or eat too much of fatty stuff , you will die soon.I would die too ( Daactar , main marna nahi chahta !!).And what am I waiting for ? For life to throw up something one day which will make me happy for long ?
I dont think life would do it.Theres nothing which can make anyone perenially happy.You get a big car , and you want a big car with automatic transmission, you get that , and you want a big car with automatic transamission and a CD player , you get that , and then you get real fat and the doctor advises you to cycle to work.Without generalising the "I want a car" funda ,desires would never end.And no outside thing can make you happy forever.So stop waiting you cribber.That moment you are waiting for would come and die down and you will set off in the pursuit of the next one.

And you will miss all the fun along the street and keep dreaming about the massage parlour at the end of the street.

So lighten up.

Work hard but grab the fact that your happiness aint in any screwed 18 hour job or any moment you are waiting for.Your happiness is right here.Smile a little.Smell the roses.Smell my socks.

You think Im some spoilt and pampered and insensitive brat yet to face the hard spiky life ? You think I dont have any worries ? You think I dont have any bleeding memories ? have you ever heard of this deadly ailment - limphoosircoma of the intestine ? Though I am not suffering from this , I have my share of heartaches.I have probably a lot more pain in my heart than most. But its when life threatens to screw you that you need to smile and laugh more. Its not like im puttin up a fake attitude when my insides wants to cry.

Im not escaping my pain , i have embraced it , understood it ,taken responsibility of it ,and left it behind. Being miserable is so easy. I refuse to be miserable and serious and intense.

Not that I dont have any skeletons in my cupboard. I have enough of them , im planning to donate about a dozen to medical schools in Bihar. But I know skeletons would keep running into my cupboard. If I have to be happy , its my job. I cant let life decide about my happiness. So if I keep waiting for reasons to be happy , I wont be happy. A light heart is not a by product of circumstances , its the best way to live when the circumstances wanna push you down. So I am happy. Without a reason. You too smile right this moment.

 

Ouch !You got a real stupid smile.

Life should be a cartoon film for me. Do I need to grow up ?

Life 0n a board game

 Ajjtak & NDTV guys missed this, But urs truly just passed the NEBOSH IGC exam with distinction. God knows how I passed this and more on that why on earth my company sponsored such huge money ……………………… that to on me.

 

Anyways, one of my lil friend’s B’day was there on 20^th Jan. So I was invited as an Uncle to Ayisin’s 5^th B’day.  I was totally surprised that people came with gifts and chocolates (I planned  my B;daty party as well in hope of getting such gifts ) I came only with best wishes , love and my shame less self. After some desi mujras on some firangi rhymes and one dance solo by front teeth missing  Vikash on “Papa kehte hein…..” the party ended and every body went back to their homes. On Ayisin’s request or u say threatening that she will tell her dad abt the chocolates I stole from her, I stayed there for some time to play with her. So we started this  boardgame called LIFE. For those of you who are not aware about it , you got a better option than bathing in the sea of ignorance , go to this link : http://www.boardgamecentral.com/games/life.html

So what happened in this game was that you were allotted a coloured piece which travelled along a curvy path on the board .The number of slots he moved ahead depended on the roll of a wheel ,like the ones they have in those kathmandu casinos. You moved along the board doing all the life stuff , becoming a doctor , engineer ,gangster etc etc ; marrying , divorcing , raising kids ,taking bank loans , buying houses , you even got this salary via a toy version of the american currency. I  tried to sneak a few extra notes frm the box while lil Ayisin was rolling the wheel.

Lately I have started viewing my actual life as just a bigger version of this game.I am just a piece like that in the game , whos just rolling along the boardgame of life. The difference being that on which slot I land aint exactly decided by a rolling wheel, but largely by my bad choices and missed efforts.. And just like the game , one day god will decide he had enough fun with this guy , and would pick me off the board n toss in the box .And all the currency notes , bank loans , the houses I won during the game , would remain back on the board , to be played with by the other guys.

And this makes me view my life in a rather dis-engaged way. I dont exactly go gaga with my so called achievements, which anyways can be counted on the fingers of a man with a missing hand. And neither do I plunge to the depths of despair with my failures and problems , which can be counted on more than the fingers of your hands , toes and the rest of your body. Its like nothing in this world seems to affect me too much.Its like I dont know what I want to achieve , what I want to possess.

I feel like a toddler who has been left to play on the floor of bombay stock exchange.I see people yelling , excited , angry , racing to get somewhere and wonder whats it all about . Sometimes I feel I want to earn a lot of money and spend my life with angelina jolie on my left arm and jenny lopez on the right , and swap their places after every 30 minutes.Then I feel i want to spend my life in my room with the AC on , munching on tomato flavored wafers and watching espn and AXN and star movies,and that too on a flat plasma screen TV. A little later , I see my life's purpose in setting up some NGO and serving the needy. What do i want out of life ? Is there any purpose at all of this entire life thing or are we just trying to have a good time pass ? Have all you guys figured out what you want in life ?

 

Zebra Khan

Some things are closer than they appear.Like exam result.
(Nebosh result is coming on 28th jan)

My life has been buried under a lot of p6 & Microsoft Excel worksheets , calculations , figuring out profile data and such things.

By the way , P6 or Primavera 6 is a tool to manage and keep track of projects.
Ah,the joy of showing off.

Anyways, this post is about a rather dark aspect of my life.Nah.I did not hide behind any bushes and watch any murder happen which still haunts me.Nor was i molested by my neighbourhood uncle who lured a six year old me into some kind of shady room by waving a cadbury eclairs.

Its about a much more realistic , yet hard hitting phenomenon.My name.You read it right.My name.

A-N-I-R-U-D-H.

It starts with an A .Good enough. It effectively takes my name pretty high in the alphabetical order.And this can have more consequences than you know.

My parents did not seemingly think of the existence of a concept called "Roll numbers" when they named me.I was the Roll no 1 throughout my school and engineering college.Never did any aastha , aaditya , abhilasha walk into my life to take up the roll number 1 mantle.Avinahs were aplenty.Not one Aamir.I dont blame my parents for naming me such.Only another roll no 1 could have imagined this.you need to be a "been there , done that" type to have this far sightedness.

In the examinations , I graced the front desk right under the invigilator's armpits . When almost the entire class passed slips ,verified answers upto three decimal places, and used answer chits stacked in their socks , sleeves and a lot of other places , i was subjected to the forced virtue of being a person of high moral standards who would never cheat.

Because When you are perched at the front of the row and havent got an idea what to write in the answer sheet , except for the name and date ,you cannot do much.The most I could do was to watch the teacher pick his nose standing alarmingly close.I wish my dad had been a great fan of zeenat aman.Maybe he would have named me zeenat in her honour.

Then there was this viva we had at school and college.I was the first one to present myself to the panel.The first one to enter the arena.All the eyes zoomed towards me as roll number 1 was called in to start the proceedings.I felt like I was entering a boxing ring with a "ear-hungry" mike tyson in there.

And at that time , the panel guys were as fresh as dew drops.But started off with the vigour of a viagra drunk bull seeing the first lad of the day.I always got the toughest questions.The freshest questions.And there was always this huge crowd of my classmates waiting outside when i finally escaped from the interview room. And they pounced on me asking things like the number of guys in the panel , if they were polite , if they gave me any clues about the answers.Now I know how the CBI chief feels when mobbed by a gang of journalists.

Even at the school assembly we had in the mornings.I was right at the front of the row.Facing the stage with the school head master and a few other frustrated men .They pulled me out if I had hair a little long .They said I was spoiling the decorum of the school by sporting unkempt hair on my head.While guys at the back with perfectly electrocuted hair styles were left untouched.And those boring speeches that were made at those assemblies.The guys at the back of the row yawned , scratched their heads , gawked at the girls while I listened to the principal muse about "corruption in society and what students can do about it.

"Even the telecom revolution has added to it.Now as is expected , my name is usually the first name in the phone books of known ones.So sometimes , my number is dialed unintentionally/accidentally by them due to pressing of keys. Once the entire foundation design lecture was beamed live to my home through the cellphone of a blissfully unaware classmate . Once this "unintentional dialing" happened when the other guy was with his girlfriend.I found out a lot that day.I still manage to blackmail him.

And this roll no. 1 thing somehow stuck to me.Few called me anirudh at school/college.I was jokingly called coolie no.1 , hero no.1 , aunty no.1 , khiladi no.1 , biwi no 1 and a lot other no.1's .Courtesy David Dhawan.

A guy even called me a McDowell.On further probing , i found McDowell had a punchline : mera No. 1 .

And how close I was to escaping this identity crisis.My grand pa had named me Debabrat .Debabrat.Starts with D.But then they could not see a happy cuddly Debabrat and named him anirudh.

But things were partially better when I gave the NEBOSH exam .the parents of one of my batchmates watched a little too much of "mahabhaarat" on doordarshan. Besides becoming a little more of couch potatoes , they got inspired by the episode with the "chkravyuh stunt" and named my batchmate Abhimanyu. So I was the roll no.2 on the exam day.Who says doordarshan sucks ?

But I hope some good comes out of it.You can spare your kid this agony.In true sarkaari style : " Zara si saawdhaani , Aur zindagi bhar ki asaani."When you think of naming your little bundle of joy , just remember my story.Dont name him without knowing that one mistake ,and things can be a lot worse.Name him/her zaheer , zayed , zeenat , zaakir, zubeida.

If you are running out of names.just name him a simple "ZEBRA".Aamir Khan.Zebra Khan.I would prefer the latter any day.

The year that was

A very happy new year to you , ur family , ur neighbours , ur pet dog , ur milkman , ur newspaper boy and ur postman. its 3.30 am and my love with insomania continues.the year was pretty reasonable , perhaps the most defining of my life.so lemme look at the tyre marks im leaving behind on the road called life this year.

~~ I resigned and joined a new company, over came the fear of switching jobs, places and boss.

~~ Started studying again.

~~ Passed the ISO Auditing exam and became certified ISO auditor.
~~ Passed American Institute of concrete certified practitioner exam.
~~Appeared in the NEBOSH IGC exam whose results will come on 28th Jan.
~~Started preparing for GMAT .
~~i m a bit tidy than last year , i think.though my room looks like an assortment of dirty clothes , empty wafer bags , coke cans and chocolate wrappers ,books and magazines, I m alive and brush my teeth everyday .

~~ I am not saving as a saved in last year . But i kinda make up for that by assuming a spiritual face and saying " i dont want too much money , u see ". ~~ I managed to start a blog and keep it going.Though many of u must have had this urge to send me a letter bomb due to this blog , ive enjoyed it. ~~ I still love the same girl i loved at the start of the year.her parents named her aishwarya rai.u might have heard of her. ~~ I made the path breaking discovery that humans can survive without sleep.the guinea pig was me for this experiment , courtesy the not-so-lovely work schedule at KPTL.

~~ I developed this funny ability to know when to stop.and i feel i should stop now.

She didn't wished me good luck this year, For last 8 years her good luck wishes made me overcome all the hurdles i faced. Hope even thou she didn't wished me good luck her best wishes will be always with me.

Hope she is alright and bearing that mesmerizing smile which reaches straight to the heart.

A very happy 2009 to all of u again.be happy and make others happy , atleast make me happy.