The Curse of Mediocrity

A recent discussion over a stupid 10 marks quiz being held again on the request of some students who couldn’t score well in the first quiz triggered this debate which I am going to elaborate with some more dimensions added to it. To summarize the entire debate which lasted for 2 days and died its natural death, let me just write that it was a debate between meritocracy and mediocrity. Some people might take some offence on this statement but, doesn’t matter to me.

 The love for mediocrity is not new in India. It started the very day reservations based on any factor were introduced in education, employment or any other field. Don’t confuse me with someone who is not in favor of giving equal chance to deserving but deprived section of society, what I am opposed to is the wastage of these chances over people who are neither deserving nor deprived. Economic reservation is justified but I am totally against the concept of caste based reservation. Somebody doesn’t become eligible to sit and talk with an intelligent person just because he/she is from a particular caste or tribe. This system has been grossly misused. First, the father was given reservation and he became an IAS officer, then the elder son became a doctor based on his caste and now his younger brother wants to reuse this to get into an IIM after wasting an engineering seat at IIT. By no means does he or his brother deserve this since they were given all possible facilities to study during their schooling. But they are given the chance and the seeds of mediocrity are sown which promise to pollute the entire system in the long run.

The second factor for mediocrity comes from the shoddy and “chalta-hai” attitude of people around. People are not ready to take responsibility for their actions. But they all want equal rewards as if the person who puts in efforts and takes responsibility is a fool. When somebody deserving wants to assert his/her right, beautiful words like selfish, perverse and self-centered etc etc are used. I want to ask one question, who stopped you from following the paths of the so-called selfish person at the first place? If he/she can do it, why can’t you? Are you not capable enough? Or were you so lazy that you didn’t care to think about the outcome in advance? If yes, then you are neither lazy nor casual, you are simply a fool fooling yourself and none else. You may get a second chance here since it’s just a training ground, but believe me mate, life doesn’t give second chances. A person who is better will always be better than you, he will always think ahead and foresee the consequences while you may be busy boozing around living in your own sweet dream world where everything works as you want. It doesn’t happen this way, and I pray to God for it to never happen this way.

Third factor is over emphasized love for social service, society and feeling of benevolence. These are noble feelings and should not be used for the sake of using them. Be benevolent to old, be kind to those who are hurt, be generous to the needy ones but be equally harsh to undeserving people. I don’t believe in the theory of “God made all equal in terms of thinking power and self control and deserve equally”, even if He did, the chaff is separated from the wheat very early in the life. People going to same school end up very differently, one may be a billionaire industrialist while the other may just end being his employee. What caused the difference, they both started together? The difference lies in their dedication, commitment and self regulation. One of them took responsibility of what he did while the other waited for somebody to feed him thinking that it’s the other person’s duty to feed him. Again, this doesn’t happen in real life. A person who feeds always remains superior to the person being fed.

I don’t know why people are so averse to hearing that whatever somebody does is for himself and for no one else, however disguised the actions maybe. Somebody who has put in many nights and days’ hard-work to setup a factory wants returns. He doesn’t care about the employment generated or the contribution to the nation a bit. Go and ask Ambani or Tata about why they started their empires, I bet on my life if they give the answer you want to hear. Nobody does anything for others for free. I am not talking about saints or God who are different; I am talking about poor mortals who are driven by desires of food, love and power. If somebody is in the illusion that the world will be generous to a lazy, irresponsible and undeserving bum, he is doomed for his life today or tomorrow.

I don’t know how many of you have read Ayn Rand but will like to say that thinking about yourself and your good is not perverse. What is bad is doing the same on someone else’s expense. Putting in hard-work to achieve what you aspire for is not being selfish; in fact it is the other way around. If you believe that someone else should come and give you what you want, then it is being selfish (you are living in a fool’s paradise is a different matter altogether).

My sincere request to everyone; think about what you want, try hard to achieve it and most importantly learn to take responsibility for your actions accepting failures on the way. And, there is no harm in thinking about you first!!!

Disclaimer: All the views are personal and not meant for anyone specific. It would be an utter misfortune if some people take it personally and feel offended.  

The Chetta Spirit Rockksss!!!

For the uninitiated, Chetta is the Mallu equivalent for Brother or “bhai”, and being in Kerala I need to use this word to attract attention of a passer-by if I want some help to find my way on the road. To avoid being sexist, let me also introduce the Mallu equivalent for the other gender, “Chechchi”, fondly used to address the lady working at the coffee vending machine in the campus.

Many of you may ask now, why am I teaching you Mallu at the first place? The reason is the adventures we had last night when we went to watch the movie Om Shanti Om. Being in Chetta land, we were highly fortunate to be able to watch a Hindi movie at the first place. The tickets are dirt cheap, you get to sit in a balcony seat, which we have long forgotten with the Multiplex era, and that too in 35 rupees (We spent 100 bucks on travel though). Compare this to the price of a pack of popcorn in PVR Gurgaon!!! And one more thing, you can stretch your legs also for maximum comfort. Coming back to the experience, I should divide the fun in two parts, the paid fun and the unpaid fun.

The movie was fun. The only condition is that you need to leave your brain either in the car or if you forgot to do that, put it on the seat next to you. Once you have done this, you are ready for an awesome joy ride. It starts with Rishi Kapoor dancing with Shahrukh, it shows you Manoj Kumar being beaten by the security guards, it shows you Deepika Padukone (God! She is Gorgeous, we will come to it later) dancing with Sunil Datt and Rajesh Khanna, it shows you flying Shahrukh Khan etc etc. And believe me, I enjoyed it!! The story is copied and the movie makes it clear in the first scene itself. The director nowhere pretends about showing a sensible and logical movie. Deepika looks stunning but is grossly underutilized. She doesn’t get any screen time, every moment of it is gobbled by SRK who looks ugly and malnutritioned dancing topless in the item song. Now here lies the difference, in Chetta land the entire crowd goes mad as soon as SRK makes an appearance on the screen and goes silent when Deepika appears. Whistling is on full swing for SRK but Deepika draws a blank crowd. From previous encounters with Chettas, it is also reported that the same was observed in the movie DON with Kareena and Priyanka failing miserably in luring Chettas with their pelvic thrusts. SRK is a craze here. I have never seen such loud claps, whistles and shouting for SRK before in my life.

The best part of the movie was when the projector stuck for 15 minutes. In such a case, some hooliganism is expected but we were shocked to see Chettas dancing and singing. Imagine 20-30 chettas singing Mallu songs and dancing bhangra to their own tunes, slapping chairs to generate some background score for it. The same situation in Delhi would have caused a silence resembling a morgue with a boy watching his girlfriend popping the popcorns with amazing grace and the same situation in Bihar would have caused a riot with the manager being beaten up. It was amazing to see the spirit of fun and enjoyment in a moment of frustration. Chettas rock!!!

I am longing to go back for a movie again there and praying for a power failure again. The net return on 35 rupees can nowhere be more than in a movie at Chetta land. Once again, Chettas and the spirit of Chettas surely rock. They sure know how to enjoy a movie. Way lot to learn, Delhi!!

Summer Placements @ a B-school: An annual circus

An annual circus that is organized in every business school which attracts the participation of many of the ringmasters from the corporate world to hire some musketeers for performing the same jugglery at their private circuses is branded as summer placements. But a circus cannot be organized without thorough preparation and planning else the ring masters might be displeased with the current lot of monkeys on sale.  So let me (a monkey) take you through the preparations which may put a wedding planner to shame.

 The preparation starts well in advance for the annual ritual of selling raw uncooked pieces of meat packaged as delicacies to hungry customers. The poor souls, the first year students, are asked to read read and read. Read about this, read about that, read about everything under the sun. Forget about academics, forget about personal life, forget about extracurrics, and some people do forget even sleep, food and other Maslow’s basic needs. They are told to mug up ready responses to clichéd questions like, Why finance/marketing/consulting? They are actually taught to lie about their ambitions, career dreams and even why are they alive. A “tell me about yourself” question becomes so difficult that it requires 100s of hours of coaching from 10s of people, 5 out of these 10 don’t know anything about their tomorrow themselves is a different thing altogether. So this process continues for a long time, junies are threatened repeatedly by senior musketeers who have gone through the same process of hire-purchase last year. A perfect example of Knowledge Sharing!! This entire process reminds me of annual festival of Baqrid, celebrated by muslims, wherein they feed and maintain a goat for one full month so that when it is slaughtered, better and more meat is obtained.

So our scapegoats are ready with impressive CVs to lure the best ringmaster. They all purchase nice costumes for the big day. The first step in the actual sale is coordinated by some internal ringmasters fondly known as PlaceCom members, who make sure that every monkey is looking like some imported kangaroo and every third grade ringmaster gives an impression of an expert in his field.  The ringmasters come with a jazzy presentation to lure the best monkey. Isn’t it nice, monkeys luring ringmaster and ringmasters luring monkeys!! Nobody knows who the smarter monkey is though. The masters indulge in a self appraisal mode crossing all lines of modesty, telling about the quality of food in the office canteen, the gender ratio, the cleanliness of toilets etc. After this blabbering comes the next part of announcing the names of shortlisted monkeys which suit the requirements of their circus. After all they can’t ask every monkey to jump for the same height. The rejected monkeys go back to their trees, some become sad, some cry, some shout, some drink and some simply go to sleep.

Meanwhile the shortlisted monkeys are taken to a separate chamber for further screening. The most dreaded part is called Group Discussion where the true colors of these monkeys come to play. Monkeys who ate together, smoked together now become enemies; they fight badly for a bullshit job in a bullshit place. They shout at each other, frown at their friends and show invisible middle finger to all around them. Hunger makes people do strange things. After this bullfight some more monkeys are sent home. The remaining monkeys are now interviewed and now it’s the turn of the monkeys to put modesty and humility to shame. Every answer is exaggerated to its limit; a simple thing is blown out of proportions and presented. Glib liars rule and honest monkeys lose. The sequence of lies continues till the ringmaster finally decides on the best monkey to dance in his circus. He goes back happily and I don’t think I need to mention about the joy of the monkey involved. Finally he is proved a superior monkey and may get some attention from the opposite sex. He is proved to be more adept in lying than others, he is proved to be a decent crook, and he can surely pull off a double face more easily than others.

This process of hire-purchase continues till all monkeys get a ringmaster. During this time, monkeys jump from one selection tent to other, changing their career choices in the flight time. They vomit the good things about a circus in front of that particular ringmaster, a sure shot formula for selection. The process is hard and takes a toll on the weaker monkeys; they get disheartened and lose hope, thereby losing their confidence to jump higher. A vicious circle sets in, a less confident monkey is more likely to fall down and a fallen monkey loses more hope. But for the rescue of these monkeys come forward the internal ringmasters. They make sure that finally every monkey gets a place to jump and dance. In the end we have a bunch of happy and gay monkeys who now believe that the world is theirs.

Now that the process is over, when I look back and ponder, I wonder; is this what is important in life? A 2 month internship which is less than 1% of our lifetimes suddenly becomes the end of the world. Why don’t we understand that nobody can change the world in 2 months, neither can we do it nor will we be allowed to do it? So then why this chaos, why these lies, why these back stabbings, why these heart breaks, why these nervous breakdowns, why this shameless begging, why these nonsensical comparisons? Is it only to show you are better of the worse or to be more precise, worse of the better? I don’t have an answer, if someone has an answer, please please do enlighten me. I would be indebted to you and who knows; I might come for a dance and jump session at your tree J, that too free of cost.

Disclaimer: The views aired in this article are the personal views of this monkey. No offences are meant towards other monkeys, ringleaders and circuses for sure. After all, I also need to dance and jump in a circus, and I can’t afford to piss off my ringmasters. 

Ek raat: Chai, maggi, madira aur 6 dost

What do you do when you and your friends achieve what they have been longing for a long time? This can be anything, what is more important is the feeling of achievement and happiness you all have. They know they have put in so much hard-work and smart-work and you know that you also have been anxiously waiting for them to do the same what you have done and have been waiting for them to cross the line and be on your side. So when all of you are on the same side of the equation, you enjoy, you celebrate and you have fun. This is a story of 6 people and one such night. I am not counting one or two more people as they did not fulfill the minimum qualification to enter the circus. They at best can be counted as guest appearances. For our ease let’s give names to these people, A, M, G1, G2, N and A2. To make the story more interesting I will surely exaggerate a little bit here and there, but most of it will be true. And I will surely try to explain people’s behaviors in technical terms, so bear with me.

The story opens with A and M returning from some official dinner when other 4 ppl are waiting for them with full plans for a fun filled evening, rather a night which ultimately culminates into morning. So after some initial hiccups with some of them having to attend some useless Peecha-pani meeting with some nice looking seniors etc, all of them reach A’s room with booze and beer. Now all of them being MBA students, you can’t expect things to go smoothly without ego clashes. G1 ordered Smirnoff but for some goddamn reason wanted to drink whisky which G2 was firmly appalled off. Theory of economics: When you have limited resources, you do not like any sort of competition. Before I forget him, there was one guest visitor sitting who was playing the role of moderator and to an extent a role of a spy. Ultimate motive, get some cheap thrill out of 6 drunk people. Theory of marketing: You always try to leak off extra information about your competitors for an added edge. But learning from the theory of adaptive learning, these 6 people let him down and forced him to go back. Important learning, without core competency it’s difficult to succeed only based on insider information.

Moving ahead, these 6 people finish off their spirits and suddenly feel hungry forcing them to eat. Mind you these people are on high and are becoming dangerous to the common man by the minute. They eat maggi and for some god forsaken reason drink tea. People do strange things, right. They all are happy and hence it doesn’t matter. Now, comes the best part. They start discussing Gyaan. Now discussing Gyaan is one thing but discussing under influence of alcohol is different ball game. It can get real heated up and hilarious too. A says something about common people which N and A2 agree too, but G1, G2 and M don’t. A perfect setting for an interesting GD. G2 debates rationally and to an extent agrees to A but G1 continues on his own track. M was always different and continues to be different. Voices becomes loud, patience of all being tested, it becomes interesting. Arguments over difference between arrogance and self-confidence become interesting. Mediocrity and intelligence are compared to each other. Knowledge based confidence and attitude based confidence are also discussed. By this time N has lost his interest and M has made all his points. So it’s A, G1 and G2 who continue to fight. G2 keeps saying, I agree to this entire bit what do we do about it? To this A replies, it’s not my freaking responsibility to teach people and generate confidence in them. He keeps on repeating, until you believe you are better than rest, you can’t be better than the rest. Humility and arrogance are once brought to the table by M who brings in good points to the GD but backs out before discussion actually starts. Things become tense with G1 taking all the airtime despite repeated pleas from A to give him some time to counter others and make a constructive contribution towards the GD. But as they say in Hindi, “Kutte ki  dum hamesha tedhi hi rehti hai”, things continue on the same track for some more time.

N stands up and declares the GD to be over and shows his inclination towards eating something. Group agrees and finally it was M who stopped all that crappy discussion about confidence, arrogance and humility. Looking around themselves, they realize its almost dawn, G1 and G2 for once agree and rush to get their cameras to capture the beautiful rising sun. So now they all capture pictures and leave happily towards their dens, some to sleep and some to write about it.

Alcohol makes you do strange things, some good and some bad. A discussion like that could not have happened without it and could not have been forgotten in the same way as well without it. I may not have been up till 7 in the morning to write the story of those 6 buggers and hence could have missed the beautiful and breathtaking view from hill top. The sun is shining on its full blast now and I feel its time for me also to get some sleep. Even an owl sleeps when sun rises, so happy good night to all of you J 

PS: No offenses to anybody, neither to named people and definitely not to guest appearances in the story. After all, it’s my version of the story and I have some liberty to express my thoughts. And, ultimately what are guest appearances and item numbers for if not to add spice to the story. Attached is a pic of that awesome morning for your viewing pleasure.