The decade that shaped my life…

I know I am a couple of days late in penning down the thoughts that swarmed my head on 31^st night as the world and along with it I moved into the years where the third digit in the year part of the date will never be zero. The reasons for this tardiness can be many but plain laziness that has described me over the last 2 and a half decades would be the biggest culprit for this delay.

2 days ago it was the end of 2010 and along with it the end of the decade 2001-2010. The decade which formed my life, which shaped it, which distorted it, which convoluted it and which all with its negatives and positives will remain with me for whatever number of decades I live on from now on. Start of 2001 I was in school, about to write the final school exams of my life, wondering at nights and worrying at days as to if I would be able to make something out of my ordinary life. Everything, if not everything then at least most of it, was to be decided in the next 6 months with me about to see if I can land up at a good institute for graduation. In 2000 I did not know there is a thing called IIT that exists and in 2001 I failed to get into one. I still do not know why I did my engineering and what I learnt from it technically. But looking back at those 4 years, I can surely say I learnt a lot and started becoming who I am today. I made my first best friends, stayed for the first time in a hostel, shared a room for the first time, had a fight with him from the first time, worked in an organization for the first time as a trainee, bunked classes for the first time and did not end up being in the top 2 ranks for the first time. 2004 December was the last time I asked my father for money to spend on myself and 2005 January was the first time I bought my parents a gift from my own first stipend. That was also the first time someone superior complemented me for a job well done and made an ever-standing job offer which I can take even today if I want to work with him again. I had my first remember able crush in 2004 in college (albeit I am pretty sure there were many before that, just that I don’t remember them). And 2004 August was the first time when I had 3 high paying jobs in my hand, the sum total of which was the highest in the institute at that time.

Joined my first full-time job in 2005 at a company whose name my mother still cannot spell or pronounce and whose work stream I got to know only after my first project. Analytics as a word was never in my dictionary then and it never really mattered since the job was in Delhi and paid 25K as the starting salary which was enough for me then. Years passed by and 2006 was the year I first went out of the country and it was also the fateful year I fell in love for the first time. People do crazy things in love and I was no different though I just don’t remember most of the crazy things I did. Maybe I should have done more of them. Anyways, 2007 was the first time of the second time I wrote CAT that I got interview calls and it was also the last time I had to write CAT. 2007 was the year I had my scariest accident, the scars and memories of which still send shivers down my spine. It was also the year where I returned being among the top 2 ranks and it was also the year I got my summer internship with the employer I still work for. 2008 was the year I went to Europe for the first time (of the many more times to come) and it was also the year world came falling in October. It was the year that crushed many a dream and brought many a people back to earth. 2009 was the first time I worried about my future. But the year and the morbid start to it were not able to make me compromise on too many things. 2009 was the year I finished my formal education and it was the first time I felt some part of me was left behind at the place I lived for the last 2 years. When I got my gold medal in front of 500 people, it was the first time I saw pride in my parents’ eyes, a pride that compounded when Director of the institute and Chairman of BHEL stood up to shake their hands and congratulated them. It was the first time when I realized that I may have done something good with my life.

2009 was also the start of my unending professional life and it was the first time I lived in Bangalore. It was also the first time I saw a formula 1 race live and watching the live race was the first things to be ticked off my bucket list. As the months passed by, I for the second time was worried about my future and first time worried that I may have messed up the IIM degree and the gold medal. 2010 came unannounced and I just hoped that the last year of the decade brings some joy to my life. It did and that too in the very first week of the very first month of the year. March was the month I came back to Delhi. Life seemed back on track. 2010 was the year I got my first car and it was the year we moved into a bigger house. The year did play some tricks though and it was the year I finally said good-bye to the only person I ever fell in love with. Life moved on with its own funny ways with me being in an airplane almost every week. The year ended appropriately with me on a plane destined to Delhi on the night of 30^th of December.

Looking beyond the events and anti-events, the hits and the flops and the fast flipping pages of the calendar, I wonder how I have changed over all these years. How have my expectations changed, evolved, got distorted? How have the things that mattered to me 10 years back changed? And most importantly how have the things that did not matter to me 10 years back suddenly became so important? 10 years back all I expected was to get into a good engineering college and hoped for getting a job that would pay me 2-3 lakh annually. Last year I was earning half of that much in a month. 10 years back I would have been happy with this money, last year I was not. No, it wasn’t about the money. 10 years back I would not have got up at 5 AM on a cold December morning and ride a bike in the pitch darkness fighting the cold winds, all the way to railway station just to meet someone for 10 minutes. I did that in 2008. 10 years back I would not have called my classmates mediocre and would not commented on their way of thinking. I did that in 2008. 10 years back I would not have spent 30K for watching a car race, I did that in 2009. 10 years back I would have married any girl my parents selected for me. I could not do that in 2010. 10 years back I would have asked my parents for advice, I don’t do that anymore. 10 years back they would offer me an advice, they don’t do that anymore. 10 years back I had horrible English and could not have written an article. Today, my blog has more than 12000 hits and 200 comments. 10 years back I did not know what love was; today I am scared of falling in love.

Some things still haven’t changed. 10 years back I was in top 2 of my class. 2009 I was back there. 10 years back I lived happily with my parents in Delhi. Today again I am enjoying the chill of Delhi sipping a cup of tea made by my mother. For the rest unchanged things, I don’t remember them since they never changed.

10 years surely is a long time but in some measures its nothing. Some things never change, some do and some maybe will. Who knows where I or you will be at the end of this decade. What will change and what will not. Doesn’t really matter since there is nothing we can do about it. Just pray that things that should not change don’t change and things that should change do not take a decade to change. Amen!!

Unpredictable, unforgiving and uncertain

Being in a philosophical mood, I want to share 3 feelings I have currently. All these are learnings from the happenings of the last few days.

First. Life is unpredictable. Life is uncertain. And maybe that is the best thing about life; you don’t know what’s going to happen in the very next second. All of us know this but funnily enough none of us acknowledge this truth. We always keep fighting for trivial things in life be it a degree or diploma or be it a job. Why do we do all this struggle, knowing very well that all is going to end someday, maybe tomorrow itself. Well, I answered a friend of mine that we do all this just to kill our time here on Earth. Since we are here, why not as well do something to make sure that we don’t feel bored until we die. People might disagree at this and even laugh at this, but I could not find a better reason for anything which all of us do knowing the end result. And people say that human beings are rational. Are they?

Second. We all take many things in our life as granted and unless you see someone devoid of them and suffering because of that, you never care about that. Life is nothing without the love of near and dear ones. We take for granted the love of our mother and the protection of our father and never give a second thought to it. Think about someone who for any reason is devoid of this. Life can be seriously incomplete and difficult for such a person. Reasons can be the complete absence of parents which is generally uncontrollable and it is an utter misfortune of the person. For someone, who has both parents alive but who still do not want to nurture this child is the worst thing that can happen to this kid. They may have differences amongst themselves but this child is in no way to be blamed for it and do not deserve such a punishment. They may have some constraints, some reasons but how can they kill their feelings towards their own child. The mother who gave birth to this child after keeping it in her womb, who fed this child with her own milk, would require a super human effort to detach herself from the child. In this case, human beings have a lot to learn from animals. Look at a female monkey, even after her child is dead she doesn’t want to believe this truth and keeps the dead body attached onto her and behaves as if nothing has happened. She doesn’t abandon even a dead child. A dog would kill you if you as much as touch his child. I am not generalising but even one case is disturbing enough. What happened to the human emotions? Is it a case of modernity or showcased modernity?

Third. Friends are irreplaceable. That is the best bond people make other than the blood bonds and I would say sometimes these bonds are stronger than the God-made bonds. Some people are very lucky to have friends who are ready to be with them at all times in all situations. A friend can make you smile when you are down about a family member. A friend can make you laugh when all you can think of is to cry. And a friend can make you believe like you are the king, even though you are an idiot. One good friend is all you need to become the richest person in the world. The best thing about friendship, it can happen anytime in your life and with anyone. I remember the movie, “Cast Away” where Chuck made a basketball his friend and lived with it for 4 years on an isolated island. He talked with it, he fought with it and he even cried his heart out when he lost it. He would have been dead long back had he not humanised a non-living object like a ball. For him, it was not a ball; it was Wilson, his best friend.

Cherish all the good times you have today because who knows what would happen tomorrow. Don’t take things and people for granted, you only realise their worth when they are gone, far from you. And try your best to preserve them, don’t be a fool to throw them away. You are one of the luckiest people to have had the chance of making your life beautiful.

Birthdays and time zones

I somehow end up being at random places (read countries and cities) on my birthdays since the last 3-4 years. Places which either have a different time zone from India or even if I am in India on my birthday, it somehow ends up being celebrated in strange locations. Weird locations are still acceptable since I don’t have to worry about celebrating my birthday according to various time zones where some friends wish me when its 12PM according to their time while it’s still late evening at my location. Let’s see how time zones have mattered in 2 of my last 3 birthdays and how the only remaining one was celebrated in a bus

24 September 2006: Singapore, 2.5 hours ahead of India meaning that it was 12AM of 24^th in India when it was 2:30 AM in Singapore. So I got calls from friends in India at 2:30 AM in the morning. Of course their argument that I was born in India and not in Singapore justified the time of wishing. Fortunately I was celebrating my birthday at a beautiful beach in Singapore so I dint have to wake up to pick up the calls. But yeah, that birthday was nice, serene beach and a bunch of friends to enjoy with till wee hours of the morning. I think it was till 4AM. But confusion due to time zone made many of my friends to wish me twice, once according to Indian time and once again to Singapore time.

24 September 2007: This time I was in India so no confusion due to time zones but I was travelling on a bus from Bangalore to Kozhikode that night. Fortunately had 4 friends with me on the bus and we did make sure that the entire bus wakes up at 12AM with loud noises and celebrations. A makeshift cake in the form of a chocolate bar was there for me to celebrate my 24^th birthday. Of course, that meant that I was saved from the customary birthday bumps. Lack of critical mass to do that

24 September 2008: It was the turn of Germany this time, 3.5 hours behind India. In simple terms 8:30PM here meant that my birthday actually started in India. Taking things a bit ahead, it meant that it was 2:30 AM in Singapore. So while I was getting ready to cook something to eat for my dinner, I got calls to wish me from sleepy friends in Singapore who wished according to Indian time. It would have been easier for them and much more complicated for me had they decided to choose Singapore time (was in a class at that time). Indian friends were confused as to should they wish me according to Indian time or European time. Some wise people decided to use the German time and other stuck to the logic of “You were born in India and not in Germany” and wished me according to Indian time. Of course, I am talking about chats and pings and scraps, since not many people called from India. Maybe rising financial crises and falling rupee is the reason. And even I was confused in this time zone mix as to when should I stop feeling like a birthday boy; according to India or according to Germany. And I decided to extend the day by 3.5 hours on both sides, start by India time and end by German time

A quarter century of my life which started in India and ended in Germany was spent with not many friends. No birthday bumps and no cake on the face to make you smell of egg for days. It was simple, sober and different. Silver jubilee celebrated in Frankfurt with an Indian dinner at a Pakistani restaurant. Truly a globalised world!!

In love with nature

Pretty late in the night, sitting on a pile of to be submitted assignments and an impending quiz tomorrow, for some weird reason he feels like writing something. Best part is that he has nothing to write on, no controversial topics to provide his POV on and no global topics to be an expert on. After lengthy thoughts, he starts believing that it is the weather that is playing its part in making the mood of almost a workaholic to run away from his laptop and books to listen to soothing songs and let his mind wander around in search of nothing.

What he feels when he listens to the sound of the heavy rain falling on the innocent green wild bushes is a feeling of tranquillity amongst this noise. He searches for stars in a heavily clouded night and lets the cool breeze slap his face with full force, making his face wet with the cold rain water. He imagines the fog that will soon engulf this serene place and would make it almost look like a white paradise where life stands still and is free of worldly vices. And in all this background, his ears are recognising the lyrics of a beautiful song sung by Kishore Kumar, making him join the singer in the song.

He wanders further and reaches a place where his ears are immune to any sound or noise, he thinks of people he normally doesn’t think about, he starts to relive his childhood when he was free to run in the rain and nobody cared. He remembers the days when he thought of nothing and just flowed along. He remembers the days when he played flute and enjoyed his cricket. He remembers living life without realizing that he is reaching slowly towards a point of no return to these blissful days. All his friends of childhood flash in front of his eyes, calling him to play with them, as he finishes off his glass of milk to run to the park.

Not having any more words to write on nothing, he signs off looking in the sky singing the song, “Jagamagati Hui Jaagti Raat Hai, Raat Hai Ya Sitaaron Ki Baraat Hai”, amidst no signs of any stars. What he sees is the cheerful swaying of the trees and bushes, enjoying the thumps of the wild rain lashing around this beautiful place, without complaining as if the pain of being beaten by this rain is overwhelmed by the joy of being so close to it. Pain and joy, always had a close relation, with one following the other almost always and this he realises today in its fullest practically. Nature, as they say is very powerful and he bows his head to it.

From 601/MPA/01 to PGP/11/132

These numbers may look strange to many of you, at least one of these to most of you. But for me, these define who I am today and who I will be later in my life. The first of them is my engineering roll number and the later is my current roll number at IIMK.

Roll numbers have a greater effect on a person than a prisoner number. Roll numbers decide whom you sit with in the class, roll numbers decide who would be your group member for a team presentation, roll number decide your sitting position in the exams which greatly influence your chances of passing the course, and sometimes roll numbers end up deciding the person you are going to spend your life with. Actions are also defined by roll number; people sitting in the front row due to roll number behave in a certain way which lucky chaps sitting in the last row don’t need to. Sitting with a pretty girl makes you study for a quiz so that you can help the damsel in distress and score some brownie points, not to mention the sober look on your face throughout the day irrespective of the professor or the course.

But for me, these numbers have a meaning far beyond this. For me these numbers represent the institutions I belong to. A part of me is not Alok, its either 601/MPA/01 or PGP/11/132. I become 601 whenever I see a lathe machine or an engine assembly, curiously wondering why am I not working on this. Opening and closing gates of a metro train remind me of the pneumatics and hydraulics learnt as roll number 601. I still remember that a single phase motor drives a fan or a cooler and why diesel engines make more noise than a petrol engine. I am no longer baffled when I see new inventions around me, I know exactly how rotating things rotate and moving things move. 601 made me a computer hardware engineer expert also making me dexterous in installing new RAMs or adding a friend’s hard disk to copy some nice and new stuff. It taught me to live in a hostel and enjoy with people from different parts of India. It gave me my best friends who are still with me sharing my joys or sorrows.  4 years at 601 made me an expert in writing exams and acing them without slogging hard. It made me a decent presenter and speaker, and it also made me a gossiper. Being 601 was my first head-on encounter with life.

Life as 132 is a bit different. Life is more complex, more hectic and more confusing. But 132 brought some changes in me nonetheless. Sleeping in the classes is something 601 never did but 132 does it almost every day. 601 bunked classes but 132 cant. 132 is more aware of his surroundings and is no longer an easy target for manipulation. 132 fights for what he feels is right while 601 generally did not know what was right. 132 is more mature while 601 enjoyed with the child within him. 132 will make more money than 601 but 132 has lesser friends also as compared to 601. 132 can blurt out gas for hours while 601 could speak on technical stuff for hours. 132 is hollow while 601 was as solid as stainless steel. Teachers still remember 601 but hardly anyone would even recognize 132.

Many times 132 envies 601, for the innocence and the freedom 601 had. And 132 misses 601 too. In the end, it was 601 who made 132 and not the other way around. And hence, Alok will always be an engineer before an MBA, no matter what he does or for what is he paid for.

Memoirs of an year

As the entire class huddled up shouting and cheering after the end of the last session which ironically belonged to HRM, it all came back to me. The first day of first term here was similarly drenched in water and marked by thunders as if it was an ominous sign of things to come. Things came and things passed by; acquaintances became friends; professors came, spoke and went; exams and quizzes became a part of life; in a way things changed, for good or for bad, depends on viewpoint.

The sky is pouring as if it wants to wash away all the pains and miseries we went though over the last three terms, supposedly a year, here at IIM Kozhikode. The rain Gods are pleased to see us through and are making this day as cool as possible for us. It may be the weather only which is making us all so happy on reaching this small but significant milestone. It was nice to see all the supposedly serious and crème-de-la-crème future MBAs forgetting everything and cheering together for that one momentous group photograph. It looked very innocent to see people running and shouting pleading to the camera man to click one photo of them in that one unique and arbitrary pose which they are gonna see 1000 times in their lives and laugh nostalgically.  Even the professors joined the fun and posed for the group photograph in their own unique ways, some even doing it just during the quiz. Never seen a crowd of 66 people running rout in the campus during a weekday right in broad daylight, so much so that we even gave bumps to someone in the administrative block itself…

What is this or why is there so much euphoria on completing just one year when all of us know that the next year will be much more eventful? Probably this has something to do with the belief that all of us now have, “Surviving this, we can survive anything coming our way”. And of course the end of this year marks the end of some of most ridiculous (for someone or the other) courses taught by boring professors who take pride in stretching the class just to show how much they want to give to their students. Whatever maybe the reason, everyone is happy including the rain Gods, so have fun and party…

Life as exponential functions

 

A weird thought crossed my mind while sitting and lazing around; the exponential growth/decay function which almost all of us studied in our high school for the first time and forgot then and there is so much prevalent in everyday life; the effect of which is much more visible in case you are an MBA student. Let me start by defining an exponential function in a true layman language: Anything which grows or decays at an alarmingly fast rate is said to follow an exponential function. We will see the variants of these as we go along.

Let’s start this intellectual discussion with Exponential growth function. Many things follow this growth function but I will limit the scope again to life in a B-school. The capacity to complete assignments just before deadlines, the capacity to present a presentation which you have never seen in your life before, the capacity to be prepared for a quiz are very simple examples of this. When you start in a business school, an assignment due next week is completed at least 2-3 days before the deadline. Similarly, when you know that there is going to be a presentation which you are supposed to make in front of the class/teacher, you at least look at it once before going to the lecture. A simple 5 or 10 marks quiz would have generated some interest in the first term. Now the assignments are done Just In Time, the presentations are made On The Spot and the quizzes are taken Business As Usual. There are some other things which may follow an exponential growth curve, some of these might be debatable and highly person dependant. Ability to doze off in the class, ability to ask irrelevant questions in the class, ability to gossip, ability to get up just in time for the morning class, the attraction towards the opposite sex (among the sample available in campus), the desire to get out of the B-school with that elusive job; all increase exponentially as you progress from Term 1 to Term 3. The ability to be practical in life would increase exponentially once you are done with your summer internships is one thing seniors have told me though I need to verify it myself.

A few examples now of the exponential decay function. Just notice the number of people studying in library in term 3 and compare it to term 1 or compare the number of students attending the morning class or the number of student actually reading the case/chapter scheduled for a class; they all follow an exponential decay function. The library looks deserted and the morning class resembles a morgue with half empty seats and half seats occupied by sleep deprived zombies, though only 1% of these zombies actually lost their sleep over some constructive work. Other things following this function can be the level of tolerance, the respect for fellow mates, the respect for system, the inhibitions about the three letter word, the fidelity towards your “already engaged” partner. Again, these are effects that are highly person dependant.

So if you see, I have classified almost everything people do and learn in a business school by means of exponential curves but still there are some things which don’t follow this function. And if by chance you noticed, I did not classify “the actual learnings of an MBA” anywhere, neither in growth nor in decay. For some it’s learning and for some it’s destruction of common sense and logical reasoning and I have no intentions of hurting either of these two groups. You see, one more thing follows an exponential growth function, the art of being tactical and diplomatic

 

 

The burden of past

The biggest question in life faced by almost everyone is how and when to forget the past and move ahead in life. How long somebody is ready to carry the burden of his/her forgettable past and people who made that past is totally a personal question which nobody is comfortable facing or answerable. People for the sake of being or showing courageous and strong, pretend that things happened in the past are gone and they totally have started to live in the present but, is that totally or even partially true? Most of the normal mortals unwillingly go on carrying the burden of their past which either they invented themselves or was gifted to them by someone else.

This burden of past goes a long way in making sure that the individual suffers a lot in the present thinking about people and things that were a part of the past and are no longer a part of the current and future picture. He keeps on thinking about the possible ways he could have reacted or behaved which could have modified the past and may have been more beautiful. He thinks and tries to analyze the possible reasons for a particular behavior of his or of someone else which affected the normal functioning of his daily life. Doing this, he generally goes overboard and ends up scratching the uncalled for moments in the history and more often than not, too strongly.

There is no doubt that the mistakes done in the past are the best possible way to learn about yourself and improve your life unless you are a compulsive repeater of them and can’t breathe without doing them again. The only caveat in this self-learning cum introspection is that people generally over analyze things and ultimately end up making things more complicated in the present. It also happens that if things in the past did not go too well, people may altogether forego that particular action once and for all which might inhibit the natural instincts that a particular person possesses. The fear of repeated failure makes them take this path of abstinence, again making their present life pay for the past.

I am not giving any arbitrary gyaan about some random topic without a reason. When to chuck the fear and inhibitions imposed by the past is a question most of us find unanswerable. What should be the best possible way to forget it, I don’t think there is a particular correct answer. Had there been something of that sort, life of millions of people would have been better who otherwise continue to suffer burning in the fire that something or someone set them on sometime back. I wish there was a rewind and delete button in the human brain that would have made this possible but since that is currently impossible, is there another way to get rid of the past??

Indians and Politics

This may be a very contentious issue to be tinkered with but what’s the point in trying to tame a meek goat when it would be much more fun to fight with a raging bull. So let me try to control this bull with some logical points which may not go down so easily with everyone, and for the rest take these words with a pinch of salt as is generally done with Tequila shots for reasons know to everyone.

The linkage and affection of politics and Indians is almost as old as that of earth and sun. As no one can comment on “Who came first, chicken or egg?” nothing conclusive can be said about this issue also. The recorded history shows Rama being sent to exile by the political Keykayi, this may be the first instance of politics ever played but who knows what happened before that. The affection of Indians with politics can be attributed to many reasons some of which I would enumerate here.

1) 1) Inherent tendencies to think: Right from our childhood we see people fighting and politicizing against each other, day in and day out. An innocent child learns politics from his mother and grandmother politicizing against each other, the father and his boss politicizing against each other. He grows up in such an incubative environment that it is difficult for him to resist his newly developed instincts from trying on people around him on the first chance he gets to use.

2) 2) Extreme amount of free time: Plenty of people don’t have much to do in their day to day lives. Result, they start thinking laterally, on issues which don’t affect them, issues which are irrelevant for them. Twisting and bending each fact becomes a source of enjoyment in their otherwise boring and wretched lives. The fun to do something wrong to an unsuspecting person is something which they strive for. Rumor mongering is a favorite pass time of good for nothing people who can otherwise do nothing constructive in their eternal free time.

3) 3) The tendency to have an opinion on everything: How many of us don’t think that they can be a better prime minister than Manmohan Singh or a better cricketer than Sachin? Almost all of us believe that whatever is happening is wrong and could have been better if they were allowed to pour in their invaluable contribution towards everything. This is not only true for bigger things like these but also for much smaller and inconsequential things like student body functioning or even the working of a non-profit volunteer club. So awesome people try to become more awesome by criticizing the lesser awesome incumbent members of each organization.

4) 4) The tussle of mediocrity and meritocracy: Again a live wire to touch, but people who are mediocre and more importantly themselves believe that they are mediocre try to fight merit by the only possible way which is the political way. Equitable distribution is their slogan since distribution on merit is something which would leave them starving and naked on the street. Result, targeted political attacks on people who don’t even need to be political, their merit would take them places they want to reach, places which these people can only day dream of.

The truth of these statements is reflected in the amount of tussle for every student body election in every university, be it at graduate level or post-graduate level. These tussles sometimes become very poisonous as seen every year in DU elections with violence marring the democratic process. The love of politics and power is so ingrained in each one of us, that we make sure to live up to them even outside India. A simple look at other universities outside India would show the manpower we have in their student bodies. This may be good or bad, that is an issue we are not debating on. The issue is the preference this thing takes over primary academic activities. Some people might argue that had it not been the case we wouldn’t have had so many politicians, after all almost all of them started their political career from DU only. And who knows, it may have been better for our country.

Nobody could escape the ever growing sphere of influence of politics and politicians. If lord Rama couldn’t escape the politics played by his own mother, who are you and me to even think of escaping it. I have poured in my opinions about this issue in front of you, after all you see; even I have an opinion about things. Think twice before liking them or hating them, for this is a total non-political effort in putting in my opinions.

Adios 2007

One more year passes by itself. One more eventful year will soon be past. It would be remembered and mentioned to as last year, something as a part of the history of everyone’s life. Many things happened this year, to many people, people I know and people I don’t know. I would not write about things that happened to me here since this a public forum. That, is a part of my life and remains in my diary, for me and only me.

The year started off with children being killed by a pedophile in some village near Delhi again showing the true face of the intelligent and sensible species called homo-sapiens. Nothing could match the barbarism of the act, I believe it was more gruesome than Gujarat riots since over there some people could still argue about “Who started it” but here there is nothing like that. Poor innocent children were sodomised/raped and killed brutally. Look at the beauty of the system, the case hasn’t even started its trial and the accused may even go scot-free. The only possible way for people like these is the way adopted by villagers in Bihar where they simply killed the accused themselves. No point in waiting for monsters like these to be given a chance to go away. This may be termed as lawlessness in itself but I guess that is the only possible way out.

Next big thing was the hoola-boo regarding OBC reservations in IIMs/IITs for this academic session. Doctors protested to prevent their interests, were given some consolations by the vote hungry politicians, but all it resulted in was delayed results for almost all entrance exams keeping thousands of aspirants waiting. Nothing happened in the end, no reservations and the sanctity of these institutes of excellence was preserved for one more year. People died in Rajasthan, some demanding for ST status and some stopping these people. Funny, isn’t it, it’s only in India where we see a race amongst people to show poorer and more helpless and deprived than others. Development is a curse, for it may result in removal of the stigma or shall I call “blessing” of being in a reserved category.

India did sign the nuclear deal with US. I don’t know whether it is good or bad for Indian interests, all I know is that it attracted too much attention than it deserved. Everyone became an expert on nuclear issues overnight and believed himself to be the only sane person around. I believe hungry peasants committing suicides are more important than a nuclear deal. People were brutally massacred in the name of SEZ development. Ironic enough this happened in the state with the strongest leftist connection. And that is why I believe CPI was and is quite over this otherwise they have a habit of crying their hearts out at even an itch in their groins, claiming it to be either communal or capitalistic or if nothing else anti-people incident. While people were being murdered there, our sensible politicians were busy debating about the authenticity of Ram Setu and the possible wrath perpetrated by all the Gods if someone touched it. Again, it doesn’t matter whether it is real or not, what matters is the usage of it today. If it can save millions of dollars every year for our country, Lord Rama would be more than happy to destruct it himself, but the issue became an issue of Hindus versus the rest, a communal issue which refuses to die.

Modi won again in Gujarat, this time on the tide of development though. Heartening to see people voting for development and rising beyond caste and communal politics. The biggest surprise was the win of Mayawati in UP. I don’t know after how many years, a single party will rule the heartland of India but it again is heartening. She may have won on caste politics, but at least the state has a stable government. Congress now needs something different than to yield the Nehru-Gandhi name every time they see an election, begging for people to vote for nothing but their name. Doesn’t happen this way, not anymore Mrs Gandhi. Politics showed its dirty and opportunistic face in Karnataka where support changed more frequently than moods of a pretty lady. Someone please give some lectures on ethics to these men.

India lost out badly in cricket world cup, failed to clear even the first stage after losing to Bangladesh. But we won the 20-20 world cup, touted by some as a planned tactic to encourage the game in the biggest economy of world cricket for all the commercial reasons. Don’t know if that is true, may be or maybe not, but it really pumped up everyone’s adrenaline for almost 3 weeks. India won against Pakistan in the home test series but is currently struggling against Australia down under.

Ash got married to Abhishek, a story covered with grandeur by all news channels 24 X 7 for days. They covered everything, I think except the honeymoon details. A new pretty lady came on screen in the name of Deepika Padukone and Kareena finally had some success. Shahrukh returned twice only to shock people both times, once for his character and acting in the movie Chak De and once for his artificial 6 pack and nude dance in OSO. The movie gave the best dialogue of the year, “Ek chutki sindoor ki keemat tum kya jaano Ramesh babu……”

Going global, US subprime mortgage crises was proved to be much bigger and worse than everyone expected. US economy would most likely go into recession and with it possibly Indian too. Rising rupee has already wrecked many industries looking to be ominously strong going forward. Pakistan finally going to have elections, how fair would they be is a different issue altogether. Bush not ready to accept his mistakes, in fact, escalating the commitment in Iraq. Other mundane issues like global warming, terrorism and communal violence remain like they always have been.

It has been quite an eventful year, filled with both good and not so good memories and happenings all around each one of us. Hopefully next year would be better with a higher proportion of happy ending than the heart wrenches. As Shahrukh said, till the time there isn’t a happy ending, the movie is not over my friend…