Noon at a bookstore

If there is one place on this planet where I would willingly give up my sanity, it would be inside a bookstall. It need not be a fancy place that tries to justify the price of the book you are inclined to buy from there by calling itself a bookstore, for we know that books ain't come cheap nowadays. 

The word 'bookstall', for some reason, instantly sounds a bit more synonymous with affordability, in comparison with the word 'bookstore'. Specially if the bookstall deals with second hand books. Talking about second hand books, there are very few things that beat the concept of a book being passed from person to person. A few thing that do beat this concept are chocolate, coffee, and adrenaline!

I had just watched this movie 'Chef', written, directed, produced and played by Jon Favreau, who's only earlier role I recognized, was 'Happy', Tony Stark's body guard in Iron Man. Firstly, why would Tony Stark need a 'Body-Guard'? What was the suit for? Eh? Specially after his 'I am Iron Man' stunt?

Just for the record,  'Chef' is a really good movie!

After the movie, my sister had a few things to purchase(as usual), so he left me to  my own devices, namely my watch and my cell-phone. And lo and behold! The first thing I saw outside the theater was... A bookstore!! The fancy kind!

What more could I ask? 2 hours, a huge room full of books and myself! And more importantly, as long as the shop owner didn't force me into buying a book from the store, in case the shop's POLICY didn't allow free reading, I was free to read stuff for FREE!!! You already get a sense of freedom, don't you?

Let me tell you the most gratifying sight in a bookstall! The most gratifying sight in a bookstall is the sight of a book kept there on a shelf that you have already read. The sense of gratification is tenfold if you managed to get hold of the book at a nominal price, specially if the book costs a fortune straight off the shelf!!

After filling my 'gratification' quota of the day, I moved around a bit into their 'movies' section. I rarely go into a bookstore with the intention of emptying my pockets into there, until I am feeling unreasonably generous to donate money. I usually go there to catch hold of movie and book titles that I think would be interesting. I make a not of them, loiter about here and there, and quietly leave the place, and then search for the cheapest possible place where I can get hold of the titles I had made a not of earlier in the bookstore. Nifty, eh? And I very blatantly accept my cheapness. I think it' a virtue!

So my today''s visit to the bookstall was no different. Got hold of a lot of interesting titles of books and movies that I hadn't heard of earlier, or had forgotten about them.

There was a book about Hitler getting out of his grave sometime in 2011, only to find that the world had come far from where he had left it in what? 1945? I mean, Duh! But the concept sounded brilliant! I hope I can get my hands on that book sometime soon! After seeing the price tag on the book although, I have postponed that soon to some time in future.

After window shopping through the bookstore, and going really mental about choosing a book for my 2 hour wait, I was really upset. I was hoping that I would run into a nerdy looking girl whom I could start a bookish conversation with. Alas! No luck. I could have even settled for a not-so-nerdy-looking lady in my vicinity. But again, alas! So I went back to re-sifting through all the shelves the bookstore had on display, this time, my search being a lot more diligent than the last time. But there is a disadvantage in being so sincere in your quest for reading material. You just end up wanting to read everything there is on display! Now this, we know, is not possible unless you happen to be Will Hunting from the movie Goodwill hunting, where you can finish off a book by just flipping through it's pages once, and toss it aside with an air of accomplishment. I swear on my life, that if I were granted one superpower ever!! IFF EVVER!! I would choose super-reading speed as my superpower. Okay, I guess I sound super nerdy when I say that. But then that's true...

Besides, inside a bookstore, where the walls are quite literally MADE of books, psychedelia pretty much hits you right in the head. The colors look so tempting! For some reason, orange looks very pleasing  on books. Specially when they are accompanied by an oval with a penguin inside the oval, if you know what I mean. Enough about me tripping on books!

Thankfully, I did run into a book that I thought would be worth my time. It was something about this guy, some Dan *Something*. The book was about this chap doing a study about intelligence, wherein he was planning on increasing his intelligence by traditionally suggested methods such as mind  training, exercise, diet change, listening to Mozart, so on and so forth. It was also about how many, if not most of these methods, commonly believed to spike intelligence, were most often mere speculations with no serious backing from research. 

While I was in the process of reading the book, my sister called. Shit!!! How come she's done with her shopping? This has never happened before! What was this? Her attempt at the world records for her shortest shopping session? With only an hour and a half, she must have easily beaten her previous time by a day, FLAT!!

Sadly, I didn't have the cash, nor the heart to purchase this book on intelligence by this 'Dan' chap. A good read though. And so, with a heavy heart, and thankfully not a lighter wallet, I left the bookstore.

I was rather pleased with myself for not giving into the obligatory purchases that I make out of guilt at a bookshop for making myself too comfortable inside one.

And that's how, I trotted out of that beautiful space! 

The Terminator guys weren't joking!

I am extremely paranoid about an apocalypse, specially the one involving some kind of artificial intelligence. Blame it on I having watched the entire Terminator series, or the fact that the concept in The Matrix, Minority Report, Transcendence or any of the movies involving machines taking over the world simply for the heck of it just doesn't plainly appeal to my sensibilities.
And it is not like such a time is far from the present we live in where humans will mindlessly give into the power of machines. Look around! How many faces can you count that aren't looking down onto some electronic device? And by saying that, I am being the biggest hypocrite of all! Right now, I am in front of my computer, typing my thoughts away. How do I know if what I am writing is being read by anyone else? Of course I do know that someone is reading what I am scribbling, and of course, there is the Internet, and we are presently living in a global village and blah.. blah.. blah. But who knows? What if there already is some artificial system in place that is maintaining what we believe to be is the Internet? What if the world has already been taken over by the machines, and we are living 'Duracell batteries' for machines to derive their energy from? Just that the machines must be really stupid to use heat from the human body as a source of energy, because they couldn't get hold of anything better.

Each time I hear the news of some machine out-doing some present human ability, I am filled with a sense of ambivalence. On one side, there's this thought of machine subjugating man, forever making man it's slave. On the other hand, a thought comes to mind. The thought being that how awesome it would be to overcome such an adversary that considers itself, and probably is superior to man in every possible way. The second thought somehow manages to far  outweigh the thought that the presence of a superior intellectual force may be in some way beneficial to mankind in any way.

All this rant from above was triggered by this hideously titled article in the Economic times called "15 ways the world will be awesome in 2050". The article is divided into 15 parts, as suggested by the title, each part being another reason for the world becoming more awesome by 2050.
Here are the 15 reasons.
Lower child mortality- Okay, totally agreed. I am not a parent, nor can I imagine the grief if my kid passes away real early, but from whatever little I have seen in the world, a lower child mortality rate sounds like it will definitely make future a better place to be in.

Vaccines and cures- This too sounds good, specially since the writer of the article is pretty sure of a cure for HIV and other major diseases being round the corner.

Live forever- Now here's where the trouble starts. By Live-forever, it is not like we are on the verge of finding the fountain of youth. Someone will apparently figure out a way to 'upload' our conscious and brain function into a machine. Yeah, right! As cool as it sounds, living forever? Seriously? Specially a life of perpetual servitude inside a machine? Still sounds appealing? By the way, if everyone keeps living, where are the new ones going to stay??

Fewer poor- Now this is pretty ridiculous. Anyone who believes that we all can live in a world without pain and poverty can, well, continue to believe so. But just for the record, the person is delusional, to say the least. By that, I in no way say that I am pro-poverty. It is just that poverty is an indelible part of our society's construct. Without poverty, there won't be aspirations. Without aspirations, there won't be efforts. And without efforts, there won't be progress. Unless the 'Fewer poor' entails getting rid of the poor in any way, like the 'Garibi Hatao' plan, which turned out more to be a 'Garib hatao' plan, poverty going down? I wouldn't be so optimistic.

Artificial Intelligence- Oh come on! This was a no brainer! How is it possible that A.I. won't be there by 2050? Google already has it's self driving car! Despite this, Self-driving cars is separately mentioned in the list of things that will make 2050 more awesome! Maybe we are waiting for more people to come with their own bandwagon of self-driving cars.

Clean energy- I do not understand what the writer of the article meant to say by mentioning this point about clean energy. You see, if we do not have any alternative energy before the said 2050, we, in all likelihood won't have any energy source at all!! So clean energy? Pah! Useless point!

Gender equality- There is only one thing I can understand from this. The machines will be so heavily involved in our works that they wouldn't differentiate between man and women. But yes, given that women are increasingly becoming subservient contributors to our work-force, the gender equality point will be a welcome change, specially if it stops one half of humanity from protesting over this issue.

Global literacy- Yes, sounds good.

Fewer wars- Of course, fewer wars!! In all likelihood, there will only be ONE war!! Man v/s Machine!

Internet everywhere- Again a no-brainer! We are all going to be contestants of BIG BROTHER! And big brother will be some higher non-human intelligence that projects itself in front of you wearing a face that looks most convincing/ intimidating to you. And how would global surveillance be possible without internet?

Organ transplants- Medical science will have progressed a lot by this time, so that sure sounds good.

Reproductive technology and Designer babies- Basically anyone at any age can have a custom-made baby of their choice, complete with the eye-color, intelligence, and disease resistance and skin preference. Basically, we'll be giving nature the finger. In one word, Gattaca!!

Universal translators- This device will allow us to go about anywhere and rant in our own mother-tongue and the person in front of us, regardless of where he is from(provided there is a computer programmer in his country), will understand what we are saying. So if a bunch of us from any given country go to China/ Japan, and both parties highly frustrated with the negotiations, and decide to abuse each other/ bitch in our own language, OOPS! There are going to  be a few fall-outs!
That is just in case if the machines haven't taken over. If the machines have taken over, then they won't need the translators. They, in all possibilities will kill us regardless of what we speak. To them, all will be Greek anyway!

I want to end this post with a joke my mom told me a very long time ago. Here's how it goes...
A man was super-lazy. He was so lazy that he didn't want to attend even nature's calls. So he told a friend of his to develop a machine that helped him with all his daily functions. So the friend of our lazy-lad worked diligently and made a machine that took care of all his friend's requirements.
There was only one button that needed to be pressed on the machine that would be sufficient to get the machine to work. Upon knowing this, the lazy chap thought- "Now who's going to push the button??"

What I am trying to say, that is if I am trying to say anything, is that more than anything, we are going to be taken by our relentless search for convenience before anything else takes us. There will soon be a time to choose between 2 things, namely freedom and convenience. Which one will it be?

2001- A space Oddity

Here's what we are going to do. Imagine the following lines in the voice of those obnoxious TELEBRANDS advertisement hosts, who inherently have their disgustingly condescending, patronizing baritone, that according to the advertisers, makes the customer oh-so-badly want to purchase their awfully annoying products. So, here goes nothing....

Ever wanted to get high, but had no means to? Or did the thought of your parents' reaction after them knowing that "Oh! My child got high!! Now what am I going to do??" ever stop you from getting high?? Or did the lack of availability of psychedelic 'shit' ever pose as a deterrent in your pursuit for gaining a higher consciousness?? 

NO PROBLEM!! We have the perfect solution to your problems! You shall get SO high!!, SO HIGH!!, SO HIGH!!! that Magic mushrooms will feel like candy from there on!! You shall feel things you never felt before, go places you never went before (Mind you, they may not be places you wanted to go), and if you did it right, you might just get past the 'Cerebral Palsy' phase so amazingly well described in the movie 'The Wolf of Wall Street'!!! Besides, if you do try this product, you might actually begin to develop the intellectual capacity to comprehend the contents of this page!

And the best part is a real revelation!! It is completely free of cost! You heard it!! 

ABSOLUTELY FREE!! 

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**Conditions apply, depending on your geographical location, more so on the internet policies of your geographical location.

I present to you STANLEY KUBRICK MOVIES!!!!!!

*Studio audience claps*

Watch them once!! Watch them twice!! Or any number of times! And you shall be left officially 'MINDF****D' every time! GUARANTEED!

I am not too sure about his movie 'Paths of Glory', but the rest of whatever there is, that has come out from one of the most controversial, albeit also most innovative and revolutionary minds in the movie industry remains mind-numbingly unintelligible. 

It's like this.

It starts with the background music. And here's how it starts... With a silence..... 

Then from somewhere, a Mozart, or a Ludwig or any of the musical maestros start off with one of their symphonies. All's good, all's fine. 

By the way, you may stop imagining all of this being read by the 'Telebrands' anchor, just in case you a haven't stopped doing so already.

So where were we? Yup, the background score. The visuals follow the background score, in terms of both, the feel and elegance. But that's where it all ends. Or at least the comprehension part of the story. What follows next although, is some kind of a concept that seems completely far-fetched to human abilities of imagination. Or perhaps not. What does follow is the innermost fear that each human carries within without realizing its presence. 

The background sounds engulf you in their crescendos to the point that you cannot overcome their rampantly increasing volume. Let's talk about the visual drama that plays the perfect accomplice to the music that has the sole purpose of killing your brain cells before they turn 70 years old. 

Imagine accelerating from stand still up to the speed of light as fast as you can imagine. I'll tell you what that might look like. And trust me, it probably wouldn't look like what you imagine at first. That is because usually, one only imagines things plainly being hurled at him/her all of a sudden. There is a bit of drama to it. 

Here's a small bit of detail that we mostly miss while imagining ourselves accelerating from standstill to the speed of light. Now, apart from imagining everything being hurled at you, also imagine your horizon expanding in all directions. It is like being able to see a lot more while looking straight ahead without needing to look left or right. This happens because a lot many more light rays are entering your eyes now, than at the time when you were standing still. What this should possibly feel like is everything actually moving away momentarily, unlike what we usually imagine.

Okkay, so 'Accelerating-To-The-Speed-of-Light' part is over. Now hoping that you considered all surfaces, specially your skin as friction-less,just for the sake of simplicity, we can proceed. By the way, just in case you didn't consider all surfaces 'friction-less', then we have a small problem. You have probably disintegrated into nothing long ago. But then, let's hope for the best and proceed anyway.

So you are hurling through space at the speed of light. It probably feels like moving through a bright-yellow tunnel with a black dot that is quite possibly the 'other' end of the tunnel. For all you know, you are cruzing through a worm hole. And since you are able to see a black dot at the end of your 'tunnel',you most certainly are moving towards a black hole. So basically, you are going to die.....

You are moving closer to the black hole every instant... And just to add to the effect, there is a screeching sound that seems to be increasing in both pitch and volume as you move closer to the black hole...

 Closer...Closer(louder screech)..CLOSER(even louder screech)..CLOSER(even more louder screech)..CLOSER(screech that feels like your eardrums are going to explode any moment!!!)!!! Oh Shit!! Oh SHITT!!!

All of a sudden, you are engulfed by darkness. There's silence. And it remains that way for a few moments.  You feel comfortable suddenly. Like you were wearing your night-pajamas. There is a light breeze blowing. Ahh.... how good it feels when the cool air enters your clothes and you want to stand that way for eternity... You open your eyes. You look around, only to find yourself standing at the edge of a ledge. Wow! That rhymed! Now, although you did not make a conscious effort to jump off, the ground below your feet disappears anyway. The ground looks like it is being hurled at you. You hit the ground. There's a skull-splitting headache that assures you of the fact that your skull has split into two. You are sure of your skull being completely smashed as you can see your brains blown all over the place, your blood spewing everywhere that you can see. Even you know you are dead. So you wonder "Oh! This is what after-life feels like".... But then, the next thought that comes in your mind is "Uh-Oh! Wrong thought!"

Suddenly the ground is the ground no more. It has turned into the ceiling, all in an instant. As if the forces of gravity developed a brain of their own. So now, you begin your never ending fall into an abyss. You feel like Alice in Wonderland. Mind you, the abyss is pure-White in color. You still feel like Alice in Wonderland nevertheless. You think to yourself- "Let's see how deep the rabbit-hole goes!"

You see a black dot again, and you go like "Oh! Bloddy hell! Not again, man!"

But as you close in, the black dot looks like something written on paper. As you move closer, you can roughly make out that there are two words written.. (I'll tell you the words in a while.)

You read the words, written in black Helvetica Bold. You notice something odd. The middle part of the alphabet 'D' is completely blackened. And you seem to be headed straight into the middle of the blackened 'D'. You are so sure you are going to crash. But you just move into a completely dark place. It feels like free space. You know why it feels like free space? It is because you can see the Earth exactly how it looks like from outer space.

The camera focuses on your eyes, showing the sudden dilation of your pupils. You can see the reflection of earth on your cornea. 

And then the screen turns black.

By the way, on your descent into the pure-white abyss, where you were feeling like Alice in Wonderland, the two words you saw written in Black Helvetica Bold(capitals) were......

THE END 

Dedicated to the one and only, Stanley Kubrick

Up in smoke

Chaos is a good thing. A good thing, specially for those who can see though it, who can make themselves disappear in its smoke.
If you want to feel what chaos feels like, think of what runs in your head when you think of a bunch of dogs running madly behind a car. Remember that you are very near by when this scene is taking place. Imagine what runs in your head moments before you fully register all the facts in the scene presented above. Just to add to the whole scene, add a sandstorm to the scenario. So you have a bunch of dogs running behind a car for reasons probably unknown to the dogs themselves, and all this happening when virtually everything is wrapped in a thick sheet of sand. Now all of a sudden, you hear a screeching sound, like a car's brakes locking all 4 wheels desperately trying to avoid a collision course with a pedestrian, stopping just in time. It is at a junction entering a 4-lane speed-way. The pedestrian heaves a sigh of relief.

You next hear a huge crashing sound from the back of the car. Whatever made the sound threw the car 50 feet onto the middle of the highway.

A police car is in hot pursuit of an over-speeding a Ford GT-40. The Ford, in all its glory appears like a streak of blue and white on the expressway. But the one in pursuit looks no less menacing. It almost looks like a battle of pure brawn, specially if someone manages to notice amidst the sandstorm the Black and white Chevy Corvette C7 behind. You see, it ain't no more a case where only the perpetrator gets the fast car. The world probably got a wake-up call when the Vatican Police got themselves Lamborghinis.

All of a sudden, the Ford frantically swerves left, then right to barely miss a car that exploded onto it's line at a highway intersection. The swerve to the right turned out to generate enough G-forces to lift off the right rear wheel, then the right front wheel, then the left rear wheel, finally followed by the left front wheel, basically putting the Ford into a sideways cartwheel. It is quite THE spectacle to watch in ultra-slow motion, with Beethoven's Symphony No.7 playing in the background.

The police man in the Corvette just happens have adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream instead of blood, hence leaving him with a super-heavy right foot. The police car gets away from the scene just scratching the paint on its roof under the truck's trailer.... Yeah, Cars don't pass under a trailer in 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Meanwhile, the Pedestrian who narrowly missed being crushed by the car in the first scene, stands and watches all the commotion. The Police's Corvette comes to a halt in front of the Ford that has just gotten over doing it's ballet dance on Beethoven's Symphony No.5. The police gets out of the Corvette, gun drawn out, pointing at the mangled mess in front of him.

The Pedestrian, still standing at the junction, draws out a Remote-controller-kind-of-a-thing and hits the red button on it. The Ford explodes into the air in a ball of fire. The policeman is thrown backwards, but stays un-hurt.

In the next day's NEWS,

COMMOTION ON THE HIGHWAY! Speeding Car Crash on Speedway. 1 Killed. Perpetrator MISSING. The pedestrian picks up the Newspaper, reads it, and smiles.  

Holy mother of innovation

'Cutting Edge' is a word used a bit too often nowadays . The frequency of it's usage has virtually turned the term 'cutting edge' into blasphemy. 

Let's take innovation into picture. Yes, agreed that the processing power we have at hand is quadrupling every 2 years, as predicted somewhere back in the last decade of the 20th century. Science is progressing at a phenomenal rate, as it has been for quite a while. But we as a society are only looking at the aspects of progress that we consider progress. What might not be apparent is the fact that even today, there are simple solutions to many of our problems that make use of nothing but pretty much forgotten tools, namely necessity and .....the brain. 

As most of us are drowning our time in applications, or rather 'apps', what we are forgetting is the application of our mental faculties in making the world that one bit better. 

There is also another mistaken notion surrounding innovation. Very often, what is advertised as 'All New' is probably just a re-branding/face-lift/fancy sticker job or just a few minor tweaks thrown into a pre-existing product/service. The mobile and (strangely enough) auto-mobile industry have been thriving on such gimmicks for a long time.

Now,look at the earth from space considering two parameters, 

(a) In terms of the areas where maximum innovation(real innovation, not the next iteration of an old cell-phone) is taking place

(b) In terms of areas where there is a regular availability of electricity and other conveniences.

Look closely enough and compare (a) and (b) and something very astounding might turn up. What one might observe is that if (a) and (b) were sets, they would share very less area in common. 

A common, but misleading notion is that we need more technology to take innovation further and further. In the process, we are developing technology to an extent that it allows us to walk upside down, The point being that we, at least as of now, have no requirement of walking upside down, but we are over-preparing ourselves for a condition where we might be required to move around upside down, purely for provisional sake.

In the process, we forget to optimally make use of our currently available capacities to solve immediate issues. Another thing is that we take this so called progress of ours so much for granted that not only do we cease to think, but we also have the audacity to consider our ability to stop thinking as a source of our vanity. 

Coming back to the earlier mentioned point (a), i.e. regions on earth most dense in terms of innovations, it surprisingly is places where people encounter lack of basic necessities that maximum amount of tangible innovation takes place. Be it an Energy problem, be it a Water problem, be it problems concerning basic infrastructure, health or anything from the long list of things that a developed place will not suffer from, a solution comes out. And it comes not from non-profit organisations that take pity on people facing adversities, not from countries trying to gain leverage through people who 'apparently' are weak, but the solution comes from the people facing the adversity. Obvious, isn't it?

Some really wise fellow said "Adversity/necessity is the mother of innovation.", just that we have mostly forgotten the phrase.

Another thing being that we don't need innovation to be rocket science all the time. There will always be more of innovation in simple solutions that stem from simple thinking, coming from simple yet extraordinary people. There will always be Sense in Simplicity...

Here's a short TED talk on the power of simple innovations.

http://www.ted.com/talks/toby_shapshak_you_don_t_need_an_app_for_that

Elusively Beautiful

Beauty, needless to say, has a way of escaping the eye. Specially the eye that isn't hunting for beauty. There definitely are things that are strikingly beautiful, and without objectifying anything or anyone, there are too many a people who, in public opinion, are unanimously considered beautiful. But what to do with all the things that everyone agrees on? It is in looking for diamonds in places no one thinks of, and more so finding a diamond in such a place, that makes one realize the real charm of life.

Coming back to beauty, it obviously, more than anything else, lies in the eye of the beholder.

And I was fortunate enough to call myself the beholder, albeit for a very short span of time.

If you look at her on an average day, for all you know, you wouldn't notice her, until you talk to her, feel the enthusiasm in her eyes..

I call her 'the Mirror'. Why? Talk to her for a while. Just pay her a bit of your attention, and you will notice your own emotions being reflected back at you. While the previous line may not make much sense, one surely needs to witness her eyes to understand what I just said. I just happen to have had the opportunity to witness her enthusiastic eyes, not once, but many times.

As far a appearance went, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary that she wore on the day, that would come across as 'striking'.

I came across a saying somewhere... It goes like this.. “If a lady is poorly dressed, you'll notice the dress. If she is impeccably dressed, you'll notice the lady”. Although the saying is slightly out of place, what I want to say here is about the way she carried herself, more so, how beautifully she did so in the simple attire that she was wearing. Nothing overstated. More than anything, what added to her beauty was the smile she wore, which she actually always does, if you notice carefully.

It all happened about a week before. I was slightly skeptical about asking her out for a dance during my college festival, mostly out of a fear of getting slapped. But we were good friends, and thankfully, we had been that way for a while now. So, for all it was worth, I took the risk of getting slapped and asked her out anyway. Thankfully, she turned out to be the forgiving type. So I (narrowly) escaped getting slapped. Fortunately, I also realized that I live in a world where people seldom look beyond ostensible details, which turned out to be good for me. So now, I had a gorgeous lady by my side, whom no one would noticed until it was too late... for the world to see what they had missed out on. And for the sake of heavens, I couldn't hide my excitement, which I apparently managed to hide very well, for she probably still doesn't know how madly my chest was thumping when she came along with her friend to meet me..

I was standing with a friend of mine, waiting for her to arrive at the venue. My friend was asking me about my plans for the afternoon. All he knew was that there was a dance workshop being conducted near to where we were standing. I was just telling him how I was planning to pick up the first single lady around to accompany me to the dance workshop. He looked at me mockingly. Even I just laughed it off as a joke. At this point, I was almost nervous that 'she' would skip out on me. That sure a hell was a stupid thought, but it was a thought nevertheless...

I was just about to turn around when she and her friend came along to the venue. Just to play along with my friend, who, I suppose was still unaware about my devious 'pre-arrangements', I pretended as though I didn't know the two ladies who had suddenly turned up.

I just told my friend to wait and watch my magical charm, as I would try to ask one of the two ladies out for a dance..

So I turned to one of the two beautiful ladies,(to My lady, of course.... ) and asked her, in my most gentle-manly manner “Would you like to go to dance with me?”...

What I was most afraid of was that she would say a “No”, maybe just for the fun of it. Goodness!! That would have been an absolute disaster!!

But what came as a response to my question made me feel like the king of the world for that moment, and for many more to follow...

For starters, she smiled, displaying all her 32, and said what sounded like a resounding “Yes!”. Man!! If life were a cassette, I would just like it to get stuck on that stretch of time between her smiling and the 'yes' coming out of her. Okay, NO! NO! NO! NO! In that case, I wouldn't have been able to dance with her.. So chuck the idea of the cassette getting stuck anywhere.

There is something so overwhelming about a lady willingly submitting herself to your touch. The very thought that your lady trusts you, makes you want to treat her to the best of your abilities. And secretly, it makes you feel so much stronger, not because of your inherent advantage in terms of pure strength, but for the sole reason that you now want to do everything in your power to keep her out of harm's way at any cost. Just like how a woman primes her senses the moment she feels a threat for her off-springs or her dear ones, there surely is a male analogy to the same process.

There were a bunch of couples who had turned up to attend the workshop. We were all made to stand in a huge circle, and exchange partners, moving all around, until we completed an entire circle to come back to our original partners. And each time I completed the circle, I was the most happiest person alive! I sure as hell hope she shared my feelings... If not that, the very least I hope is that she didn't utter something under her breath like “Oh shit! The arsehole's back!!”... which I am sure she didn't... well, almost sure...... Okay, she probably did mutter “Oh shit! The arsehole's back!!” under her breath....

So after a lot of lifting, laughing, turning, twisting and also a little what we considered to be dancing, the evening came to an end..... Happyz endingz...

I was glad for the way it went.. Now, for what I am about to say next, imagine me jumping like a nine year old girl when she gets her first Barbie doll/doll house or something. “I TOOK A LADY TO A DANCE!!! YAY!! YAY!!”...or rather “A LADY ACTUALLY AGREED TO ACCOMPANY ME TO A DANCE!!! YAY!! YAY!! YAY!!”.

Among my folks, I am considered a real brute when it comes to mannerisms. So when I told my fellows about I taking a lady to a dance, they all(okay, just my three fellows), each one of them (rascals), individually told me “Dude, please, for the love of humanity, behave well, PLEASE!”.

I always responded with a “Yeah...OKAY...”. Guess it went fine.

As for the beautiful lady repeatedly mentioned above, if anyone's wondering who it was, for the love of myself, I wouldn't tell a soul. If you ask “why so?”, I'd say “Hard luck, buddy...”.

Someone has to do it

It was kind of an epiphany that hit me in the middle of a conversation I was having with a close friend of mine. And to be true, it wasn't an epiphany, as much as I would like to call it one. What it was, was something my that friend just said while we were talking.  We both are running our own little marathons, behind our dream-trains, he behind his, I behind mine.. It's probably why we get along well. Anyway, Here's how this post started...

My friend recently started a band of his own with two more blokes, which makes them a 3 piece band, in case no one's keeping a head count. From whatever little I know of the way the band functions, from what my friend tells me, it looks like this friend of mine seems to be the most enthusiastic of the lot to go ahead with what these folks started off with, which is another way of saying that he does all the running around. Now that is a good thing. Why it is so, I know not. 

So we were chatting about the band's latest performance, and how he was happy about how things were working out. I asked him, if he minds doing all the donkey-work. As a response, he said "Someone has to do it...".

The line hit me like a wave. There's no arguing the fact that what he said had nothing profound in it.

But what hit me was the simplicity, rather the truth in what he said. 

I have a story of my own, my dream-train I am running after... I have my own team of blokes who is into doing 'stuff', which involves wading through a lot of red-tapism to get things done. Now that has it's own set of perks and quirks. But sometimes, the perks and quirks get all mixed up and I get really shit-pissed... Okay, that came out wrong.

Basically, I feel I am the only one running around to get things done, or the only one who wants to do 'stuff' in the first place. A strange sense of despondence surrounds me sometimes, to see the absolute lack of enthusiasm in my folks, who are supposed to come along and conspire along with the universe to make my dream come true. Surely it is a dream that all my folks and I share, and wish it be fulfilled someday in the near future, but these things don't strike you when you are at a low point of your day.

But someone, I don't know who, throws a stone at my head, and then this thought hits my head that "Whatever it is I am doing, I am doing it for my own satisfaction more than anyone else". And just just to prevent getting beaten up the next time I see my blokes, in case any of them happens to read this, I must also mention that, its not like they are not there at all. They do manage to cover my backside when needed. Phew!! 

As a matter of fact, the very fact that I have the liberty to call my blokes 'my blokes', itself is a constant reminder of how things eventually work out between us, somehow... Anyhow..

There is a thing about the fancy term called 'organisational behaviour', from the little I  do/don't understand about the terminology. No matter how much psychology we put into the working of an organisation, irrespective of it's size, no one can circumvent donkey-work.

As far as individual roles in an organisation are concerned, there is an article I had read a while ago. It's called 'I, pencil' written by this fellow called Leonard Read, somewhere in 1958. It is a biography of a pencil.

Now, how a pencil's biography can have anything related to the behavior of an organisation is anyone's guess. To begin with, why would anyone write a biography for a pencil??

Actually, the article could have been about anything. For all we know, it could have been called 'I, pod'. But Steve Jobs was about 6, so it surely couldn't have been 'I,pod'...

What this article describes is how a pencil comes into the form we recognize a pencil in. It all starts in graphite quarries, where all the graphite gets mined, which then goes into the core of a pencil. The quarry workers haven't a clue where the graphite will go. It is sad, although safe to say that they might not even know what a pencil is. They get payed their daily wages, go home to make ends meet, give their children a better future, which may involve buying pencils for them, some of which might have the same graphite in their cores, which might be coming out of the quarry the worker gets his daily pay from. 

The article then talks about all the subsequent procuring and processing steps that go into giving a pencil it's shape. What the article focuses on is that no single one in the 'Pencil-making' industry knows how to make a pencil from scratch. Few may know the entire chain of processes involved in making a pencil. But here's the deal. Knowing about a step, and successfully executing that step are two things, a world apart. You and I may have learnt about the equipment used for mining graphite(for instance). That knowledge, in no way, necessarily translates into out ability to execute the mining process, given that we have all the requisite equipment at our disposal. Mind you, the key word here is 'necessarily'. Of course, there are those of us who love DIY(do-it-yourself) kits!

But point here being that we need professionals at some, if not all steps of making anything.

Just to oversimplify things, the bet footballer may have no idea of how to make the best shoe for playing football. That involves sports scientists working nights off to study and understand the anatomy and bio-mechanics of the human foot. These scientists may know about the working of the human foot, but in most cases, they'll suck at playing football, because these folks had buried themselves in books when the football players were out playing.

What it all boils down to is that at the end of the day, to accomplish a task, we do not need everyone on the team to have the knowledge about everything that there is to pulling off the task. Each one standing up to what they are good at, at the right time is more than enough to deliver a happy ending. More importantly, we need to have faith that somehow, anyhow... each one of our blokes will stand up to the occasion when needed of them....

 Below is the link to the article 'I, Pencil' for anyone interested in checking it out..

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil