Essentially an evening on a weekday after work is a very lethargic one, by the time i move out of the couch in front of  the TV it would be well past 9. Today was a little different in the fact that a couple of relatives came over and almost as usual conversation turned to me spending a fair enough (an understatement !!) part of my remuneration on books and it was then that my aunt told me of an anecdote.

It was about a kid who refused to go to school even after being a class topper, i couldn’t understand as to what made such a person to shrink away from school. I kept the quizzical look on my face and she just turned to me and said ” she reads voraciously”..I was taken aback with that and erupted with the “wait just a minute..you can’t..” She just told me the rest of the story then, the parents used to buy the books that the kid wanted without looking at what they were. It so happened that the kid read and read books and leap dived into ideas that were to be reserved for a more mature and introspective mind at another point in time perhaps. It was a sad development that someone so young and at a time to be spent gambolling in the colors of life had elapsed into quietude and detachment from friends….was all this due to reading ??

Could be partly accounted to it, If i were to answer the question. Reading is but a step wise process and if one were to read on without reflecting on and spreading out what he/she gained, then its like wasting away one of life’s most priced possessions.  There is a flip side to it, if reading to some molds minds to polished re fineness then to some it warps the mind to something incomprehensible. It is the reader’s burden to make out what he needs from his books & it is my belief that it is the reader and not the book that makes a mind….

I wanted to write a post, but what I am writing now is not what I wanted to initially. The post I had in mind was about a thread for a journey that began one night at a home in Bangalore over a glass of Scotch and one that became reality in the rain lashed beaches of Goa. Of friends who had to turn away from a weekend of frolic by the unforgiving rain & of three  guys who were stuck in Goa but made the best out of it. But then, I wasn’t in the mood for recounting that memorable little journey. I was rightly in the mood of jotting a warped piece of my own madness.

We watched Kerala Cafe the other day and the character that stayed with me after the movie was one named Leon in a  tale titled Island Express. If you ask me why i liked him, I would not be able to articulate it well. Is it because he speaks a language I wish i could ?? Yes..Is it because he is quite unabashed in his sexuality ?? Yes…Is it because he is a Vagabond ?? Yes…Almost all these traits are against Malayalam cinema’s stereotype of a hero. Kiran on talking about the movie after it told me ” I knew you would like such a character, one that is quite far removed from the plane of reality!!” ( he wasn’t this literal but yes, this was the crux). I turned that phrase in my mind many a time and i strongly believe he was right. As a kid & growing up my heroes in the silver screen and on the page were always ones who bashed up thugs and saved the crying heroine, almost many a male chauvinist.

Through teenage some of the heroes were given colors of Feudalism in the Malayali society, not for them the niceties and iron hard rules of the society. Like any other teenager, I was drawn to the hero that defied the society and had a happily ever after life when the credits rolled. The realisation that the story is the real hero was something that was a revelation some years ago, but even now I am more of an escapist. In the sense, I dig into tales of fantasy where the author’s imagination takes leaps and bounds and is so disconnected with the real world. Ask me why & I am tongue tied..it could be the fact that real life could never be this interesting. It could be the fact that I refuse to accept the blandness of life….escapism has become a stamp on my reading habits….

This was a post without direction, I wanted to give vent to my verbal garble and let off some steam….Thanks to Kiran who gave me the idea.

What’s with movies and violence ?? Thinking of it, almost a big chunk of mainstream movies (Hollywood and Indian alike) have it in them that the complexity of the story can only be resolved by an out and out fight towards the end. The other day i was watching a movie deemed the latest trend setter in malayalam, the movie was back to back fighting for a good 2 hours. Some scenes were of the extremely violent kind themselves, I just happened to look at the seat directly in front of me and there were two little girls watching the entire movie with rapt attention…are we giving these young ones the right messages ??

Villains in movies are blessed with arrogance,thick headedness, ruthlessness and well….almost everything that we associate with villainy in excess. I think it is this reason that makes us all feel happy inside when the protagonist beats the living daylights out of him/her. More of it might have to do with the fact that the hero(ine) accomplishes on screen what we could not or cannot in real life. How these would impact the younger generation is something to be thought of…I come from a state where kids become goons at the age of 16 or 17. Could these movies have impacted their psyche somehow ??

Questions & questions but alas I have no answers to them…..

I take the company transport to work and back and this post has been on the back of my mind for quite some time now. The bus which i take quite an antique one, it is an old model from the Toyota stables but still in prim condition. The major part of the maintenance is done by our protagonist, the driver. He is an affable character, friendly and helpful..but then you wonder why write a post about the blatantly obvious ?? Well, he is quite a music connoisseur and his taste in music does have a synonym in the english language : ATROCIOUS !!!!

The bus is never devoid of music, whether this is good or bad is a subject open to debate.  Am pretty sure most of us passengers would debate you to death with this topic . Some of the songs you hear are so good that you wish you could jump out and run away at the speed of light…to give you a taste of it, one song that plays in the bus goes like : Thannithotti thedi vanna kannukutty njan ( this translates as : oh…am the calf that came in search of the water trough !!!). This ladies and gentlemen, is but a taste of the musical massacre that happens in the bus. The other day i got a call when i was traveling and the song playing at that time was from a Malayalam movie that featured a yakshi ( similar to the greek sirens). Yakshis in the movies have an irritating quality, they cackle and cackle as if there is no end. The call came in just when the cackle started and i could hear the caller hesitating before talking ( he might have wondered : Jeez, where is this guy ??). Such incidents are quite common place.

Afterall tomorrow is another day….of god knows what songs….

Tales begin with the much adored “Once upon a time..” line, but mine in this case is not a tale but an incident. Then again, thinking back i do not see much in the incident but a laughable good five minutes. However, in the frame of time that it happened those five minutes shook me to the core. Here is how it went :

The exact year or the class in which i was then are sketchy now, I used to walk to school daily and it was a good 15 minute walk from home.  The road was more or less a straight one and it went through a residential area occupied by the well-to-do, which meant that sparing the occasional jogger or one out walking a dog the road was more or less empty in the mornings. As for me, i was quite a paranoid kid then with all the notions of kidnappers and strangers offering you sweets filling my head for good reason, I walked to school alone !!! One fine morning as i was walking to school and when i was passing a particularly deserted stretch of road, I felt someone coming up behind me and looking over my shoulders i did confirm it. A middle aged guy definitely not a Malayali in ragged clothes and with a haggard face carrying a dirty satchel ( it’s been years now, but the imprint of the face and the way he walked are still fresh in my mind !!!). I did look back a couple of times again and yes he was right behind me. Wonder of wonders, there was not even a living soul in sight let alone even a stray mongrel. I could see the school building up ahead but it was too far off and the watchman was but a dot from where i stood….

I slowed down and stole a glance behind and to confirm my worst fears he did slow down too…pretending to tie my shoe laces ( which were knotted prim and proper by the way) i stopped altogether on the road and hoped against hope that he would pass by, but no one passed by me. Then came the inevitable contact, i sensed someone standing right near me and looking up i saw him smile with his betel stained black teeth. I would have gone pale then and am quite sure of it, the tales of kidnapping and so forth ran pell mell through my mind. What followed then was incredulously a dialogue between him and me, which went as :

Him : Taariq kya hein aaj ?? ( What’s the date today ??)

(I was learning Hindi in school then and was able to pick up the words and make sense of them, but given the situation even English would have sounded Swahili to me )

Me : duh !!! err….. ( I dont think this needs translation )

Him : Taariq ?? Taariq kya hain aaj ?? ( He would have been thinking : Kid, are you dense ??)

( I remember having a watch from whose face the date jumped out at me & if it had a life it would have went : ” hey, hey kid..am here…hello..am here…yea yea the D A T E…look at me”, but then i chose to ignore it. I made a show of looking at the watch but nothing registered and it did not make sense either & the first word that came as a pop-up to my mind was..)

Me (blurting out) : Maalum nahi….bilkul maalum nahi… ( I have no idea, no sirree..no way am i knowing a thing called date…)

(He looked thoughtful then, scratched his chin and said..)

Him : Achcha, theek hai ( Oh, alright ..)

He walked on and I stood on the road not knowing whether to laugh or cry with relief. He walked on and i remember him walking past the school gate with barely a glance inside. I was broken out of the reverie when i heard the school bell going off in the distance…I ran to school and was I happy to see the watchman who looked surprised to see me giving him a smile…Classes began but still the images and the words stayed with me.

As a footnote : When i got out of school that day, I walked in a crowd and yes I did look this way and that while walking…but obviously i didnt see the man. To this day, i have never seen him…and with his life I dont think he would ever read this blog. But my friend, you gave the fright of my life and had you asked one more question, I might just have wetted my trousers there….and wouldn’t that be embarassing or what ???

Cliched lines make a march through my mind as i sit typing these words out on a warm monday afternoon. Onam is upon the keralites and still all i feel is the complacent nad lethargic monotony of a holiday. Days or was it months that have come to pass since i keyed in something on this blog & it lay here gathering the proverbial dust…..

I do hope to write more in this round but knowing me i am not entirely sure how long this jig of writing will stay with me…

Ghosts, a favourite topic of mine. Where childhood days gave me quite a fearful look at the concept, age made me more interested in it. The way in which a window creaks in the night or a dress flutters in the night wind where all attributed at first response to a ghost in childhood days. Still vividly remember renting a video casette of a werewolf movie and returning it after 20 mins viewing ( i lied tht the casette was not working ).

Reading and talking with friends gave me a broader look at the entire phenomenon. Once a friend who was studying biotechnology told me : every molecule in the body stores energy and when someone dies abruptly, all the energy is released in one shot and where does all this go ?? will this be what you call a ghost ?? could be..couldn’t be.Mythology and folklore in India gives the concept wings and what flies out from this one concept is one manifestation too many.

All these thoughts chunred through my mind as i was reading William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist, powerfully written and makes an effort to scientifically explain what causes a posession ( if something like that exists that is !!!). Most of my blog posts doesn’t even make sense to me let alone someone else !!!

Dictionary.com has about four definitions for leadership listed under it among which one is : an act or instance of leading; guidance; direction. A leader of a group of leaders are ideally what would symbolise  from something as microcosmic as a school to something on the bigger end of the scale as a country. I chose to insert the word ideally in the last sentence almost deliberately for in the real sense of the world, this is rarely the case.

Recently during a conversation with one of my seniors at work, he made a remark that has stuck to the back of my mind for quite some time now. The point he made was very simple in the sense that there is a marked difference between born leaders and self ( or otherwise) made leaders.The old saying goes that leaders are not made and are born. It is a point on which i beg to differ, there are people whom i have seen and met who have risen to leadership with nothing but sheer grit and the will to learn as their arsenal. If for the born leader the traits and underlying nuances of leadership comes in a smooth flow, then for the made leader the flow has to be consciously made to flow in a direction best suited to the situation.

My span of vision on this subject is limited but still its an mazing prospect to look at, one that shows a kaledioscope of possibilities each time it is looked at.

Just finished with Fish!, I had my reservations about this book but it served to dis spell all those. Very small a book but still packed with ideas that are known to all and sundry.

The most sensible part of the book lay in one single philosophy “We can choose our attitude at work”, sounds simple and logical but thinking about it makes me wonder if i have put this completely into practice at work.The parable that is weaved into the book is tailor made for this story and the philosophies that it preaches.

How do people manage to write these stuff ??? I need to write more on this but still wanted to make a preface to it….nuff said

I did my education and pursue my career in two different lanes. My degree equipped me with the very basics of a collection of technical skills while my job ensures that i interact with the very human beings that make this technology tick.

The people outside work whom i meet ask me ” why HR ??” and in my mind i retort “why not HR??” (PS : am too polite ask this to them in  the face).Books,blogs and articles galore adorn the net and bookshops alike with ideas that elevate HR into the higher constellations of organizational power, but in the eyes of the common man HR is back office. Start along the lines of strategic HR to a software engineer and he/she sits dumbstruck and the next question that obviously would follow would be ” strategic what ??”.

Many an article praises HR to be a function wherein partnering with the business goals and lining yourselves to the business objectives forms the crux of the job. My perspective of the job differs from this in many a way,i feel a job well done when some body calls me up or emails me with a simple thanks. A profile that heavily relies on customer service, there could be flowers and hailstones both headed your way. If it’s your lucky day then you could have both in the same day, but still its a thrill.

There is a still a long way to go, the amount and depth of ideas and principles that i come across does baffle me and interest me to the same degree. Learning is a buck that will never stop….