xenophobia?!
If I have to have a conversation with a guy, I’d rather he is a Chennai born, Chennai bred, Dravidian tamizh guy. Not the loud, misguided, attitude laden men but sensible and balanced guy who thinks like I do. Call it xenophobia at its worst or parochialism, this is reality. For a mellow person like me if it impossible to put up with loud enthusiasm, misguided ambitions, silly eagerness and ignorance that seems to define the culture and socialization patterns in certain o ther parts outside this city. But otherwise I hate Chennai, I hate the weather which is keeping me acne prone for more than a decade now and the infrastructure which makes me feel like deprived third class citizen.

KEEP THE RIFF RAFF OUT.

Why is “commitment to work” considered a virtue?
A friend says that in today’s world, it is necessary to do more than what is expected of you in order to rise to the top. It is necessary to “exceed expectations” to climb the corporate ladder. The thought that immediately came to my mind was that if I work more than what I’m paid to work for, I will feel like a corporate slave, but that is beside the point. The point here is, having signed the dotted line to deliver the specified services and being in receipt of the remuneration that goes with it, one is expected to get the work done. Some people are complacent in this situation. Others have ideas of where they want to reach within the organization, or in the industry and work towards it, in many cases end up doing more than what is expected of them to reach those goals. Well! Congratulations! But still in all this where and how did ambition or the so called “commitment to work” become a virtue???!!!
People find their inspiration in life from different sources and for some, nowadays many, owing to the general societal mindset, it is their work. Any sociology text book will define “value” with an example- the importance placed by the American society on career success, resulting in “ambition” becoming a value and in today’s globalized world, it is so in India too.

Weird human inspirations!
On an early morning flight to Delhi [departed Chennai at 5 in the morning], there was an endless expanse of white and silver sky outside the window and in one corner of the frame, the white sky with silver highlights being nevertheless beautiful, but as if to break the monotony of the pattern, there was a small but distinct sphere called the moon. At that point, the total beauty of that white expanse was spectacularly luminescent and the awesome shades of white and incandescence of silver made me think of the creator of this beauty – God, but then again beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, the beholder is the creator of the beauty. In all modesty, the mind creates beauty; the mind seems to create everything. My mind is accessible, and it is my reality, God is not. I’d rather deal with my mind.

Official Statements

Following Benazir Bhutto’s death, the external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee read out a statement on CNN IBN. The minister felt it necessary to read out the statement along with the punctuations. He said “full stop” after completing a sentence and “comma” before pausing in between a sentence. The first 24 hour news channel has been operational in India since 1998 and having been sufficiently exposed to 24 hour news channels, I have not quite come across anyone reading out a statement with punctuations. Please mail in with your comments about this practice, I would like to get rid of my ignorance.

Tag line of a silly movie – “There’s nothing like love to spoil a good friendship”. As much as I hate silly romantic comedies and mushy lines and wannabe cool lines, lines spewed by confused script writers…… I kinda think this line ain’t that bad after all, if one overlooks the fact that one should be really messed up and dumb to be in the situation that warrants that statement. But this is a phase too and the line as silly as it is captures the essence of the phase. Am I making sense at all???

Rambling
The positive side of being cheap labor – even if you stay up late for a teleconference which is organized to suit NA timings, you can show up in the afternoon the next day, put in 4 hours and get a whole day’s attendance, while the teleconference would have lasted only an hour. Gosh! How cheap do I sound? I also sound sleepy. That I am, as I could not crash immediately after reaching home at 1, I stayed up late. Woke up very very late and am still yawning at 2PM the next day. [Forgive the mix up of tenses for I am groggy with sleep]. That apart, the mind gratifies itself with pet preoccupations from to time, that do make you walk around like a zombie, mouth silly things, react in weird ways during conversations. “Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”- My latest preoccupation. Sometimes you glorify a factor so much that at one point it seems like the most ridiculous silly thing ever. But that again is not true, discounting the importance is not the solution, the preoccupation won’t go away. Being true to my academic credentials, I seek equilibrium. In economic theory equilibrium does nt last long, but in life it does solve issues and offers clarity even if it only means to spring another preoccupation at another level, but hey so what, we all like graduating from level 5 to level 6 and keep going further.