The book penseive

This morning, I took upon myself the onerous task of cleaning my book shelf. Mine, I say possessively, though it was a gift for our wedding from our friends. Mine, I say possessively, because anything books is always mine. My favourite bookmark, my favourite bookshop, my favourite reviewer, my favourite recommender of books, my favourite books all of them. Almost. There is a bunch of non fiction across those racks I will never claim to be mine. Not over my dead body. Those are V’s. 

As I cleaned the racks, a lot of dust got raked up. Literally. But, figuratively too. The P. G. Wodehouse omnibuses beckoning me to drop everything and start reading immediately. The Vikram Seths wondering where I had absconded for so long. The always dependable Jeffrey Archers smiling as if to say, “I knew you will come back to me.” That random book about Marie Antoinette I had picked up at a bookshop in Paris asking me how I felt about history now that I had read another take on the woman who famously said, “Let them eat cake” (apparently, she didn’t, as per this book). A customised book my colleagues at EY had gifted me on my last day, reminding me of happy days, great memories. A travel diary I had filled up while tripping across Eastern Europe sparking memories of a cute and cosy hostel room and a very dear friend. The first ABC book I had got for my kid telling me how far she has come, reading through pages of the Monkey Puzzle and the Pout Pout Fish. 

Books are like pensieves. Once you look down a book, you won’t know what memory might draw you in, spawning a hundred other related thoughts. 

What today’s clean(s)ing experience gave me is also a lot of clarity. I think I have known this forever but never acknowledged - the Kindle can never replace a book. Never have I opened my list of books on a Kindle and felt a pensieve drawing me in. Never have those books on the Kindle beckoned me with outstretched hands saying, “drop everything you are doing right now and lose yourself in the scent of my pages.”

I know what I will do when I grow up and grow old and have a lot of money and a room of my own. A huge bookshelf with hard copies (preferably hard bounded copies) of all those books I would have read on the kindle by then. Only point to note - it will be a covered bookshelf (with glass doors) so I don’t ever have to do deep cleaning of books again, only enjoy looking at them all day long. 

Marie Kondo and the joy of pre-love

There is a lot of noise on social media about this Marie Kondo Netflix series on tidying up and sparkling joy. I haven’t watched it yet. To be honest, I got so bored of Bandersnatch that I haven’t logged into Netflix in a while now. It sparks joy in my mind to avoid that app these days.

Anyway, I do not generally agree with this philosophy of saying goodbye to things we love. Or people we love, for that matter. I hoard what I love, and I throw away what I don’t. In fact, I am such a ruthless thrower-awayer of things that I wonder if I love anything at all. Except books. And, I hear that Kondo has suggested we throw away books too. So, I don’t like her. Throwing her away from my mind now.

All this talk about love for objects, and joy in tidying up, sparks a completely different thread of angst in me. Do you know what’s fashionable these days? Pre-loving and pre-caring for things. Darn it, this phrase ‘second-hand’ has been made obsolete and very second-class, no one uses it anymore. Except for with used cars. Yet to hear someone say “My pre-loved car is up for grabs.”

I mean, even grammatically, ‘pre-loved’ doesn’t seem to make much sense. What does ‘pre-loved’ mean? That I don’t love it anymore? That it is pre- my love and I will love it once I sell it to you? That it was created before love came into existence?

And you know where it is used the most? With baby stuff. People are always selling their kids’ pre-loved toys and pre-loved furniture and pre-loved car seats. Now, I have my share of baby stuff. As soon as our kid turned 6 months, V and I promptly landed up at the baby store to purchase bed, high chair, and stroller, without any view of where we will hold it in our very Bombay apartment. While my baby is super special to me and I consider her a very unique being, she is exactly the same as 90% of the babies in this world (the other 10% I am told are raised by parents who read books like ‘How to talk so little kids will listen’). So, coming back to my baby, she is very predictable – doesn’t use any of these new-fangled things mama and papa got her with much love, and a significant pocket outlay.

So, I look at these things with anything but love. That stroller, especially that stroller. It’s this white elephant in the drawing room, only grey in color. I would willingly throw it out with the bathwater (without the baby), especially at the next person who utters the phrase ‘pre-love’. The only thing stopping me is that significant pocket outlay. I am told kids use the stroller when they are 4-5 years old and too lazy to walk, especially on holidays outside India. Maybe, I will wait till then, while building a lot of angst up every time I see that stroller next to my much-loved bookrack.

By the time I internalize the concept of sunk cost and opportunity cost at space wastage, it might become my pre-hated item. That’s at least a differentiated value proposition for a sale, for whatever it is worth.

Of weddings and offices

Ten years ago, when I started my career, Kamala Mills (Lower Parel, Mumbai) was the haven of the office goer. Because, that’s where you landed up if you wanted a paycheck. It had two gates, one front and one back, with a long line of taxis at both, none of them willing to go anywhere. There was a JaiHind restaurant (Udipi? Café?) outside one of the gates, and that’s all the food we could get, if we wanted to avoid the unpalatable food at the teeny tiny office cafeteria. Those days, Kamala Mills also had a large tract of wasteland within, withering away in the Mumbai sun and floating away in the excessive rains, that transformed into a dusty parking lot for the brave that drove to work. In that era, I knew no one who drove to work in Bombay. Except two. Who we would hound on bad monsoon days to drop us wherever we could be dropped, gearing up to swim the rest of the distance homewards.

Anyway, all this preamble is for naught, only to serve as a reminiscence of the struggles of a newbie in Bombay. But, that parking lot at Kamala Mills? That one has significance. That’s where the land owner’s son or daughter got married one fine weekend. In an age devoid of Instagram and instant rumors, we made do with hearsay, tabloid stories, and our own curiosity to come up with what was cookin’ at the wedding. SRK danced, said someone. Katrina did too, piqued another. The wedding cost 25 crores, exclaimed a third. We spoke about those unknown people for at least 2-3 lunches and tea breaks at work.

What will we do for small talk if not for ostentatious weddings, I thought.

Cut to 2018. Kamala Mills no longer has that decrepit parking lot; neither does it have those sad cafeterias. Not too many people walk in there to draw paychecks any longer, for it has transformed into the safe haven of pubs and bars and discs, all highly flammable, that people walk into, to see their paychecks go up in smoke (literally, sometimes). The action has all shifted. To other office buildings in Lower Parel, but much to the concrete jungle of BKC (in Bandra and somewhat in Kurla).

I need to go back a bit again, you know. When you have spent a good 10+ years criss-crossing a city, especially as a consultant with clients all the way from Nariman Point to Ghansoli (which is technically not even in Bombay), there is a lot of reminiscence that is (un)avoidable. BKC used to be a place perennially under construction. Buildings were coming up everywhere, but there was only concrete waste to see, no food to eat, and general desert-land around. The only good thing was, no traffic from home, so I didn’t complain. BKC today has developed by leaps and bounds, if lot of buildings means lot of development. However, it still seems to be perennially under construction (of the metro rail variety), also full of traffic. Only silver lining – endless, copious amounts of food everywhere.

What is the point, you may ask. The Kamala Mills of 10 years ago and the BKC of today meet at an interesting junction, quite counter-intuitive to the commercial connection they have. Weddings. The grandiose variant nonetheless. Come to think of it, it’s quite poetic setting wedding ceremonies in the middle of commercial establishments. There is nothing more commercial than a well-spent-upon wedding after all.

I had the good fortune of witnessing the Isha Ambani reception prep from my BKC office, atop a multi-storey building. It looked garish even from afar, but that’s only the jealous woman in me talking. Also, this time, unlike 10 years back, we were able to track to the “tiniest diamond stone in the bride’s Sangeet lehenga” level of detail on the wedding prep, thanks to Instagram and the ever dependable ToI. It made for small talk for a month before and a month after, and may do for several months beyond too. SRK served food, so did Big B. Salman Khan was the side dancer to Anant Ambani’s main dance. Beyonce performed at the pre-wedding ceremony, while ARR at the reception.

I can go on and on. But, really, let me save that for the small talk if and when you, the reader and I, the writer, get to meet each other. For now, I hope they have finally been able to clear the debris from the reception venue. I want to take my kid to that ‘public garden’* for once before she grows up and wants to go instead to the pubs of Kamala Mills.

* Is that even a public garden or have I got it wrong? The public are forever barred from going inside because of some event prep or another.

Looking back

I was tempted to write Z for Zummary, win-win at one attempt, a summary of the A-Z blogging challenge while also taking the easier way out on Z. But, that seemed like cheating, grossly mis-spelling the word and also denying this blog the chance of one more post for this month. More importantly, the only letter I was sure about when I started the challenge was Z, Ze Salon all over my mind and my Facebook feed these days. So, you, my reader, have to live with one more post from me, a takeaway of sorts, from this one month of blogging.

• When I started this challenge, I was quite sure C would be the last my blog would see this month, 3 posts in 30 days. And, in fear of my anticipated failure, I didn’t tell anyone (including V) about the challenge, for a couple of days. But, discipline can work wonders. Every morning, I was out to prove myself wrong, that I could write a post a day, and it has worked well, quite surprisingly.
• Being part of a global challenge is a good thing, perhaps the best of things. I registered on the A-Z challenge website on March 31^st, a day before the challenge began. My number then was 1789. The rule is that, if my blog looks like a marketing tool / is inactive / doesn’t have a post for 5 days in a row during the challenge, it would be removed from the list. Naturally, my ever active competitive spirit kicked in, instinct not letting me rest for fear of being removed from the list. I have finished at 1166 today, which means my perseverance won over ~600 others.
• Oh well, now that the challenge is over, I am missing it already and feeling a little empty. Can I wake up this Monday morning and start with a again? I could do my own A-Z challenge for May, but I have a fleeting feeling that without the ranking and competition, I will be a very lazy and undisciplined kid. If only I could cover some of these myriad topics across the next few months just as blog posts, that will be a win in itself.
• I am a grammar freak, as you would know, if you know me well. I spend inordinate amounts of time editing my posts and not just because I know there are well meaning friends out there waiting for the first opportunity to catch me in the act of committing grammar crimes. But, this month, I removed that part of me and put it inside the far end of the “discard” closet as I wrote. There are many posts here that I did not read a second time before posting. My G for Grammar Nazi post had (still has) some glaring, pathetic language errors. It’s alright sometimes, I have learnt. Moving ahead becomes difficult when the mind is shackled by too many structures and constraints.
• The challenge suggests that it will be nice to have a theme across the 26 posts. Being the generalist I am, I did not think of or commit to one particular theme. I did not want to be shackled to it! But, I have ended up writing a fair number of posts that have a flavor of travel across the month, about Prague, Paris, Ljubljana, Amsterdam and Dubrovnik. I had taken a travel diary with me last year while on one of my trips, and the things I jotted down then greatly helped in shaping some of these posts. The idea is more so reaffirmed in my mind now, that I should always carry a travel diary with me, even if it is old-fashioned in this era of smart phones and tablets.
• This is my first year of the A-Z challenge, though I have been following Sayesha, who takes up the challenge every year and writes some very interesting posts. My only focus this year, as a newbie, has been to write every day. The challenge is much more than that. The challenge is also to read as much as we can, of the others who take the plunge along with us. I have failed miserably in the reading part. Reading requires discipline, just like writing, and it cannot be ignored because a ranking system is not tracking how many posts I read every day or how many comments I post every day. That’s definitely a big failure, and I hope I can work on it next time around.
• All of us have a “want to be appreciated” motive in mind when we do things – performing well at work, doing a concert on stage, displaying our artistic creations in a gallery, writing a book and publishing it. I am no different, no evolved human who creates just for the sake of creation and inner happiness. I write my blog posts and advertise them in all free media – Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus (even that!). And I like being read and told they are nice posts. It is new energy being pumped into me every time someone says that they read the post and it was nice. This time has not been very different. Many of you have appreciated me for taking up the challenge, and more importantly, have read these posts I have been writing. It truly means a lot to me. So long, and thank you for all the support J

All in a good day's swearin'

Do you enjoy swearing? Or are you one step ahead, and have imbibed it into yourself so much that you have no control over when you swear anymore?

I am clearly the kind that enjoys swearing. It gives me immense relief and satisfaction to swear loudly when some random *** tries to cut me in from the side, on the road. It is as if I have said the worst, and now, life can move on. Also, most often than not, I am fully well in control of my swearing. So, the next time you hear me swear, and then I apologize, you know there is a 95% chance I meant to swear wholeheartedly.

What if you are of the other type? It means that you do run certain risks I have taken upon myself to alert you about.

Someone, many centuries back, drew up a “Gentleman’s code”, a copy of which I haven’t laid my hands on yet. But, the sum and substance of it says that, amongst other things a gentleman is expected to do, such as wear sharp suits and well-polished boots, he needs to not swear in front of a lady. Now, does a code like that exist for the ladies? I guess not. However, it is commonly assumed that well-bred ladies don’t swear (only if they are not Scarlett O’Hara’s kin).

While the gentleman has evolved over the ages, to the extent of brazenly banging the door on the face of the lady behind him, the unwritten rule of “apologetic swear” is still followed in many parts of the world. So, when a gentleman is in a meeting that has one or more female participants, and he has the strong urge to say “f***”, he usually says “Excuse me ladies, for my language” and then swears loudly. If he doesn't do that, he just apologizes post facto. See. It is simple. But, if the ladies decide to “f***” his life, they have the freedom to sue him for having used obscene language in front of them.

Secondly, we are all growing, if not up, at least old. That only means many of our friends are already in the middle of full-fledged family life; which also means they have kids who have recently started learning words like flower, farmhouse, foreign etc. Do our friends want us to add to their kids’ already rich and growing vocabulary? They apparently are not in favor of such a situation. So, the next time they try socializing with us, with their family in tow, we run the risk of being disowned forever if we swear loudly in front of them.

What can be done about it, you ask. One lame idea, that the good people on T.V. use in order to evade censorship, is to substitute swear words for less offensive and utterly nonsensical terms such as “frigging”, “fishing” etc. But, that’s akin to suggesting that a dark-brown oatmeal biscuit will give you as much pleasure as a chocolate chip brownie.

So, I have a better idea. Consciously bite your tongue every time you utter a swear word in public. The pain will make sure you get a handle on the swearing. And, then, save up all the swearing for your private time, so that you can let go and resume life in peace.

The ideal and the perfect

This is officially my worst week ever. With unmet deadlines, defaulting vendors, confused stakeholders, hectic travel and endless arguments, I have to pinch myself to remember that I am actually on vacation. Yeah, you heard that right. And that too, with a surprisingly considerate bunch of colleagues not having e-mailed or texted me even once during the time, in any other world, this would be an ideal vacation.

Marriages are made in heaven, or so they say. But, wedding ceremonies surely were conceived in hell. And, they are here to stay. And, they are growing more nonsensical with every passing moment. And, they are giving rise to many a thriving business of sarees and blouses and return gifts and wedding invites and accessories and food and decorations and… the list goes on.

I am just back from a visit to my tailor, who, I suspect, must have been a research analyst in his previous avatar. Late last evening, he had called me with an estimate for stitching the Muhurtham blouse pegged at a staggering 25% to 40% range of the total cost of my Sari. So, I marched into his premises first thing this morning, demanding a break-up of the cost. He looked at me as if I have landed from a different planet. Apparently, brides are supposed to go crazy trying to choose the right things for their weddings and not bother about such teeny weeny things as expenses. But, yes, he did give me the break-up after much cajoling, with just a minor footnote saying, “The final cost might be 2-2.5 times the estimate. We will know once we start working on the blouse”.

And, then, there is the whole Sari business itself. I have walked into and out of 10 shops in the past two days looking for one Sari. Yesterday, I spent half an hour with a salesperson trying to understand pricing variations across Saris, all of which, to my naked eye, look exactly the same. He finally gave up any hope of my buying a Sari and turned his attention elsewhere.

The wedding invite is another mammoth affair altogether. Colors, font types, alignment, wordings, pictures… I really miss my beloved PPT pages. They are so much easier to create. And, they do make so much more sense, and can be reused too!

The next item that will come up my alley, as I have been informed (read warned), is the accessories shopping. That will involve trying to figure out, amidst multiple hues and shades of violet and green and maroon and light blue, the right colored bangles for my Saris. And, it will be another set of non-reusable stuff that will fade in color and style with time. Like it matters!

Sometimes, I wonder what the point is. What’s the point in putting so much fight into some six inane events spread across two long days trying to solemnize one wedding, when all that should actually matter is having a happy marriage?

I must be the most atypical bride-to-be in town, focusing more on the expense than on the wedding look, focusing more on the long term than on the short term. And, I am thankful the Universe made me that way. Perhaps, I will be able to drill sense into my next generation, and help them have an inexpensive wedding, yet a perfect marriage.

Some strange hope

We are strangely hopeful beings. 

We are strangely hopeful beings because we believe that if we endure pain for long enough, it will go away. We think that we can negotiate with pain, that pain will be impressed with our patience and leave us alone.

We are strangely hopeful beings because we consider peace to be a continuum, happiness a steady state of affairs. We refuse to listen to reason, that change is a constant, that a state of being is only as of a point in time. 

We are strangely hopeful beings because we chide ourselves for not trying hard enough, for not proving a point. We do not easily give up on unreasonable benchmarks, impossible feats. 

We are strangely hopeful beings because we bank on second chances, getting it right the next time. We forget that "getting it right" is subjective, second chances sometimes utopian. 

We are strangely hopeful beings because we pride ourselves on being immense individual forces. We fail to recognise that we need collective strength just to withstand some tempests, let alone battle them. 

We are strangely hopeful beings, because we think that everything will be alright in the end. We do not realise that there is no alright and there is no end.

A thousand mistakes

I complete five years of professional work experience this month. Half a decade.

Half a decade spent in front of a laptop, talking to excels and ppts, rushing into and out of airports, providing my two cents and more at (sometimes inane) meetings.

Half a decade of not experiencing an evening jog on a Monday, not getting to travel the world at leisure, not resting in a hammock with a book in hand, not letting go of a buzzing BB while on holiday.

Five years back, when I was preparing for campus placements, the questions that worried me the most were “Why do you want to choose this career?”, “How do you see yourself fitting into this profile”, “Where do you see yourself ten years from now?” and “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”. I remember wanting to tell interviewers, out of sheer desperation, that chocolate is really my biggest weakness.

I used to wonder then whether I had wasted 22 years of existence learning math and theoretical computer science and marketing and strategy, without learning about my strengths and weaknesses.

Today, I can wax eloquent about my strengths and weaknesses. I am thankful to my five years for that. More importantly, I am thankful to my thousand mistakes.

Mistakes are what make man perfect, they say. I do not have a view on perfection. But, I do have a view on mistakes and choices that turn out to be mistakes. At any given point in time, we choose a particular path because it makes sense to us, it makes us happy. However, over a period, despite battling through the path, if the choice doesn’t work, it is time to cut the losses and move on. There is no such thing as a “wrong choice”. It is only wrong if we figure out that something isn’t working for us and still go on living with it.

Strange as it may be, these five years of work have taught me more about “living” than 18 years of classroom learning. It is strange because my friends say “Get a life” more often now than ever before. It is strange, also because at times I do wonder whether education is over-rated.

If I try uttering that statement, my mother says, “You have just got arrogant with all the education you were able to have.” Perhaps, she is right. But, then again, I have no way of knowing now. For, that’s a choice I made, and I have to move on from there.

It has been an exhausting five years of work. An exhilaratingly interesting and exhausting five years of work. If the coming years turn out to be anything like the ones gone by, I wouldn’t mind the rush and the stress and the “not having a life” bit so much.

Make your own mistakes, fight your own battles.

For, the war is long and hard, and only with yourself.

And then there were colors

This is the story of how a shockingly purple color changed my life. Ah, well. Let’s settle down to “made my day”.

However, to be enlightened further, we need to go back in time a bit. It starts with the advent of my brand new BlackBerry phone a year and a half back. Oh, wait, it actually starts here, when I bought, after much discussion and debate, the beauty that is the Nokia 6500 slide. And, then when I had to forcibly replace it with the BB, because my beloved did not have this feature called “push mail”.

Sad were those days when, in a fit of revolt against my own decision, I depressed myself further by barring music and photos from the BB, making it an ideal example of just how those caricatures depict it – dull, boring and so official-looking it is almost officious.

I am getting carried away here and I don’t think BB aficionados are going to like me too much post this post. I do like the BBM (the messenger, for the uninitiated) though, and that is the only reason I held on to the phone this long. And, also because of a sudden loyalty towards the device, which has worked faithfully after being dunked in water and tea and myriad other things.

Also, if you know me well, you will know that I am wont to dropping myself and my devices left, right and center. So, the cheap, greyish-black, dirty, old BB might still have been the best bet in saving me some money and lot of heartbreak.

But, you know how it is with obsessions. A few months back, I really got into my head that I had to add color to my life. And, the only way I could think of doing it was by getting a nice and fun phone. I have a fetish for phones, rather, funky gadgets, much like the fetish V has for watches.

Nice and fun (in phones) to me means good looks, nice camera, nice music player, integration with my other gadgets and a funky brand. There, we almost have the answer now I guess. But, there was still one more important question I had to answer.

How expensive should it be? Someone once remarked that one should not buy a phone that is as expensive as, or more expensive than an LCD TV. I have no use for LCD TVs as they cannot keep moving along with me. And, if I am going to consume something only once a week or once a month, I may as well not buy it right? Such are the rationalizations I gave myself for going behind an expensive, nice and fun phone.

Oh, before actually buying it, I ate the heads of at least 10 people, 3-4 constantly, asking, “Should I? Shouldn’t I?” My mom came up with the worthiest answer to that question. She said, “You like it a lot and want it badly. No one is going to gift it to you. I definitely have no intentions of gifting it to you. That phone’s price is not coming down in the near future. And, my ears are sick and tired of listening to your everyday rant of how badly you need it. So, please go ahead and gift yourself one and end the story right here.”

As an aside, my friend says that Mom might have made a better consultant than me. Thankfully not! Competition reduced, substantially.

That brings us to the end of the story, well almost. If you remember, we have not covered the “purple” part yet. No, I did not buy myself a purple phone. These phones come only in black and white, and I of course love the damn color which is not even a color apparently – black. But, I had strict instructions from near and dear to buy a cover for my black, LCD-ish phone, so that I don’t kill it almost immediately after buying it.

At the shop, they did not have a black skin. The salesman told me, “Madam, you are dressed in purple today. You should definitely buy this purple skin”. And, I bought it. It made me happier than even buying the phone.

I do not anymore remember this girl in me who hated the Sony Vaio’s colorful laptop ads!

Today morning, my colleague exclaimed, “What happened to that nice black phone you acquired last week?” Well, learn to live with its purple skin. God knows, this office needs quite a bit of color to balance out all the BBs around. No?

Up in the air

I was flying through the clouds on my magic carpet waving to the twinkling stars. My hands were just about to reach out and touch the moon when a gust of wind threw me off the carpet. And, with a thud I woke up. I had rolled off my bed in my sleep.

It was the Half Yearly Examination of 1993. I hardly remember that 8 mark question in the English paper now. It had something to do with writing a story. And this is pretty much the long and short of what I wrote. I got a 7.5 and much praise from Mrs.JS, my most favorite English teacher of all times. My friend wrote about some houses made of chocolate that children could lick whenever they felt hungry; he got a 7 on 8. I personally liked what he wrote much more than what I wrote.

And, I think that is the last time I did serious creative writing. Perhaps, it stems from a huge lack of imagination and a fear for dreams. I have never thought about it much.

Yesterday, I was on an early evening aircraft for a change. The sun was going down, and the sky was clear. The aircraft was almost empty and I was looking out of the window in a long, long time – not reading, not dozing off, not cursing the delay but just looking out. And, there was a sheet of clouds beneath me and clouds all around me. I was trying to imagine huge white cloud castles in a square shape, a tall tower on each corner, and a clown face with a gleeful smile at the gateway. I was building castles in the air, almost literally. Sometime then, I must have dozed off. For, when I woke up, it was already dark and we were landing. And, I think I felt alive in a very childlike way then.

It is nice to build those chocolaty homes and fly through the clouds with angelic wings, and live a fairy tale life, sometimes. It is nice to forget those concrete jungles, stressed out moments and robotic lives, sometimes. Perhaps, it is just nice to dream sometimes.

Nonplussed?

Like I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I joined the FB bandwagon pretty late. Firstly, I was unsure of whether my little brain would be able to understand one more UI. Secondly, I had nothing to say to the world. My life was pretty un-happening, if you know what I mean. No tours (international or domestic), no photos amidst the wildlife, no videos of me diving through the sky – in short, nothing that would make anyone (even my hypothetical pet dog) jealous.

Erm.. well.. how happening my life is now is not a wise topic to discuss. So, let’s get on with what I wanted to say.

What has all the networking done to me today? Apart from an exponential increase in my creativity and boldness in writing (if you have a different opinion on that, let us take it offline :P), nothing positive, I would say.

Despite continuously cribbing about social networking’s negative value add to my life, last week, I self-inflicted some more pain into my system. Yes, I created an account with yet another social networking site, despite it being very unimaginatively named the Plus.

But, before getting on with that, it would only be righteous of us to mourn in honor of the debacle that Google came up with sometime last year. I was one of those people who actually saw in entirety, the one hour long video that Google had put up on how to use Wave. And, I conveniently forgot that “enthusiasm” is a two-way street. After much cajoling and threatening of the near and the dear and everyone in particular, I gave up mournfully. And, I went back, defeated, to good old FB.

Google Wave was such a fiasco it would not even go down in history as a failure.

However, Google, just like Mahmud of Ghazni, is not willing to give up the fight so easily.

Enough has been said on FB about Plus already.

My two pence is this: If Google can crack the mobile app well enough for Plus, it is going to be a big hit amongst the Android fans, and sooner or later, amongst other smart phone users too. The “circles” seem like a smart idea, weird that FB did not think of it. But, it might only be prudent for Plus to stay away from the whole commercial pages part for some time at least. The number of advertisements and programs in the media that advertise FB proudly saying “Like us on FaceBook” – well that is going to be very, very difficult to crack and might be a fulsome dilution of Plus’ ‘personalization’ image, with no tangible returns in the near future.

Sigh! If only Larry and Sergey would listen to my periodic advice, they would just be elsewhere I tell you.

An opportunity to "language"

“Send me sample moon charts ASAP,” a friend texted me frantically last week. I replied with a “What the heck are moon charts? Are you referring to Harvey balls?” Pat came the reply. “Oh! No wonder I was getting random charts on moon signs when I ran a search.”

If you are dazed by the abnormality of this conversation, you may click here to enlighten yourself.

And after that insignificant digression, you may continue reading.

The other day, I was apologising to a friend for having missed his call, “There was some major fire here, so could not call back.” He replied in a grave tone, “I hope metaphorically.”

And then, one day, I was cribbing on Facebook about how obsessed I am with thousands separators. A friend replied with a “Do I stand to reveal my total ignorance if I say that I don’t know what thousands separators are?”

Today, I was trying to make sense of what a customer care representative was telling me, when I lost my cool and blurted out, “You are giving me a very global answer.” He was flummoxed, I could say from the tone of his voice.

Aah, well, that is when I realized something. Something very important and possibly highly lucrative.

There is a huge opportunity here – To write a book on “How to communicate better - a lesson in the language of the future”. Essentially, collect all the phrases you have ever come across in B-school and work life, situate them in random circumstances and make a 200 page book out of it. If possible, promote it with a “First of its kind blah blah written by IIT / IIM blah blah”. It will sell like hot cakes, I tell you. Yes, yes, even better than those books on how to hatch without chickens or something.

A story well told

Each city paints its own story with the help of the colour palette. No one story is the same as the other, as no one colour can be the same as another. There are hues and shades that give each city a life of its own.

And no one does a city show case itself more to than the one who watches from above.

Today, as my flight is about to land, I look down at the city below and wonder what story this one is telling me. It is lush green and beautifully serene, is filled with water, not just of the sea variety.

Inevitably, I take a walk down memory lane.

It promised to be a red city, with swirling dust. I could see neither the greys of the roads nor the blues of the water from above. The city seemed to challenge me, in a mocking tone, with a “Do you have the nerve to touch my red hot soil, smack in the middle of a treacherous Indian summer?” Whenever I hear ‘Ahmedabad’, the only colour I am reminded of is red, a dangerous, deep red.

Did I ever tell you the story of the intimidating grey, warning me of dire consequences if I ever dared to touch it? I remember to this day that fear in my heart when my flight touched this grey and red land. It still does not cease to intimidate – the regal, royal red and grey combination. The red of forts and the grey of castles, sprinkled with a vast expanse of roads and tolls. What a fitting choice of colours by the national capital!

There is this other story of that muddy brown one, muddled up all over. It said, “Can I ever have a colour of my own? I house so many unknowns within me. If you could only define me by any colour, would I be who I am now?” Dear Mumbai, if only I could associate with you a defined colour, I may not love you as much as I do now.

As my flight takes off from Kochi, and I marvel how beautifully this city has spoken to me through its colours, I am still left wondering what my city has tried telling me all these years. Wait a minute. Have I ever bothered to pen it down? Is it the vast expanse of the blue, or the yellow twinkling of the lights (for I have always landed in Chennai in the night)? Is it a multi coloured extravaganza or is it some dull hue of an unknown colour one cannot bother to notice?

Each city tells a story of its own. Mine too would be telling someone its story. Maybe it would tell me too, someday sometime, when it finds me worthy enough of the knowledge.

What does yours tell you?

Small wonder

Why does a dress look more attractive when someone else is wearing it than when it is in the store? Why do those set of curtains look so desirable hanging down my neighbor’s windows than while I actually ignored them in the curtain shop? Why do I always want that piece of jewel that my acquaintance is wearing even though I had scoffed at mom’s idea of buying it?

Such pertinent questions have never plagued my life, for I have found them to be natural occurrences.

However, it took me 25 long years and a short trip to Dilli Haat to understand what we fondly refer to as “human psychology”.

Dilli Haat itself is a quaint, colorful place, with much option for shopping, albeit a little pricey. As I know only too well that my shopping expeditions are of no interest to anyone here, I will move on without further ado.

In sync with its overall quaintness, the place had a quaint little shop selling many, many articles made of wood, not excluding lamp shades and well, some more lamp shades. Outside the shop were four cutesy little chairs, two on either side. My friends were adamant on perching atop them for a touristy picture. I obliged (by taking the picture that is).

In that split second between the posing and the clicking, our decision was made. Those chairs were coming home, not just via the picture. After a quick and very ineffective bargaining session, we secured two of them and settled down (not on the chairs) right opposite the shop to wait for a concert scheduled to start any moment then.

Little did we know the entertainment had already begun.

An aunty came up to me and asked, “How much did you get it for?” and promptly walked up to the shop afterwards. She was followed by many more “Auntyjis” and “Unclejis”. Those obscure chairs, which had been ignored till that very moment, had risen in importance and market value rapidly. The shop owner was rationing out the stock from his storehouse to create a pretty supply-demand mismatch picture. The prices were increasing rapidly, at the rate of 10% per minute. All of a sudden, those chairs had become the center of all attraction, just because their position had shifted from that side of the pathway to this, from the seller’s hands to the buyer’s.

That day, we learnt a thing or two, not only about human psychology but also about marketing effectiveness. It is not just enough to have a quaint little shop with some quaint items. Coax someone into it, pay them for it, do whatever it takes – just make sure a few people keep circling the area of your shop with some of your items and an air of just having bought them. If your products are unique enough, I bet you are going to be out of stock by end of day.

P.S. The incident compensated any unrequited yearning I might have had to become a ramp walk model. We were stared at and quizzed by all and sundry, in the station, on the metro and all along the way, till we put away those clever buys out of sight.