Identity Crisis

The other day I was having this conversation with a friend of mine. She told me that she identifies herself with the city she comes from. She is extremely fond of it and anything said against it would offend her to no end. Many Muslims identify themselves with their religion, many Hindus with their castes, most notably Brahmins and Rajputs.
This got me thinking. I am not proud of where I come from. I don't identify myself with any of the following things.
1. Being from Jaipur, Rajasthan or India.
2. Studying from St. Anselm's, MNIT, or IIM Lucknow.
3. Being an engineer (former) or a Management student. (I am still confused about either of them).
4. Employed at Samsung or Emerson.
5. Working at Noida or Mumbai (Thane actually )
6. Being a Kayastha (Shrivastava) or a Hindu.
7. Son of a doctor and an engineer.

I am not passionate about any of the above mentioned stuff and am proud of none. I don't belong anywhere.

I have a family, friends and some people I am extremely fond of, some of whom have influenced my life a lot, in a number of ways. I have learned from them, love them, admire them, respect them and look up to them.

These people make me. Probably that is my only identity.

Never quite understood why helpers in malls , high class shops and restaurants try to speak in English even when the customers start conversing with them in Hindi. They sometimes make absolutely no sense, garbling up words and pronouncing words in a way that make you cringe for the English that you learned in school.
It also makes customers who don't understand English look like fools. Shouldn't it be changed?

It's been a year since I graduated, and one of the worst and least productive ones that I have had. Moments of happiness have been few and far between. Mostly disappointments, total lack of activity,  and a complete lack of ambition have filled this year. There is a huge void that has been created after leaving Lucknow, a void that cannot be filled. I wish I could go back in time.
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There is too much hate and negativity surrounding AAP and Arvind Kejriwal. I was in Delhi for a day where I interacted with few people asking them about Kejriwal and they were all praises for him. Now he didn't do anything extraordinary in his 49 days but government offices actually started functioning, the police officers stopped taking bribes and there was an atmosphere of hope. My father's (who is a government official Rajasthan)  department was instructed by the MLAs to pull up its socks because the government wanted to look good in the eyes of public and avoid the fate of Sheila Dikshit. Is this not a welcome change?  Too many people have been complaining about the unconstitutional means adopted by AAP. I wonder how many of them ever went to the polling booths in their life time.
There are some pressing questions that need to be confronted. Suddenly BJP is the new saviour of India. How easily the people forget the corrupt practices of these leaders. It would do a great deal of good if people started using their brains and questioning everything, every fact that is thrown at them.
Same people who used to lament the degrading quality of Times Of India and India TV are now posting links and Youtube videos that condemn AAP. I am tired of this hypocrisy.

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Quora has been a discovery. It's a great site to learn a lot of good stuff. I realized that I feel extremely happy when some people 'upvote' my answer on Quora. More so, when a lot of time was spent researching for the answer and the 'upvote' comes from a person you respect on Quora because of his/her great answers.

Lost Love, Maybe

I watch a lot of old cricket videos these days, lots of them. Modern Cricket fails to impress me. But now, the desire to understand the game and its nuances has taken the precedence over watching the usual hit and run show the game has become of late. There are no great players around, except maybe Dale Steyn who evoke admiration and awe at the same time. There are close finishes no doubt, but the joy of watching the game is amiss. (Hashim Amla is an exception though).
So I try to turn back the clock. Read about some game of cricket, some player, some innings, some piece of bowling on Cricinfo and then watch its video. And try to understand what made Shane Warne the master of Leg Spin, why Sachin is such a great player that he is, what made Lara such a delight to watch, where do the technical faults of Graeme Smith lie and so on.
Until recently I used to pride myself in saying that I understand the game. Hardly. I still don't understand why Shane Warne is rated higher than Muralitharan when statistically the records of Murali far outweigh those of others. Why Glenn McGrath evoked fear in batsmen with his consistent bowling in the "corridor of uncertainty". Yes, I can repeat what commentators and news articles say but that is not the understanding of the game. That is just plain repetition. However, there is a desire to develop that insight in the sport now, much beyond the statistics. It's like a poem recitation of William Wordsworth in class 3. The poetry doesn't change, but over the years the feeling and understanding does.  I crave for the "Ahh! That's why David Gower was such a treat to watch."
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Bill Lawry is a commentator for Channel 9 in Australia. He is not as popular as Geoffrey Boycott, or Tony Greig, or even Harsha Bhogle. But it is such a delight to listen to him purely because of the passion of the game that he has. Earlier I used to hate Hindi commentators. These days I have started hating listening to most of the English commentary as well. There is so much mediocrity around. Even after almost 20 years Ravi Shastri hasn't grown up as a commentator or added new words to his woefully limited vocabulary. His platitudes are as predictable as the continual losses of West Indies team in test cricket.
On pure aesthetics, I would rate the team of Bill Lawry, Richie Benaud and Tony Greig much higher than any other commentary team. These people made Cricket much more interesting than it actually is. And on the other end of spectrum you have jerks like Ramiz Raja, Laxman Sivaramakrisnan, Arun Lal, Danny Morrison and so on. The list is endless.
IPL and T20 is killing not only the beauty of the game, it is also killing the art of commentary.

Jealous

Oh yes! I do feel jealous..
Of people who can love...anything..anybody...

A Question of Respect

I'm in that phase of my life when everybody around is getting married, or is about to. A friend of mine recently asked me to inquire about a guy, somebody whom I knew through another contact of mine. I asked her about the things that she really cared about. She told me that it was extremely important that the guy in question should be
a. Earning more than her
b. Should have a degree from an institute which is at least equal in stature to her's.
If the guy fulfills the above two conditions, she would say yes without much apprehension. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to 'respect' the guy.
And it made me wonder. Is this the criteria girls judge their husbands on???? To a great extent, yes, but are these the 'only' things that matter? Does it really bother someone that the guy is earning a salary which is 2-3 lacs less than her 18 lac annual package, or hasn't done an MBA but is 'just an engineer'?
I was shocked to say the least. Having studied in a b-school, I have known people who care about nothing but money. Many of those students simply disgusted me. They could stoop to any level to gain an advantage in a job interview or for currying favours (read networking) with people who could help them in getting a better paying job. Many times I wondered if these guys were able to sleep peacefully at night. Did they have any real friends out there? Will they ever be successful in any relationship based on trust?
I expected my friend to have shown a little more maturity after having studied with such people for a good two years. Sadly, that was not the case.
At Samsung, I knew a lot of people who were way better than I was, not only in terms of knowledge or work ethics, but also in terms of kind of people they were. I know that even though I am more qualified and earning more than what they are even after 6-7 years of work experience, it would take a lot of time and effort to be the kind of people they are. They are good people, my mentors whom I look up to. I enjoy their company and there is always something to learn from them.
How long will a girl care about the qualification of her spouse if he treats her like dirt? How long will the bank balance matter?
I am not saying that the salary/qualification should be ignored altogether. Yes, they matter a lot. But some things matter a lot more. 

Yayati: A book Review

Since finishing college I have been on a reading spree and have so far read 13 books, and about to finish 14th. One of them is Yayati. It is an award winning  novel, written by V S Khandekar way back in 1918. I picked up this book because I wanted to read something good in Hindi, something I had not done since reading Mrityunjay. 

And  I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong, but I am not a fan of love stories, which is what it mostly is. I picked up this book wanting to read mythology in the form of a novel. Yayati was the ancestor of Pandavas and Kauravas, and Krishna too. So I was hoping that I would get to learn something about the lineage of Kuru Vansh but it was not to be.

The book revolves around Yayati, the king who is torn between the love of Devyani, the daughter of Shukracharya and Sharmishtha, a princess who suffers at the hand of fate. It describes his lecherous nature and the way he spends his life being a coward through and through with some misplaced sense of ideals. Devyani is the jealous wife who is more interested in satisfying her whims and fancies rather than taking care of her husband. Everything that she does is out of vengeance, right from marrying Yayati to making Sharmishtha her servant by using the influence of Shukracharya, her father. 

Sharmishtha is the woman who suffers because of Devyani, and secretly loves Yayati. They spend nights together when Devyani is not at home, which leads to the birth of Puru, who eventually ascends the throne because he accepts the curse and gives his youth to Yayati.

Yadu, the son from Devyani is the ancestor of Krishna (Yadu Vansh) and is cursed by Yayati that neither he nor his descendants will ever get to sit on throne. (which explains why Krishna never became a ruler, but was only a king-maker)

The book mostly describes the feelings of each of these characters and the dilemmas these main characters face. A problem with the book is that it is not in what one calls Shudh Hindi, which I wanted to read. At some places, it uses quite difficult words which we don't get to read/hear any more, at others it uses Urdu where easy hindi words could have been used. The use of Urdu words which are commonly used in colloquial language turned me off the most.

The book is good for those who like romantics and novels which lay emphasis on feelings. The emotions have been captured quite well and the story can actually mirror a common household with a troubled married life. Personally, I didn't like it much.