PS: note to self

11.01.11

2011-01-11T18:55:00.005+05:30

Ever since i first started teaching freelance, I have been meaning to write about my classroom experiences.
The nervousness in facing a bunch of 17 year olds fresh from school (!?) The learning not to react or wonder if the snide chuckles and shuffles in the back rows pertain to you in some way...the first time you get that look of blank incomprehension when you have raced ahead and have an entire sea of confounded faces staring at you..............the first time when they ask you something on the subject that you haven't the faintest clue of and are too embarrassed to admit it....teaching for me, really has its days!
There probably isn’t a bigger cliche line about teaching than the one that goes, that to be a good teacher, you have to be a good student....But seriously the things i’ve learnt when i've taught!!

I’ve learnt that students are far prompter about sending you friend requests on Facebook than they are ever gonna be about mailing you assignments. I’ve seen that when i sound unsure about how they will receive what i am saying, they too seem unsure about how to react to that information.
I've seen the importance of setting context before starting. Why are we learning this? How will we use this? and How is it relevant to us are questions you should take time out to answer.
There are days when i am discouraged by the quiet in the class. And there are days i have gone with no prepared lesson and made up a class on conversation and real time examples and come back charged and high on the class’ participation.
I’ve observed that I make a far better impact when i stray off the prepared lesson and draw from what they are saying and build the lesson around it.
I’ve also learnt that they are probably gonna learn far more from each other than from me as long as i can spark off an interesting debate between them.
I’ve come around to realise that as a teacher its more important that students learn to arrive at an informed viewpoint about the subject rather than have thorough knowledge of textual matter.
I’ve come to believe ‘google it’ or ‘i will get back to you on that’ is a good response to a question you cant answer.
I’ve realised that a significant part of teaching has to be devoted to one on one interaction with students who come up to you.
I’ve learnt that to be one of those ‘rockstar’ teachers who can keep disinterested students up at 2:00 p.m on a sunny afternoon after a heavy lunch takes practice and straight from the heart involvement with what you teach.
I’ve learnt (from a really inspiring teacher himself) that the core of a subject is in the first line of the textbook (an NCERT one, in many cases) and that as a teacher its your job start there. Like biology is the study of living things. And once you know that you really cant actually hate the subject, you know.
I’ve watched it makes a world of difference when you ask people to use their hands and fingers to do stuff than jus cut copy paste on the computer. Draw, write, actually cut with scissors and stick with glue.

But the most important thing i think i learnt, was from my dad. About the time i started teaching, I came home one evening wondering if it was worth my time to teach a bunch of disinterested students who’ve shown up for the sake of attendance, a grade and a paper diploma and he after hearing me talk about class said to no one in particular that there is no such thing as disinterested students, It jus’ means that the teacher doesnt know how to engage them :)

Those were the days my friend...we thought they'd never end....

2010-04-09T01:08:00.001+05:30

Spent the last four days with my roommates from college. Something I had promised I would do when I quit my job. Four days spent talking, head banging after a night at Hard Rock, shopping, checking out a new mall, eating cheesecake and drinking coffee. Through it all we argued about open source v/s IPR, working v/s creating meaning, the larger good v/s individual short sightedness...reliving what we did for two years in college and wishing we could do this more often. Discuss daily mundanities while being able to talk about things that really move us or make us think. Four days of company, conversation and the comfortable familiarity of close friends made me think of the funny ways in which we meet people who become so integral to our lives and how we live....

The first time I walked into the 40 degree centigrade dusty hostel room that was my assigned acco in design school, I thought I finally had the answer to why Ivy league design education in India costs a fraction of Ivy league management education. In a 9’x9’ room with li’l or no flooring I saw 3 metal cots and one forlorn looking cupboard with doors hanging off its hinges looking back at me.

I spent the next five minutes pacing around the corridor outside thinking of a logical line of argument to persuade my dad or the bank to fund my stay outside of this oven; in a place where I had a fighting chance of getting through the Ahemdabad summer. And that's when I met the only person on this planet I know who can walk huffing and puffing into a fourth floor room on a terrace with weatherproofing for flooring and hospital cots and see a place that had the potential to be transformed into a Mocha like hangout.
When they say Bharatnatyam dancers speak through their hands and eyes, they are not kidding. This pear shaped dynamo, who turned out to be my destiny designated roommate, in words and sweeping actions cooed in delight at the room and the ‘view’ which in peak summer framed the drain sized stream of water snaking its way through a sandy bed; the erstwhile path of the river Sabarmati. Against the backdrop of this view I was shown (in my head) visions of blowing-in-the-breeze blue curtains, fluffy beds, comfy cushions, rugs on the floor and paper lamps throwing warm light across the room. Sucker for fine living that I am, I fell in line. All thoughts of living outside campus having being abandoned, I turned towards the only other object in the room that I saw as a problem. A tiny 5 feet steel almirah...in a room meant for three girls!! My classical dancer future roommate saw this only as a tiny li’l insignificant hiccup in the larger scheme of the fun we were gonna have living together. With a grand wave of her hand she democratically decided to leave the division of that li’l piece of furniture till our third roomie arrived. I didn’t realise it then, but I had jus’ met the most resourceful, enthusiastic and cheery girl I was ever going to know. Neeru still has a sweeping vision for everything she comes across and an answer for every impossible situation....well, almost everything.

When we came back from the orientation, we saw why sometimes dictatorships work and why hostels have li’l or no room for consideration. The cupboard that was left to democratic division was now firmly shut and locked and bore the distinct air of being full of someone’s luggage. Enter my third roommate. Jus’ when I thought that at 25, I wasn’t gonna meet or make any new lifelong friends (a rather cynical point of view, in hindsight) in walked the girl who having lived in hostels all her life obviously knew the protocols that bound sharing living space. The undemocratic occupation of the cupboard that seemed like a territorial human right violation to me was to her simply a way of making her life convenient, roommates she hadn’t seen yet, be damned!

Since conflict seemed like an avoidable solution to the problem of two big suitcases and 3 smaller bags waiting near the door, we upholders of democracy reconciled to living in a suitcase under the bed. If our common dislike for our dictator roommate brought us closer, so did the fact that we were from the same city, studied in the same college, the same course and were jus’ five years apart academically speaking. It also turned out that no amount of visions of comfortable or fine living could move our roommate who saw no need for curtains, cushions or carpets. Things we were subtly told, only first time hostel dwellers thought of as priority. But nothing deters the one with a vision and I found myself shepherded through state handicraft shops, big bazaar and roadside stalls. Through the two initial weeks of ragging and classes, icebreakers and griping about seniors, hand stitched blue curtains went up on the big windows and billowed in the wind, li’l cushions robed in mismatched covers appeared on the bed and plastic mats on the floor. Our third roommate watched with interest alternated with disdain. But living together is a funny thing, it makes friends of the people we swear never to talk to in the first five minutes of meeting them. And by the time we had to invest in the quintessential girl’s room asset, the mirror, three of us were scouting around together. That was where it started. By the time first year was over we had joint assets in the areas of clothes, shoes, varieties of tea, sunglasses and a hot plate for making maggi.

Our dictator roommate, it turned out, was jus’ like us, a regular girl with talents in different areas. The fashion sense of a diva, the aura of a friendly glass of beer, the taste buds of a foodie and at most times the common sense of a man. Yup! thats her all right. Over denim deconstruction, improvised long island iced teas, sooji ka paani puri and the perennial advice to us about not getting worked up about the smaller details and always looking at the big picture, we got to know Pooja. She’d cry over soppy animation movies and refuse to read long pieces of text. (Which makes me pretty sure she is not gonna read this) She had a playlist for everything from waking up to going to sleep and from heartbreak to head banging. She’d shop for and eat the freshest most exotic fruits in the beginning of the month when the money was jus’ in and mess food towards the end of the month.

When second year gave us the option of moving out to single rooms, we simply opted to take the single room next to ours and continue living pretty much the same way, with just a li’l more space thrown in. The only people in our batch who chose to stay with their year long roommates.

Sure, we had our down days, days when each other’s tastes in music or having to listen to one side of long drawn phone conversations drove us up the wall. When one person had a lover’s spat or was PMSing and the others had to take cover in the extra room, still the upsides far far outweighed the flip sides. I came back late one winter night long after the other two had slept off and as I sat on my bed taking off my shoes I remember thinking that sometimes company is just someone sleeping in the same room as you. Through phases of vegan diets, organic food, yoga and smaller issues like projects, all-nighters and college crushes, we grew into each other’s quirks and idiosyncrasies. We spent a winter day under the sun unmindful of classes going on. We ran down the hostel stairs in alarm one spring night when a 6.2 richter earthquake shook the building only to discover we were the only ones who came without our laptops or cameras. One hot summer evening we danced in the sprinkler that watered the gardens and wound our way through two years jus’ talking, eating and talking some more. The room that we had reluctantly shared in first few weeks towards the end of our time in college had become a den, where we held court and endless cups of green tea and countless plates of maggi were made for people who came over for a chat, some gossip, some gyaan or to ask the eternal question, “What do I wear?” When fourth semester ended and they left college for the last time, they left a day earlier than me since I wanted another day to say my good-byes. And it was then that it hit me, that there was nothing to say good-bye to. We had sold the last of the old newspapers and bottles to raise funds to despatch our luggage home and all that was left was the metal cots and the lone cupboard. I knew it then, that my two years were a sum of our experiences together. That we learnt more from talking to each other all night than we did at class. That without them, the education that became a turning point in my life would have simply stayed an academic experience. Together, we had found a way to make it a way of living.

Day One

2010-04-02T02:23:00.000+05:30

Making a salad with honey mustard dressing, an evening spent playing with a puppy, a phone that barely rang, an afternoon nap and a leisurely cup of morning coffee marked my first day of joining the ranks of the unemployed. Without the preoccupation of having to get to someplace and getting back home, time seemed to move slower and I moved more consciously.

After the longest time, without the weather buffer called the office air conditioning, I could actually feel the weather outside my window and for the briefest of moments, while I vaporized, I considered telling my boss I would come back to work through the summer months. I ate only when hungry, made a glass of the perfect dark iced lemon tea and spent an entire day without getting behind the wheel of my car. A life I could get used to if only I could get rid of this nagging feeling that I am on a short holiday and before I know it I will be back to the life of living each day with a defined goal and a list of tasks that need to be accomplished.

When I shut the office laptop for the last time and drive out of the basement parking lot yesterday, I reminded myself not to trudge back there at 10.00 a.m the next day morning. So used am I to the habit called office; And breaking into a different lifestyle was little like a my first day at work, like seeing the place and the people for the first time. I noticed things like the afternoon sun on the floor of my home, I found the time to say good night to dad, I have the energy to write late into the night, to watch an IPL match till the last ball, basically to live more consciously in little mundane and urban ways. Not today the mindless ravenous chomping through dinner only to shower and collapse in bed or the mumbled conversation with family recounting vague details of the work day. Today, I lived every minute and moment. And tomorrow is another day. Thankfully not a working day...yet. :)

Au revoir

2010-04-01T21:37:00.000+05:30

My first day in the ranks of the unemployed. More about that later. For now, here is a letter of good bye i mailed to everyone on my last day of work...

As a designer you're often a nomad or a gypsy, going from place to place and from one day to
another looking for meaning, fun and satisfaction in your work. You're looking for the feeling of looking
around you and seeing the things you've helped create or give form to. On the way,
sometimes you make long stopovers and sometimes short ones. And every now and then
you think you've found a place you can stay forever. But a few weeks or months down the line
and you realise that it is what you love about a place that holds you back from moving on. I
would know. My stopover at the Education and Stationery business was one of those,
where i found a place at work i could call home.

But designers come with a one flaw (amongst many others). A manufacturing defect :) An
insatiable need to see, experience and do newer and more things. So once again, i find
myself plotting a new course with one long last look at everything here that has become
familiar and dear...colleagues who have become friends, spaces that have become
comfortable, lunch partners who have shared meals, stories and lives, teammates who
have shared work insights, how-to-survive here tips :) and given generously of their time
and themselves. In the two years fours months that i have spent here lines have merged
and when i look around i know why good-byes' are the hardest part.

It would be a cliche to say i enjoyed my tenure here. And a bigger cliche to say that I learnt
a lot more here than i did at design school...both about people and about design. But
sometimes a cliche says it best. So,thank you everyone who has willingly or unwittingly
been a part of my learning and experience. i wish you all as much luck and good times
as i am hoping i find, as i chart out the course to starting my own design firm.

With warm regards,
Shikha

Working girl...no more.

2010-03-27T10:11:00.006+05:30

27.03.10

My last few days at work and its overwhelming. Working in this place counts as my only real job simply cos of the sheer amount of time i have spent here. 3 years in the era of changing jobs as often as we change cell phones. Transfer contacts, keep some texts, erase others and upgrade. Changing a job is a bit like that; a coupla people you’re genuinely loathe to leave, some you are glad to be seeing the last off, a farewell, the last chilled out week of the notice period and you’ve upgraded to a new job, bigger salary and the hope of finding that elusive thing called job satisfaction.

In the last one month of my notice period, people on my design team have spent an unusual amount of time on my table discussing work, giving me advice for the future, asking me the million dollar question what next?, having coffee...actually jus talking or sometimes not even that, Leaving me wondering why they aren’t getting up and heading off even after the conversation is over and the coffee cup is empty. And then it occurred to me that we are jus spending time together. Something as colleagues we don’t always take time out for.
Some of them have come up to tell me how much difference I have made to their work. Hearing that is an unexpected pleasure. As a boss you always want to know that you have contributed meaningfully. That the work people do is better from your intervention. And there is always that tightrope walk between being the genial popular boss and the serious firm one that gets the work done and pulls up errant team members. In trying to find middle ground, i constantly find myself tipping towards to the serious side. With ‘not encouraging/appreciative enough’ featuring very often in the feedback i take from team members when i do yearly appraisals. Which is why its overwhelming when people on my team make me a mug featuring a mug shot of me and many of theirs and a line that says we cant spell success without you...corny, cliched and flattering? maybe. but it touched my heart and gave me the fleeting reassurance that whatever i did at work for 2 and a half years, some of it sure worked.

A colleague made a digital sketch of me, asked me to sign it and write my address and landline number on it. A bunch of them gave me the magic mouse for my mac and a big bunch of flowers with a note from each one of them. Every little random act of farewell has moved me so much and made me believe that there is much more to work than deadlines, deliverables and office politics. When i handed in my resignation for reasons like wanting to figure what i want to really do, travel more, write more and take more pictures, there is nothing i dreaded more than the business communication meet cum farewell scene. After the customary speech by the head of the business, people are invited to say a few words about the person leaving. discrete coughs, shuffling of feet and silence later we give up the floor to the farewelee and after two lines about a great tenure and polite claps we adjourn to discuss the quarter’s results, sales figures and bid a by-the-way farewell to the person leaving over crunchy kachoris and milk pedas (the only up side of the event). What i least anticipated was spontaneous acts with one simple message - we will miss you.

It dawns on me only now that giving up on being with so many people is as big a challenge as living without the comfort of a salary that reaches the ATM on time. It means lunch times devoid of multi cuisine tiffins that span hisar to calcutta and parupu usli to aloo dum. The knowing that there are so many people to bounce ideas off and share work and take feedback from. Quitting a job in my case wont be as simple as changing a phone, I guess. I think of people i know who have gone from one 10 hour workday to another and just for a mad moment suddenly i am wishing for some of that comfort of certainty. But thats jus’ one moment. Armed with the resolution to really write more, learn more, find what i really want to do and hopefully travel more, i shut my laptop and prepare to drive out of my designated parking slot with a wave at the guard knowing that i will be doing that only 3 times again in this place.

pause....play....rewind....

2010-03-26T20:23:00.010+05:30

I post something here so rarely that i feel like a visitor to my own blog :) so here goes, old notes to self, paragraphs from my digital diary...random lines, unconnected stuff...dated for easy reference....

22.10.2009
leaving office early today afforded me the rare pleasure of seeing twilight. that here, in madras, is defined by the blink and you will miss it minutes before cars and street lamps choke the deep blue of the sky turning it into a orange halogen haze. i left work early+the street lights came on late = twenty minutes of seeing the sky in front of my windscreen in a way i have not seen in a long long time. it was only 6 o clock and getting dark; reminding me that the chennai version of winter has come. the tropical denizens of this city will now pull out sweatshirts smelling of mothballs and dare to say the words pleasant and weather in the same breath. the seasons are something i miss. living in the north trains your senses to anticipate the turn of each season, look forward to its colours, the aam panna for summers and the moongre ki subzi for winter, the festivals marking the beginning and end of each season, the first flowers of spring, the spaghettis and cotton kurtas for summer, the nippiness of autumn evenings and the reluctance to have a bath on winter mornings.

living in madras, the land of perma summer, i miss the nuance of every season. but its amazing how our minds, bodies and expectations adjust. come march and everyone here is shopping for cheap cotton fabric, the days are longer and the beach seems more inviting than ever. for someone like me its a season spent dreaming of summer dresses, learning to sail on the marina and spending afternoons having beer and fish at moonrakers. summer is often a time i associate with swimming in the club everyday and tucking into a plate of sandwiches on the Gymkhana lawns and carrying back a load of books to read through the night marking the much looked forward to summer holidays from school. sid and i would read through the nite in the times when we still shared a room and stuff a bedsheet in the space between the door and the floor to block the light from filtering out pretending to be asleep.
come september and the sky turns deeper earlier. days are over faster but ironically you’ll wonder when the summer flew by and why the second half of the year moves at a slower pace. but this season too has its own celebration. the anticipation of the festivals; ayudha puja holiday, the new clothes and fireworks of diwali, kaarthikai night and the wait for christmas. there is a sense of waiting in the air and while pulse and heartbeat are words i have heard people use only in the same breath as cities like new york, mumbai and paris, this place and time has its own special magic. and it reminds me that places, feelings, seasons and celebrations are all personal. and they are not bigger anywhere than in our minds and that less logical part, the heart.

26.10.09

at 28 i feel like i am getting older. i see it in the cocoa colour under my eyes on some mornings, the smile creases around my lips and that single grey in my head. and it occurred to me today that maybe thats not age. thats jus’ me letting go of looking my age. its the staring into the computer, the late nights, the do-as-i-will lifestyle that started of as a way to say that i am older that has now turned turned into the thing thats making me feel like i am older.

and i know that i know how to fix that. simply take more interest in myself.

- eat better and not outa a packet
- make trips to the fruit/veggie/departmental store next door to find what i like and eat it fresh with a lusty appetite without guilt.
- EXERCISE! not to get slimmer or tone my abs but to up my energy levels and find the appetite to replace guilt.
-sleep. and judge the quality of that sleep by how fresh i feel when i spring outa bed.
-spring outa bed.
-meditate, sit still, do nothing, breathe with awareness - anything. for jus 10 mins a day.
as cliche as this is, pray - say thank you.

16.12.09

Having taught or ‘facilitated’ design for a few small groups I have learnt something about learning design. It is that learning design is not a capability but a certain quality of the mind.
Design is distinct because it is qualified by intent. To change a default setting is to do something by design.
Learning design too, is qualified by the same quality; conscious intent. The intent to open up your mind and see things like you are seeing them for the first time, the intent of not always wanting to where this is headed or how this will pan out, the intent to do at least some things without asking whats in it for me, the intent to learn from experiences that you dont know yet if you will enjoy or wont, the intent to learn from everything around you, the intent to keep your identity of yourself flexible and open to alteration, ........ (incomplete ‘cos i am still thinking this through.....)

17.02.10

Came into office before anyone else today and maybe because i know that i am leaving, i could suddenly see the beauty of my office today. at 7.45 in the morning, the sun comes in from the wall size window behind me through the vertical blinds. Without the hum of machines and the silent everpresent thrum of the ACs it is a quiete and beautiful place. A refuge from the madness of my home and a place where I can sit in one place for more than 5 mins and write, work, read....BREATHE.

undated

What do we need to know to live?
how to create healthy happy relationships...
how to deal with sorrow and pain...
how to reach our goals...
how to know what we want to do with our lives once we grow up...

...seems so simple, doesn’t it?

:)

Season's Greetings

2008-12-26T11:50:00.009+05:30

Yesterday, I put up a Christmas tree at home. My first.
While Divya unpacked the made-in-china ornaments with undeserving reverence, mom served us hot tomato soup and I unfurled the leaves of a beautiful evergreen tree that at 5 feet was a riot of furry plastic branches. And just as I was about to pick up the first ornament that came to my hand and hang it up on the branch nearest to me, I heard Divya go 'waaaaaaaait!' In the next ten minutes with Monica-like precision she lined up all the little ornaments on a chair grouping together similar ones. Out came a camera and an infectious sense of enthusiasm that soon had all of us at home (including my very blasé brother) hanging up the first ornaments and trying not to pose.

And as dad put up the little red stocking we gave him, he told us bout the time he wanted to buy us this lovely Christmas tree he saw when posted in Sri Lanka but which was a stretch on his Army Major's salary. And mum recalled the time we baked a cake with enough rum to cause a hangover! And as we talked, I thought about Christmas, as I knew it in all the years that we had celebrated it.

Thanks to friends who are Christian by birth and warm hearted by choice I have the nicest memories of Christmas. It was in all their homes that I watched all the little ceremonies of Christmas come together to create an unbeatable holiday season of tradition, anticipation and togetherness. I've seen some beautiful antique tree ornaments go up on the branches of a real Christmas tree and soaked in the smells of flour, fruit and rum melting into each other in the oven. I've seen the tree angel put up with much ceremony and tasted my first sip of ginger wine. I've reached friends' places early in the morning to help with getting their home all spruced up and stayed until night watching guests come and go, talking over glasses of wine and juggling brightly coloured gift wrapped boxes.

Growing up temporarily changes some of this quaint festivity when the wonder of a kid gives way to the brashness of a teenager and Christmas is reduced to Boxing Day dance nights in the club. But my favourite mental picture of Christmas is of Sid (my brother), Nikhil and me sitting on the sofa in his house next to the tree warm in our winter nightclothes tearing away at gift wrapping while our parents looked on and Nana set up an early morning snack of milk and cake.
The anticipation and excitement of waking up on Christmas morning to see if Santa had indeed managed to find the exact thing you had asked for was unbeatable. And since we didn't have a Christmas tree we'd have to troop off to Nikhil's house to find the gifts kept under his tree by our parents. Lego toys were sometimes replaced by Funskool building blocks and Peaches and Cream Barbie was substituted by a humble My first Barbie. But these were insignificant details in the larger canvas of an eagerly anticipated time of the year.

As army kids living in a random-dot-on-the-map place like Bhuj in the 1980's there was little or no Christmas-in-the-air feeling that big cities with bright serial lights and brighter sale signs have. But this was more than made up for by the elaborate pre-Christmas preparations…picking raisins and pistachios off kilos of dry fruits chopped up and soaked in an obscene amount of rum…intense debating and decision making as to which toy we should ask for followed by letters written to Santa and then checked by mum and dad who would then promise to pass it on…all in all it was a 'hectic' holiday season. :)

I especially remember this one time when Santa came 'army style' in a helicopter landing on the mess lawns and kicking up quite a storm. His sack stuffed with gifts bought by our parents. Even after we outgrew Santa and exaggerated kiddy Christmas parties, it still remained a special festival. I loved to watch Rajesh uncle put up ornaments on the tree and neatly wrap little bars of amul chocolate in glitter paper to hang as tree gifts. I especially liked the serene tree angel he used to lovingly put right on top of the real fir tree.

Images of so many many Christmases came back to me as I put up my very own tree and it occurred to me that so much of what a festival stands for, is ceremony. Little traditions that we might or might not know the origins of but that are even today a wonderful way to make small actions and times memorable. Besides the special joy of putting up my own tree I now have an even more special memory of doing it with people who made it so much fun. It made me see that festivals and occasions are not all about religion. In today's world maybe it's a little simpler if you just see it as a holiday, a break from the routine to do things you wouldn't otherwise do. Make your own tradition to carry forward the next year and add a coupla more pictures to the already overfull hard disk on the computer.

That simple act of putting up a tree made me want to bake a cake, buy little gifts for people I know and throw a small party with some wine and food and before I know it, I am thinking of having a real tree next year…and party games...but that's far away, for now I am jus happy to turn on the lights on the tree and watch the glow light up the serene face of the tree angel and savour the thought of a holiday, family and friends, the smell of baking and the sight of the lights on the tree and the whole special sensory experience that a festival brings.

In defense of us…

2008-08-17T21:05:00.000+05:30

People sigh when they hear me spout forth on something that's on my mind and then they say 'something is seriously wrong with your generation…you have it all and yet you are all deeply unhappy" As the self appointed spokesperson for the group of people born after 1979, I hotly defend 'my generation' as we are collectively referred to and I wonder, if there some truth in what they are saying.

'Theirs' was a generation of contentment. Educated, upright, disciplined and restrained they shelved themselves and did what was expected to be done, I think the other word for it is 'mainstream'. While 'our' generation in turn is best described by one word - deviant!

But isn't that an evolutionary step?

Between the old world and the new, there is a nebulous twilight realm of transition. Living in this world is a tribe that was born into the old and are growing up with the new.

When I have children, they will in all probability be digitally documented and preserved in bits and bytes right from their first lusty cry as newborns. They will see themselves mirrored in camera LCDs and talk to their grandparents over skype. They will learn motor co-ordination by playing with a cell phone and probably leave me voice messages at age 3 to tell me about what they are up to. Compare that to Doordarshan and the once a week serial, the slow and momentous progression from the VCR to the VCD and eventually the DVD, the 286 processors to the 2 kilo laptops, and you will know that 'my generation' has walked a long path with admirable patience and endurance.

Nope! we are definitely not a generation that has it all. What we really are is a deluded bunch of guinea pigs for the digital revolution! While convincing ourselves that we are on the cutting edge of technology we are left grappling with the memories of a simple childhood that is often brought up only to tell us how little we had and how spoilt we are now 'cos we have so much more. Not because we asked for it but simply because a rapidly changing world simply thrust them upon us.

How many of us knew as fifth graders that we could grow up to be career backpackers, exhibition designers, wine and coffee tasters, game testers and colour forecasters? We weren't born with the promise of these choices, we jus' grew up unwittingly in a world that sprung a gazillion options on us the minute we showed faintest signs of decision-making ability.

Piano lessons or math tuition…Tennis classes or IIT classes…Hindi or French…and to top it off advice from all and sundry AND 'parental guidance' for good measure. Hey! How about giving us some credit for growing up in difficult times!

How are we as 10 year olds supposed to weigh the relative benefits of a future career in translation v/s being a dentist? And if you say, that's exactly why we're given advice, how are we as 10 or even 15 year olds expected to know the difference between objective advice and unfulfilled parental ambitions thrust on us? I couldn't tell the difference at 25 and I doubt if I will be any wiser at 35. But by then it probably won't matter anyway, cos I will be dispensing some advice of my own.

Twenty years back it was a little simpler, math, science, commerce or arts? Translated that meant, engineer, doctor, lawyer or wastrel? In an intolerant time that defined success in narrow parameters like the respectability quotient of a job, (if you don't know what I am talking about, ask your dad if he could have imagined being an alcohol taster for a living) and how many years you mulishly stuck to one job, choices were a precious few and decisions were easier to make. The right path or the wrong…failure or success…the academic or the entrepreneur…intellectual or plebian…

But meet the average specimen of my generation and you will find they are a little bit of everything. Sure, that means not much depth in any one area but little interest in a lot of areas made possible by living in a more tolerant age where being a gazzetted government officer at the age of 21 is not the Holy Grail of achievement. And yes, if you ask us what is the millennium's holy grail of achievement, we don't know yet. But we are looking. And a state of searching is by no means a state of contentment.

Walking the middle path between a world that has made material success so accessible and another world where new age gurus ask us to just 'BE', we search for careers, homes, hobbies, holidays, partners, love, acceptance, fulfillment and meaning. Unwilling to put ourselves on the backburner we refuse to give up today for the promise of tomorrow. And that's who we are.

As 50 year olds we may not sigh with resignation and say we sacrificed our dreams for our children, but then again we will have a different set of regrets that we don't of know of yet. We might never know the contentment that comes from stability but we'll know the joys of having lived it up every moment of our lives and being true to ourselves. In the end we are no happier or unhappier than any other generation in the history of mankind. We have just lived lives different from those before us, made different choices and know that after us there will be another generation, another quest, another grail, another set of cribs and another criteria for happiness. And hopefully we'll have become wiser enough not to look at them and say, 'you really have it all and yet something seems to be wrong with the lot of you!"

Inspired?

2008-08-02T16:09:00.000+05:30

Is it too much to ask to be inspired and charged at work every single day? When someone asks me what I want to do in life, when I don’t say travelling, photography and being a bartender I say I want to be inspired and enthusiastic at work every day of my life. And that about sums up the height of my ambition! Which of course leaves me with the onerous task of finding a job that fulfills that criterion.

And have I tried or what?

Four years of working and six jobs later, I am still looking. And I am’nt any wiser than when I started. Sure, I have a long list of jobs I will never do again (only three of those six jobs I did even figure in my resume!) but I am no closer to finding the job that I makes me spring out of bed and get to work by 9.30 and industriously stay at my desk long enough to even feign being tired. As a fresher I figured this malaise was part of being plankton in the organizational food chain. But an impressive post grad degree and an even more impressive move up the ladder in the most impressive of all corporate houses has done very li’l to change what has now become status quo. I quietly pad into my cabin at what I call a sane hour to get to work - 10.45 a.m and switch off my cabin light and shut my laptop at 7.45 p.m sharp (the half an hour preceding this appointed time is spent switching off the light and shutting down my laptop)

Now, most corporate aspirants reading this might wonder what I do for a living that involves so li’l work and exactly who employs the likes of me. Suffice to say that in an office full of busy buzzing people (half of whom are only jus buzzing) I have a job that lets me work half a day while I spend one quarter of the remaining half writing articles like this and the other quarter switching off lights and laptops among a host of other such fruitless pursuits. But that is not everyday.
Some days at work are wonderfully rewarding, challenging even; when I get here at 9.30 a.m (and even the security guys look at me in askance) and proceed to then buzz around the office, issuing instructions, looking into work done, taking ‘command’ decisions in my li’l department, planning for the week/month ahead…and generally feeling like if efficiency had a human face it would look quite like mine. And then there are days when I have this mental picture of the work that needs to be done gathered in one big pile that eventually starts to resemble a fluffy mountain of paper with a comfortable plateau on top. And in my mind’s eye, I am sitting right there on that plateau, typing away on my computer about stuff that has nothing to do with what I am sitting on!

Appraisals, gentle admonishing, the promise of higher rewards…nothing, quiete nothing has the effect of making me the corporate energizer bunny on red bull…raring to go and not stopping at anything. Before you think that what I need is an energy rich meal and a tablet of revital, let me assure you that this has nothing to do with my physical state. Ask me to jump and I will ask how high, drive a hundred and sixty five kms and back jus’ to have lunch in a French place I jus discovered in the neighboring union territory, but ask me to work with sustained commitment and consistency and I will fail miserably, while looking at you with an expression of scornful condescension that says “that’s for those born before 1980's!”

You see, I believe that it is not jus’ me alone who is afflicted with this. While I might be an extreme case, I have seen scores of other not so vocal but equally miserable co-sufferers.

How else would you explain why a generation full of people who descended from fathers and grandfathers who derive their sense of identity from the company they ‘served’ for thirty odd years cant seem to stay on a job for more than 2 or 3 years? My father walks ram rod straight, is a stickler for time, eats with a fork, spoon and knife and can still beat a 19 year old at a game of squash. An army officer for 21 years of his life, its not his job anymore but an identity he cannot hang up when he hung up his olive green uniform.
If you have ever seen that light of recognition and filial pride in the eyes of those men who have spent their lives as an anonymous exec in a gargantuan organization, you’ll know what I’m talking about? While I envy the sense of belonging that they seem to have for an organization, I cannot help but wonder what is it in our DNA that has mutated to the extent that we don’t identify leave alone aspire to know such single minded devotion to a job.

We listen to the same kinda music for years and wear the same pair of jeans for as long as they fit us and even carry a torch for the same person for decades but mention that kind of single mindedness in relation to a job and our sensibilities take a U-turn. In a life full of choices and a world full of opportunity, to borrow a line from Don Mc Lean, '...are we all in one place, a whole generation lost in space, with no time left to start again? ...' And jus’ when I am about to answer with an emphatic ‘yes!’ I see the odd 27 year old designing low cost tents for tsunami victims or a grad student studying the effects and alternative cures for Alzheimers and then I know that it is not a generation thing. Like most other things in our lives, its an individual thing.

No doubt it is harder for us. We are spoilt for choice. Unlike our ancestors (both alive and posthumous) most of us don’t have to worry about where our next meal is coming from (at least for a few weeks); and when the wolves of necessity and hunger are not knocking on our doors, we can afford to experiment until we find the jobs that give us satisfaction, intellectual stimulation and enough challenge to keep us coming back to work even on those rainy days when all you want to do is curl up on sofa in front of a tv or with a book and some coffee.

But, how many of us are looking, experimenting, searching? Not many that I know of. Most of us seem content to stay on in jobs that are secure, situations that are familiar and pay checks that are fat only to crib to any sympathetic ear how bored, unfulfilled and downright pathetic our jobs are and how given time, opportunity and the right opening we would transform into the most creative, world altering and dynamic people we know.

So, note to myself here is, quit cribbing. Continue looking. Everyday, tirelessly with the same unwavering faith I reserve only for my mother, that I will find the job that gives me all that I am looking for. And truly believe that I deserve nothing but the very best!

when you read you begin with A B C...and when you speak...??

2008-07-28T15:55:00.000+05:30

a 6" inch brown bread sub and a scoop of cookie cream later, i came across three old men on the pavement, walking ahead of me, engrossed in loud animated conversation...and oblivious to the crowd around them. As i crossed them i saw furious expressions and gestures emphasizing what they were already saying.

"I told you, it was upstairs"
"I was there before you and there was nothing there"
"Will you both please listen to what i am saying!"

...was what I could make of the conversation. They forged on...each trying to make the other see his point of view.
And i couldn't hear a word.

‘cos they were deaf and dumb.

Yet, you could hear them and the noise and vehemence in what they were saying.

It got me thinking…in a generation that lists "talking" under the heading of passions, interest, hobbies and even careers, what is it like to want to say something and not be able to?
Not in SMSs or four-line e-mails but to actually speak the words and hear yourself say them.

Often when i want to check something i have just written i read it aloud to myself. When i hear the words 'sound' right i know they are right and wrong when they 'sound' off key. And thats when i realize how much i depend upon the sound of my own words.

And how often have you found that shining moment of world altering clarity when you are talking to someone telling them about something...spouting an opinion...recounting an incident...anguished...excited...undecided even incoherent?? 300 words a minute and all of a sudden when you hear your own voice say something, you know that’s the truth that eluded you all the while. Only hearing it aloud in your own voice makes you realize that.

What I am getting at here is how much we depend upon sound to communicate.

Actions speak louder than words?? If you still believe that you were born a few decades before the last century ended! And if you were born after that, you mus know that you now live in a world devoid of real people. “I love you’s” over SMS, get togethers online, communities on Orkut and catching up with friends on conference calls.
Isn’t it ironic that precisely the generation that craves communication is most isolated living in rented PG accommodation and eating dinner alone while talking on the phone?