It's gonna be legen....

2014 was a mostly uneventful year in terms of my personal development. 
I have three important long-term gauge points to measure my life with. Let's call them the three introspective injunctions - intelligence, income, & in-seam. Those of you know me would have no trouble guessing that the only introspective injunction that saw an increase in my life last year, is my in-seam. 
Lethargy & complacence seems to be what I remember from 2014. But one thing starkly stands out. There was hardly any complaining from me. I’m fortunate enough to live in a city with probably the best weather in the world, surrounded by amazing people. It’s a peaceful life. Some could even say a happy go lucky one. Living here in this bubble makes tragic events happening in the world seem like a sad movie. But I digress. This was going to be my 2015 resolution of sorts – that’s why I’m writing it towards the end of January, which is when most people start giving up on their resolutions. 

I need to make detailed plans on how I will improve on my introspective injunctions. So here goes: 
·        Intelligence – write at least one blog post per week. (I’ll need to read a lot to come up with words to spill out onto the blog – so this is killing two birds with one stone) B-) 
·        Income – make at least one call to a new prospect everyday 
·        In-seam – for the love of god, wake up just 20 minutes early and jog/exercise/yoga. 

There you have it. All these plans need a lot more detailed scheduling to make them successful, but I don’t feel like getting into it right now (lord, I’m already procrastinating!). 
But one thing that doesn’t need detailed planning is the resolve to DO THIS THING! This year is going to be much more hopeful. I’m going to need the never-give-up attitude. 
So wish me luck… and see you on the other side! 

A day on The Turf

It's a hot afternoon, some people are still recovering from the New Years' Eve party. I'm in office since 7 AM and we have an important change underway - a server's hard drive has failed and we're executing an emergency change to fix the issue ASAP. 

My mind wanders across the road, where stands are filling up and rearers are preparing their steeds with gusto. Mr. Prakash, an official Steward at the Bangalore Turf Club has graciously invited us to the VIP lounge to join him for the K Rama Rao Memorial race which is held in memory of his father. Its race day!

The K Rama Rao Memorial trophy was won by the horse named Scarlet Emperor.

Until that day, mention of the race course brought an image of the green, oval track from my office terrace, holding a cup of coffee in hand, watching the trotting horses even as vehicles stop atop the busy flyover that just overlooks a portion of the course. We'd consider ourselves a lucky lot - to have a complete view of the course from our building top. But today, even that bird's-eye-view spot feels a tad bit under-whelming after last weekend. 

The men were asked to come in suit & tie - nobody can tell the ladies what to wear ;-)

The men were asked to come in suit and tie (the ladies' dress code, I assume, has always been left to their imagination). As I drive towards the parking, excitement fills me when I cross over a portion of the race turf to the 'parking' area - which is basically the inner circle of the grandiose oval track! Soon we're all collected in one place and handed our invites. We tread towards the stands, making small talk about big bets. Cue excited & nervous laughter. 

Past the general betting counters is a building that has a guard letting in club members, VIPs and invitees only. We go towards the building with an air of importance and reach the second floor. The air conditioning is just right, there's teak wood furniture, television screens wherever you can turn your head, some comfortable couches and chairs arranged around a few tables, a buffet table and of course, a betting counter just for the VIPs. 

The old man (a member) in the lift was not lying when he said the food upstairs is really good. It was scrumptious and the service was impeccable. The waiters knew whom to ask for a drink and when, an extra chair would magically appear wherever required, and empty platters would politely be cleared away with no interference. 

Our very own gracious (and very Page-3) couple, Shruthi & Arun Prakash!

Our hosts, Shruthi & Arun were being the good sport that they are and explaining the ropes of the game to us novices. Just as we were discussing betting strategies between lunch, the first (of eight) race began! The race bugle was called, and the horses shot ahead as the commentator's pace picked up. 

Oh the edge-of-seat excitement!

The Chief Minister's Trophy race was won by the horse named Agostini,
ridden by Trevor Patel and owned by a Suleiman Attaollahi

Finally this section of the newspaper made sense!

Some selfies, bets & races later, it was time for the page 3 moment - Mr. Prakash & family handed over the Ramrao cup to the winner and soon the day came to an end after a few more races. The Chief Minister's cup was given away by a representative of the Congress party, who then cut the most delicious chocolate (truffle?) cake in the VIP lounge.

Its safe to say that most of us learnt a thing or two about betting (or at least hedging bets).

All in all, it was a day very well spent. Definitely worth the suit & tie and most definitely worth taking off work early! Thank you very much to Mr. Prakash & family and I for one sure hope to enjoy the experience again!

An event isn't n event without a selfie!

Specially when attended from the VIP lounge!

From Bachelor’s Party, to Day Zero...to, spirituality?

The cards have been distributed and the flux of outstation guests has begun. Our house has become a marketplace with ladies singing hymns all the time and making me sit in for pooja from time to time.

Dad, brother, cousins, uncles are all working on arranging for pick up and drop of guests that have started coming in (and want to travel in and around Bangalore – Tirupati, Puttapatti, and Mysore being popular choices). Sister and aunts are meanwhile busy sorting out the Sangeet day’s sequence of events.

All I have to do is work on grooming myself and ensuring that my clothes are all set for the entire charade. So here’s how this week’s been:

An awesome “bachelor’s party” at Gokarna over the weekend. There’s no “exciting” news from the trip, but I achieved what I set out to do – completely disconnect from every single thought and just enjoy the sheer nothingness that seeps into you in Gokarna. This truly laid back temple town has some reeaaalllly shallow beaches leading into the Arabian Sea. The people here are lovely, but the greatest boon for tourists are the beach-shacks lining the popular Om Beach and Kudle Beach. These shacks seem to have had the good fortune of entertaining foreign tourists very early on – probably the original Goan hippies who had to leave nearby Goa because of the loud and blatant place that it has now become. 

One town’s loss is another’s gain. These tourists seem to have taught the locals running the beach shacks how to make some heavenly dishes from a very wide range of cuisines. Of course, the local cuisine just hits the spot each time too. 

I’m really glad Shuntu and BD came along, and that Rahul took the trouble of coming all the way from Mumbai to join us even if it was for just a day. After coming back, it took about 24 hours for the nothingness to exit out of my system, and the sheer madness that is an Indian wedding began to creep in.

Yesterday, there was a Ganesh pooja because in Hindu mythology, every auspicious occasion should begin by asking for Lord Ganesha’s blessing. Today, we pray to the souls of deceased family members to attend the wedding and bless the couple and watch over them and their future progeny.

In the meantime, I got a facial done in the morning! Under normal circumstances, I would never have agreed for it, but a marriage changes a man. Or maybe it’s the conditioning by the women. Whatever the cause, I actually enjoyed it. It was bloody relaxing… and now my face is all smooth and shiny! All I needed was a head massage and a body massage, and I would go back to Gokarna mode.

There were a few other events, like drawing lines in a mound of salt, and tieing together seven loops of holy red thread. This “rope” made out of the seven loops ties together will be tied onto the bride’s hair after the marriage. I couldn’t find out why. Its sad that only the traditions have been retained and for the most part, the reason behind each detail is lost over the ages.

The one thing I love about Hindu marriage is that it is one of the few traditions that seems to have retained every detail right from the age of the Vedas. Reading Osho made me believe that during the age of the Vedas, there was an immense amount of scientific research behind spirituality. I believe the openness of Hinduism was so liberating that people realized that spirituality, not religion or riches is the true path. This led to knowledge discovery and experimentation with that knowledge. People either blindly followed the actions of the few who had attained Nirvana (or enlightenment, or inner peace etc) or maybe they realized that surrounding oneself with a certain combination of sights, smells and (most importantly) sounds led to attaining Nirvana.

That is the only explanation I could find for the myriad shlokas, along with specific type and color of flowers and food that our elite “Brahmins” stress upon for various occasions.

These things are often grossly substituted by “words” instead of sounds, artificially manufactured incense sticks instead of natural smells and painted walls instead of the beautiful colors of flowers or crushed spices.

One reason for this might be that when “caste systems” came into existence, it was more due to necessity than anything else. Scholars who researched any subject, including spirituality were the Brahmins, people who were more comfortable using brawn instead of brain found suitable roles and those carrying out similar roles were part of that “caste”.

Some of these scholars probably went “rogue” and started asking for favors/wealth from the rest of the castes who worked hard to build material wealth but needed the scholars’ help to build spiritual wealth. The rest, as they say, is politics.

Catchin' up

Less than two weeks for the wedding, and I’m not even half way done with distributing the wedding invitations. Those who know me would find this easy to believe because I’m a lazy bum. I’m so lethargic it’s not even funny. But I realized there are two major reasons for my laxness in this case. 

First, we put in a great deal of effort in making these personalized cards for our friends. Swati is constantly on a quest to do even regular mundane things in a little offbeat way. So obviously she we wanted to do something different with the wedding invitation for our friends. My suggestion was a vinyl record with function names and dates as the tracks behind the vinyl cover. The front would probably a photograph of us dressed as celebrities (my suggestion was Elvis and Marilyn Monroe).

 

Several such ideas were shot down before Swati chose our current design. I had almost convinced her that one good picture with some text would do just fine, and we went to Pulkit to take that one photograph. But he suggested doing a whole series of movie poster style pictures! I just knew Swati was loving the idea, and Pulkit said he would get something he could probably add to his portfolio. Now this meant dressing up and getting hundreds of pictures clicked everyday – NOT the kind of effort I’m a fan of! We would dress up and get one or two styles clicked in a day. So the whole process took about three weeks. But we did it, and it was crazy fun thanks to Pulkit and Charithra! Now, having made a card that we were thoroughly happy with, especially after having put in so much effort, I was going to go all out and distribute these cards by hand with pride…

Secondly, this gave me chance to meet up with a whole bunch of friends that I hadn’t met in very long. This has been taking me all around the city to meet friends. So I’m taking my own sweet time meeting people one by one and handing over the cards so that we could catch up (my experience with other friends who are married has told me that hanging out with friends often takes a backseat once you’re “settled”). Also, hand delivering meant getting to hear praises about the card. So whee!

 The Envelope

Inner card Front & Back

One month to go.

Seeing as how the Google spider is my only reader at this point, I'd like to talk about some of my thoughts.

I’m getting married. In less than a month. And it’s started to dawn upon me that a marriage isn’t between two people; it’s between two families – at least in India. Every occasion is marked with an exchange of gifts. Isn’t that great! Except that it’s a war of one-upmanship between the two families.

Not to mention the barrage of rib-poking and rhetoric questions. Every action, happy or dull, is an invitation to an uncomfortable question followed by constant stares. Every reaction is suddenly booby trapped with repercussions – repercussions that you didn’t think were possible hardly weeks ago.
Heck, even non-action is subject to sardonicism, so it’s not uncommon to want to implode.

Insatiable relatives aside, a wedding (specially a big fat Indian one) is a very taxing event on the primary “stakeholders”. 

The preparation that needs to be started at the earliest is that of the wedding invitees list. This most dreadfully challenging task took dad and me about one and a half months to build a list of  500 names. We got a suggestion early on to create an excel sheet with columns like Name, Address, Phone Number, Category (Friends/relatives/office), Importance (!), #of accompanying guests, Arrival Date Time (To arrange pick-up).

The second most important (but my most dreaded) task is shopping. *shudder*. It’s understandable that most women want to make a carnival out of it. For Swati, it started three or four months ago and included 10-12 day long trips to Mumbai and Jaipur - for the most expensive purchases like. And then there were the non-stop visits to shopping areas like Commercial Street and various tailors - several of which I was am still being forced to go. It’s scary how everyone is saying, “this is just practice”. I’m so scared I just pee’d a little.

There were also similar shopping trips for me! Not that great many times, but far too many times for my comfort. Why do tailors need one trial, while mothers/sisters/girlfriends need you to give at least two to three!?
BTW, here's a neat business tip - when you say you'll have your product ready for pick-up by some date, have it ready! I can't imagine multiple trips to over-crowded shopping markets carving a favorable brand image. 

Tasks remaining:

– talk to choreographer about my dance with Swati (Yes, I know. And I do not want flak on this. You can keep your taunts to yourself thankyouverymuch.)

– talk to club representative if we can access to the PA speakers for some ambiance music. It’s uncomfortable enough to be around SO MANY people all at once. I think we deserve some music running in the background at all times.

– Start distributing my personalized wedding invitations. (long story, maybe another post).

Quality of life?

While some believe that knowing everything in life beforehand is the best way to live (and profess that life will be good if you know how to live it), I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to the school of thought that it’s fine, maybe better, to be uncertain. Convincing yourself that you know what you’re doing and are the Master of the Universe (your universe) may give you the strength to get out of bed each morning and answer yes to the question “Are you happy with what you’re doing today?”

On the other hand, saying “I don’t know… yet! But let’s find out” to the same question gets me through the day tension free without feeling any guilt in asking silly questions repeatedly.

Who’s to say which belief is correct? Both may be correct- after all, they seem to work. What worries me however is not which of the two is better, but what if both are wrong? Here’s why:

Now the people who follow the first train of thought may think that they’re strong (I don’t want to deny them the right to that) but it is this very false sense of strength that gets the weak ones through. And that is admirable as long as they don’t break down eventually.

Unfortunately, among those who go to the I Don’t Know school, are some of us who often get it wrong by thinking we’re being strong by taking the ‘path less trodden’, but all we do is say “I don’t know” and then do nothing else about it! I’m afraid we’ve found a guilt free way to console our conscience that it’s ok if we don’t know and then some strange force (I’m beginning to think fear) stops us from making the effort to go and find out. These people are the ones who are probably not “living”.

Who has been alive long enough to continuously have a huge impact on two entire generations of the world!

I used to think that Rock In Rio was Maiden's biggest concert.. In fact, I was led to believe that Maiden entered the Guinness Book Of World records for amassing such a huge gathering! Then, I saw Flight 666 the movie on Maiden's Somewhere Back In Time tour on their VERY OWN Boeing 757 (or was it 747?), that their lead vocalist Bruce Dickenson was piloting!.

The movie says that 30,00 people had gathered for the concert. Because that was the biggest field they had around! BUT, the show was cast live all across the country! Who has EVER got people to really stop everything they're doing, and just experience something so phenomenal?

In this tour, Maiden played songs that they had last played more than two decades ago. And in front of crowds that were of the SAME age group as the crowds that came almost 25 years ago!

They were playing for the first time for some Latin American crowds! And there were adults crying out their emotions and disbelief that their Gods have finally come down for them!

I almost had tears in my eyes when I realized how humbling this experience must be to them to experience what a channel they create for millions of people around the world to express their own different feelings. specially in places like Columbia and Chile (and I think they mentioned that in one of these places, such events were actually banned by the military!).

Seriously, who has been alive long enough to continuously have a huge impact on two entire generations of the world! And see what their music does to people?