there was this Guest Lecture today and the guy who came, the head of a small Austrian firm had a nice point on human nature that i liked.. he said you can categorize people as
1. Input oriented
and 2. Output oriented
these input oriented guys get a lot of air time around us as they tell us how difficult work is, how much work they've put in etc.. andd these output oriented guys actually just talk when they have done some work.
point being, if 2 guys of similar skill etc where to work on a task the input oriented guy is gonna be credited as for the same amt of work, people would have heard him a lot more..
hmm..

christmas cake

i am just back from home, and as always, am a little happy to be. every time i go home, it takes a good few days for me to adjust. the first 3-4 days there i am grumpy; amma brings out the stored love of the last how many ever months, the lack of noise (small town, therefore no traffic or city bustle), the fact that time inevitably slows down, that i always feel full(6 meals a day do that) and to top it all, dad and i are experts at getting on each others nerves.
..a grumpy me complicates life as my parents now wonder why i am grumpy..s they ask probing questions.. and probing questions always makes me grumpy.

i blame small town kerala...
at home there is no internet, no english newspaper (u cant even buy one if u wanted to), there are no 'places' to go, hardly any good restaurants, no friends..u cant even get a decent cigarette..

nevertheless, it is actually good that small town kerala hasn't changed much. life is slow and stable. u could compare life here to roads here - they keep going without sudden turns or intersections, u always have your pot-holes, but no great life threatening ones..
maybe this is why i see a smug complacency about people here. and if u ever ask any of the smug complacent people anything about themselves, you will get a story about some great sadness. so they are smug and complacent about how sad their lives are..!

anyways, perhaps it is because most people and hence everybody else as well are old here..a visit to the church shows a sea of gray. in the part of kerala i live most of the population is christian and a visit to the church (which is the only social acivity arnd here) provides a good sample of the population.

another sad (very sad) thing i notice is that for all the unnikrishnans of the world, women (and girls) in small town kerala are not attractive... they have this smug blank complacent look that is such a turn off. then of course they have bushy hair, hair on their hands, moushtaches,oversupply of moles,terrible sense of style... but i guess these can be cured. but what of the fact that any women over 30 looks more and more like a potatoe.. fat, shapeless and sweaty!
add to this the Kerala christian style of names.. you will find the 'loveley's', 'Moleys' 'shitty's' 'tripsy' 'princy's' and jomols of the world only here.
i guess good malayalees are obliged to suffer the agony of such appalling names.

so a grumpy me in kerala, i look forward to come back.
and this time as motivation to come back.. Suhasini is coming back back, so i can go see her (her placements still remains, that needs to go well).. free time in college is good, i can read and gym, i am planing 2-3 trips, looking forward to some other things as well. as far as trips go.. the plan is like this..
1. a winter trek.. there was some talk of a trek to uttrakhand, a snow covered peak in Himachal.
2. a trip to Rajashtan
3. more interesting than 2.. a roundabout trip.. pune to jhansi..jhansi to lucknow, lucknow to nepal, nepal to gangtok, there to calcutta (sunderbans anyone?) and back
4. march mein a trip to Goa.. ,maybe a large gang of classmates
5. and in between all this small trips to mahabhalleswar, this new beach some poople went to.. (off the radar, great place to smoke up t seems) etc..

a little bit of blue s in the air, a bit of nostalgia, few drops of sentimentalism, pinch of sadness, garnished with memories.
a year is coming to an end, the mba is nearly there, pune is too, winter too will be gone in a while
all these i liked some, hated a little, but was life
i am going home on monday and i feel like i am leving here for ever. feels like i need to preserve the moment. for all those who hated it here, maybe i dint have anything better in life so i liked it. i should blog, perhaps a clichéd post on events in my life of 2008. that will come later.
i am listening to this song which brings back a bittersweet taste to my mind...

"I guess I'm a dreamer
my heart is of gold
I had to run away high
So I wouldn't come home low
Just when things went right
I mean they were always wrong
Just take this song and you'll never feel
Left all alone

Take me to your heart
Feel me in your bones
Just one more night
And I'm comin' off this
Long & winding road

I'm on my way
I'm on my way
Home sweet home

I guess that I've seen (Seem)
To many romantic dreams (To Make romantic dreams)
Up in lights, fallin' off
The silver screen

My heart's like an open book
For the whole world to read
Sometimes nothing-keeps me together
At the seams

I'm on my way
I'm on my way
Home sweet home
I'm on my way
I'm on my way
Home

It's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Just tryina to make ends meet
Theres no change, I can change
I can change, I can change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
And I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no
"

a job a job

oh, i guess i need to say, i have found job. so i am not unemployed any more. the blues of being so have reduced significantly. i am with Cargill, no not Kargil, Cargill. i will sell 2 brands of oil no one has heard of before and be paid almost as much as what i used to be before coming here. hey, but i am happy, ecstatic actually. it is the FMCG sector, well a decent sector to start in since i want to move to retail in a while, it is a decent company (USD100 billion plus i believe)though i dont know where i would be, most likely to start in Noida and then be posted somewhere in central India. the salary is not bad, it will make do. if you asked me if this is what i wanted, i would tell you, "i dont know"... perhaps in su's new british accent too. i dont know. i ddon knowwww

remember..not to forget

in my ex-home or rather old home in Chennai, where i used to stay in 2002 and later for the few months between the job and the MBA, there was this Baptist church on one side, the left hand side when i sat on the parapet on top of the terrace. and there was a temple on the right hand side. there was a government primary school somewhere in between. straight ahead in the darkness (oh, the picture in my mind is of me sitting on the parapet, as the darkness gathers, setting gloom, crows flying home and..) the super tall street flood light stood over the heavy clamouring traffic of the highway i could see in the distance.
the whole picture was nearly trance like. the school students would always around this time go to the temple and sing, clapping their hands to the tune of some religious song. the tempo of the music shifting with the rhythm of clapping.i can
almost still hear it in my head. any minute i hear this steady clapping i am transported there. about a hour preceeding this, if you were to be there, you would have heard the Baptist preacher presiding over his congregation. talking in a frenzy i can only imagine, talking tongues, and then there would be this line of people, his
congregation, slowly walk home past our gates, and you would know it was nearly time for the children to start singing. these crows that fly home, start their daily trips at about five, and they keep coming, hundred to thousands of them, in a never ending flight of black. if you were to spread out and look at the sky, as they flew over you, you would never forget that feeling either. you would remember they always fly east to west, from the settting sun into the darkness, they keep coming, till the last few, perhaps the lazy or the overworked fly back in haste. you could always tell towards the end that they were in haste. they would not sit on the antennae on the terrance and craw at me, they would not fly down and try to scare me. at seven i guess even crow spouces wanted their partners back where home was, some tree in some corner maybe there was a she or he crow waiting, may be even a few young ones. you would have heard the urgency in their cries, as the sun was just setting, if you were there.
now, when the crows were still flying and the preacher was talking tongues, if you looked to the left, you would see the home of the menons. they lived one house after my building. there was grandma menon, then uncle and aunty menon. son menon was in
the US and send lots of money home, though he never came home, even on the day grandma menon fell ill in december, was it 2001? yeah, at about five i would always see the menons working on their garden, and then twelth standard students would come
on cycles to attend Mrs.Menons french class. as the count of cycles reached 6 to 7 Mrs. Menon would leave her roses and go inside. Grandma menon would then come outside with Uncle menon to water the lawn. this was the only time i would see them, or
else they were always inside their big gray home. closed and secluded. when i lived in that home, i dont think i was ever happy, i was happy in Chennai though. Memories of school are faint. but College left such an impression i dont think i will ever forget. Visual communication, if you were there you would remember too, Professor Rajnayakam, Father Jerome, Henry 'Sotta' maria Victor, Suresh "deadbore" paul. you would remember that amazing corner of Loyola that was our campus, no way you could forget the three sheds that became classes and the art centre, the comp lab, the photo studio, the development centre, the video centre, the staff room. those low asbestos ceilings, metal mesh windows, thick walls painted half white and half blue. you would remember the long blue beches i slept on. you would still remember the sound that the electric trains made as they clattered by on the tracks behind our classes. Roshan menon, Anant Gopal and Ashwin Ram made those years for me, friends in that god forsaken place, they hugged those trees with me, they went on the south indian trip, we drove down the korattur highway to taramani, ashwin ate so many canteen samosas you would never forget too. i can never forget Bruno, the german sheperd (he died couple of years back), shanmuganathan for his subservient love, roshans parents for ignoring my continuous presence at their home, roshans Grandmom for endless tea, Vignesh and Sid for company and coffee, and so many others for so many things. you would never forget them if you met them either.

ok. hm.

i catch myself giving accusing glances at people who are placed, almost like 'what the hell do you have to say about me..' :) it is funny when i catch myself at it. another game which is played between i and me is visualising me in the bestesht and worsesht situations possible. like hell and heaven. funny ain't it, what extremes of imaginations we go to...anyway i have always had a very colourful imagination.. oh, it is like a 70mm screen in my head, and i have all the actors in my realreel life, doing all the roles i conjure up.. ps. no dirty imaginations tho.. dont know why, but have never that.. since it is my freudian unconscious that does the conjuring, i dont have much control on what is playing. i am sure freud would have been a paying patron if he had a link up to my 70mm screen. anyway, since the topic of the hour, day, week and month is placements, sure enough my single minded, highway wide placements thought comes back to it..right on..
i am sure it is no fun to be with someone who thinks of just one thing, sure enough, there are two camps now, the placed and the unplaced. the kings and the beggars. :). the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor. one side i am sure sniggers .. "hey look at all those losers, sitting waiting for what god knows" and the other side, among frantic discussions on the next company, on the next ppt, on the process that just went by, sniggers on how completely right the first group is!. i am an entrenched player, you know which side i am on. dont you.. (ps a secret thought: i hope wish pray to hell everybody reading it is on camp 1.. why?...because i occassionaly read my own blog and if everybody reading it was camp1.. i would be camp1.. ha!.. what a thought.
right!!!... insanity was the last string.

a quick blog on how to be sad..saD..sAD..SAD

self doubt, screwed up as it is, is a bastard who bites where and when it hurts most. with a one dimensional thought pattern these days, it is difficult to focus on anything, and as it becomes more difficult to justify faith, bitter thoughts of a return to the past haunts, like a difficult ghost. with this last loss, i give up on any demands whatsoever. when people say 'u will get something', i wonder what do they know that they say it. what do they know of the panic i feel. negativity is infinite and freely flows to fill big holes of doubt and fear.
God! how hard is it to even think of anything apart from this process, to work up an appetite for fun, an appetite to do something creative. how hard is it to express love or happines, to forget this stress for a moment.

will there be a day when i look at this post and laugh at it, or will stare at it infinitely hoping for something better. 

i feel like revolting, the gut instict to turn back and fight when cornered, but who do i fight, who do i aggress. for there isnt an enemy. i go to the gym, and sweat with the weights, that i guess is the only way to push. this isnt a fight to death, but a slow burning fuse. i am bitter, angry and always on the verge. with the lowest patience for irritation. This isnt healthy. i cant make myself say this isnt called for. wish i knew. wish i could say i hope this isnt called for.