I am a writer. Even the statement scares me because writing has always scared me. Since childhood, I have found it very easy to express myself verbally. I have participated in public speaking events, I have been recognized as a confident speaker, but when I try to start my timeline for writing, I am stumped. I cannot think of a single example of writing from childhood that stands out! 

My very first taste of writing (as opposed to memorizing and rewriting in an exam) was when I moved to England. As a part of the English class, we studied poetry, and each had to write a nonsense rhyme. I still have mine engraved in my memory. We also had to write an extension to a short story. This was a group activity, and the girl I was writing it with was plain stupid. She didn't understand the story completely and made me write an extension that destroyed the plot. But I lacked the confidence to say anything, and let the submission take place. Later on in English, I wrote several more essays, and even some creative writing, but I remember them vaguely. 

College was where I first tried my hand at writing without being forced to do so. I wrote my first very own debate in college. I was very proud of it, though I didn't win. I also had to write my SOPs and LORs for applying into graduate school, but I just couldn't get started and started missing deadlines because of this. I asked my then best friend to help me out. She was a writer. She wrote articles, poems, a blog and for a newspaper and though I wasn't a fan of her content, her ability to write amazed me. We sat in a coffee shop for the whole day and had my first draft. It was incredible how easy writing was for her! It was also in college when I tried to write an article about women in sports for the magazine and tried my hand at my own blog, but quit after two posts because it took me so much time and effort to write even a paragraph.

During my work life, I only wrote twice in four years. A poem for my sweetheart for our first anniversary (because he was in another continent and I couldn't send him a physical present), and an article for the office website when Women's Day celebrations infuriated me enough to make me lash out. My article was criticized by many, but loved and spread around by some family and friends, and I still remain grateful to them for this.

After this, I arrived at B-school, and writing assignments became an everyday activity. I started another blog and swore to get over the writer's block I was born with. For a Business Communication assignment, we had to write an essay about our life goals. It started as a joke, just an assignment, but in essence, it brought out my desire to write a book/books about mythology eventually and I seriously started to think about it. 

That desire is what led to me write my blog somewhat more frequently, and finally brought me here to this course. 

I am a 27 year old Indian girl studying in a B-school. I am expected to go conquer the world soon. However, all I want right now is to write. And I know I can. I am a writer, with a small writer's block.   

At the beginning of the year, I decided to cut down on the "I" posts and focus on other things. I decided many other things too.

In continuation of "I" posts, here is one more.

Yesterday I met several people who had several job offers. And several more who were rejected by several companies. They all had one thing in common, they all got an opportunity. Their resumes, their work experience, their personalities were deemed fit to be present in front of the interview panel. Me, I didn't get a single call. I can tell myself that I wasn't a fit for the jobs they were selecting for, or I can tell myself that I didn't want any of those jobs. Does it matter what I tell myself? The fact remains is that I wasted a year of my life, and 25 lakh rupees watching television shows. I wasted the wonderful opportunity I got hiding in my room, telling myself that I don't want to be here.

When I got selected to ISB, I knew I got more than I deserve, that it was my luck, not my abilities that had brought me here, but the rest of the world assumed otherwise, and I let myself get carried away with it. Once here, I could have made amends, I could have brought myself on the level that the interviews assumed. I didn't. I lost the opportunity to do well academically. I lost the chance to learn, to grow, to be counted. And now it's the end of term 6, and I am a loser. Without a job offer. Without friends. Without anything to look forward to in ISB.

No, this isn't the usual, depressing, pity post on being jobless. I do not want to work for McKinsey or BCG. What matters to me is that they didn't want me. I want to be good enough that a dozen organizations stand in line and ask me to join them. I want to be able to choose. I had the opportunity, for the very first time in my life to make that happen. I didn't. I wasted it. I regret it.

I am not an IITian. In hind-sight, I realize that I wasn't cut out for IIT. I have, and always had a very humanities aptitude. I could have worked harder and gone to a better college. It was about acing the formulae. I didn't bother to, and it doesn't bother me that I didn't. I wasted those years because I was a child. I have no such excuses anymore. I am 28. I am as adult as they get. And I wasted one of the most productive years of my life lying in bed, watching poor television shows.

Anyway, enough ranting. Letting bygones be bygones, I will make amends. The year isn't over. The job offers haven't dried up. I will be desirable, I will not waste this year, this fee, this opportunity.

The very first step, MAKE THEM WANT ME. I have two short-lists, and I will be damned if I don't put in my best and make them want me. I may lack a lot, but I will make what I have count. I will work to my full potential in the next 48 hours.

The second, my grades. I can already see I can't make a substantial difference to the CGPA in the remaining terms, but I can improve the GPA several-folds in each, so that when it is time to leave, I don't feel like a loser.

The third, I will socialize, I will make friends, I will have people to fall back on from my ISB days.

The fourth, a personal one, is that I will have articles published before I get out, because I may not get an opportunity later on in life.

All achievable, with the closest being the toughest. Let's rock and roll!

xox  

And a Happy New Year!

New year ushers in new expectations, new desires, new This-is-THE-year optimism, and of course, new resolutions.

My resolutions for 2015, just like the majority of humanity, are broad, generalized, and aimed towards turning me into a newer, improved, over-hauled, 2.0 version of ME; just like 2014.

My resolution thus reflect my short-comings, what I lack, rather than what I want from myself, not a very cheerful way of starting the year. So what do I lack? What are those teeny-tiny little things that if altered, would turn me into Wonder-Woman, which I already know I am deep within? What are Winnie Shukla's "If Onlys..."?

The biggest, most glaring, explode in the face, yell in the ear, seismic fault in my lines is my inability to prioritize and my corresponding deep, morbid attraction towards chaos. Or, to grab the bull by its horns - my inherent lack of discipline. The lack of discipline is my Achille's heel, or, to make it more relevant, my "I will eat better, gym regularly and lose 20 kg". I deal with it the way one flat-mate deals with obesity or the other with her drinking habit, ie, by hiding my head in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist. How do I fix thee? Let me count the resolutions.

1- Build a Important vs Precise Matrix on my white-board and list down the activities in the corresponding columns. The idea behind this is that I will then have everything I need to do in front of me, which will guilt-trip me into actually doing it.

2- Whatsapp everything that I need to do to Maa as and when I think of it, so she can poke and prod me to get things done.

3- Take out 1/2 an hour every evening to reply to calls/messages/emails.

4- Write a minimum of 6 pieces every month.

Will any of these work? I am not sure. I mean I am almost 2 days down in the year and have already procrastinated on each and every one of them. The problem with disciplining is a Catch-22 situation. If only I was disciplined enough to discipline myself. Sigh.

An attempt at fiction.

Rakesh Tripathi looks like a man at peace. Its 7 am, a couple of days before Diwali. I am having tea with the kirana store owner, on the porch of his house, next to his shop. He is dressed in neatly ironed trousers and a cotton shirt, with the crisp crease line a testimony of the effort put into dressing. Rakesh is a resident of the village Ramnagar, about 20 kms away from Kanpur city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. His kirana store is an extension of his ancestral house which his family shares with his parents, two brothers, and their families. It is at a position of advantage since it is located in the heart of the densely populated small village, colloquially known as "Chandani Chowk of the village". 

Rakesh is 34 years old. He is “12^th standard pass” from the nearing government college. He tried to study further, two years of BA, but could not clear the exams, since in his own words, “studies never interested me”. Right next to him you see a copy of “Amar Ujala”, a Hindi daily, which he, and friends and customers who visit the shop will read through the day. I ask him what he reads in the newspaper. His response, “political news followed by cricket”. When asked why he finds those interesting, Rakesh’s thinks a while and says because local politics affects him daily. The area gets its share of power, roads, subsidies and even laptops for college kids based of the party in power.

I asked Rakesh if he has ever lived outside the village. Once when he was a younger man, a relative called him to Delhi for a job at a shoe factory. As a youth, Delhi sounded like heaven and he needed to earn and save money for his younger sister’s wedding. On asking why he left, Rakesh said he hated the city. Living in a cramped room with two others, eating badly, and being away from family; Rakesh calls it life of an animal. “Poverty in the village is an inconvenience but poverty in the city degrades the soul. Here, an elder is always an elder, the poorest of your neighbors would be treated with the same respect; but in the city, nobody would offer you a glass of water if you were poor” he says.

Besides, the area is rife with opportunities because of its proximity to Kanpur, he tells me, and gives me the example of Kanchan, his wife, also an earning member of the family. Recently, a large hospital opened up across the highway at a distance of approximately a km from the village. Kanchan works there as nurses’ helper, along with his younger brother’s wife and several other women from the village. They are paid Rs 2,500 a month. With the added income, Rakesh and Kanchan dream of sending their 8 year old son, Shubh, to an English- medium convent school next year. Shubh is very smart, he tells me. They will save money so that they can send him to an engineering college when he is older.

But isn’t he a Brahmin, I ask him, and doesn’t it bother his family that the women work in a hospital, an unclean place? “A Brahmin will always be a Brahmin”, he says, “The job cannot take away the fact that we are blessed with superior mental abilities. Jobs are a requirement of the modern life, and they are just fully utilizing the development work going on in the area. Till last year, there were no jobs available for women. Both the women take a bath with Ganga-jal added water (few drops of water from the holy river Ganga) before they enter the house”. He has a lot of faith in his caste. But what about the houses where the bathroom is located inside the house? He finds my question amusing. “Why would anybody build a bathroom in the middle of the house?” he asks me in turn. I do not have an answer to that.

So his family must now be well-off, with the shop, the salaried jobs and agriculture? Not well-off but they get by. His younger brother used to work in a factory in the city, but the factory shut down and now he is unemployed. He is a self-trained electrician and earns some money by doing local repairs. A printed, Hindi sign in the shop advertises the services. The family grows wheat, pulses, rice, oil seeds, cattle feed and potatoes. The family doesn’t own any cattle anymore, but cattle feed is easy to grow, doesn’t require much water, and sells for good money. Agriculture is not a profitable business. They own more land than most, but he says that you can only grow enough for the entire family to eat. He says his family is highly respected in the area and respect seems to mean more than money. I notice that Rakesh always talks about the “the area”, rather than just the village, and I ask him what he means. It turns out, the area comprises of several other surrounding villages, connected to his through marriages, shared resources (such as the Bore-wells used for irrigation, Schools, Govt Clinic etc) and countless generations of shared experiences and friendships.

On asking what he would like to change, he says everybody has their share of problems. He wants to set up a photocopy machine in his shop, since there is a demand for photocopy in the area by older students, and no other shop owns one. His younger brother’s job and elder brother’s health are also something that worries him, but finally, as long as everybody has God’s grace, everything will be fine.

By now, Rakesh has dusted the shop and lit incense in front of Lord Ram’s picture kept at the place of honor. The kids of the family have come in to say good-bye, and gone off to school, dressed in clean uniforms and carrying Mickey-Mouse water bottles. Chandani Chowk is buzzing, with people moving past each other on their bicycles and motorbikes, greeting each other with loud “Ram Ram”s. The village day has started. I thank Rakesh for the tea and walk back home, deep in thought about life lessons from a village “elder”.

Lunchtime Incident.

Getting out of the dining hall, I ran into two classmates sitting down for lunch. After the preliminaries, the girl, who knows me, asked, "You must be going to Bombay this weekend na?".
Apparently, a finance seminar is taking place in Bombay which several of my classmates are travelling for.
I said, "No, why?". 
She said, "Arre, the chance to meet your boyfriend for only 2K, what could be better?".
I laughed and said, "That's OK, I manage even without the event".
The conversation veered off and I left after a while.

I decided to grab a juice, the counter being behind a pillar close to where they were sitting. While waiting there, I overheard a part of their conversation.

The boy asked the girl, "She has a boyfriend in Bombay?". To this, the girl replied, "Yeah, old, happy, very loving sort of relationship. And have you seen her figure? Some people just get everything in life. Hmph!"

Someone once told me that the grass is always greener on the other side.

The Fairy-Tale Syndrome

Fairy-tales are ridiculous at all levels. Princesses trapped in castles, (guarded by all kinds of horrific monsters) daughters sold into marriage, women agreeing to give away their first-born to strangers, parents leaving kids in the woods, and what not. The Brothers Grimm were very grim people indeed. And don't even get me started on the standards of beauty and woman-hood they espoused. Given a choice, I would never introduce my children to the traditional fairy-tales. But I doubt that the media and entertainment industry would give me a choice. Will cross that bridge when I reach it.

But they do suggest simple solutions. Like Sleeping Beauty, pricked on the thumb, to sleep away as the years pass on by, only to be woken by her True Love's kiss. I wish I could sleep time away like that. To be woken up to guaranteed happiness or to not wake up at all.

If only life was so simple.

The Indian Railways Experience: "Designed" to be a Death Trap?

I am taking a train after almost a year. It is a cozy journey. The seats are also berths; the travelers are eating, talking, having political debates ; the vendors selling everything from water to vada-pav, and the general ho-hum of the AC-3-Tier coach running at full capacity. I marvel at the possibly unique phenomenon the Indian train journeys are. I am also, as often before, left with several questions.

Has anybody ever noticed the 2.5 feet wide doors that mark both the entrances to the passage of any air-conditioned coach? Of course you have, that's the door where your suitcases get stuck as you are desperately trying to embark/disembark with a long queue tut-tutting their disapproval right behind you. Why would you design a medium of mass transport with bottlenecks at each end? Did the designer have a serious bone to pick with people carrying massive pieces of luggage? Maybe somebody dropped a 5 by 5 by 5 trunk on his/her foot. Is that a worthy enough reason to make life tough for the rest of us mere mortals? Not only are those doors inconvenient, they are a potential, and often, very real death trap. A coach that carries 78 people on an average has a 2.5 feet exit at each end. After this, there is a small lobby, where you have to take a 90 degree turn to exit the coach fully through a (thankfully) regular sized exit. Even in regular situations, you don't have to perform a CFD analysis to determine that it takes an inordinately large time for all 78 people to pass through. Add to that the panic caused in an emergency, and the ineptness of the design becomes a life-or-death issue. I am not even sure about the reason for this design. It seems that the purpose of the small passageway exits is to make sure that the heat and draught don't get in. Would it be so much harder to achieve if the size of the door was doubled? What is even more worrying is that this design has persisted through my entire lifetime, and probably much longer before that. Accident after accidents, an enquiry being ordered after each, no modifications have been made to the design. 

It isn't as if changes are not made to rail coaches regularly. Just today, I was pleasantly surprised to find several changes in the design. The guard/support staff have their own mini-cabin at the end of the coach, the AC vents are positioned so as to be easily accessed and controlled by each passenger on the upper berth individually, the bathrooms show some structural modifications. Yet, this fundamental design flaw has been overlooked for decades, despite large scale rail accidents  taking place with alarming regularity.

I understand that our railways are our lifeline. The ability to fit 78 people in that small space and yet have place for each one to sleep is commendable. But at what cost? Would removing a berth on each end be too large a sacrifice to make for safety consideration? Are our lives that dispensable?

I am hopeful that the Indian Railways are on the verge on experiencing a massive overhaul. Thanks to the new, "visionary" prime-minister, China and Japan are both entering the Indian railway space in a major way. It doesn't make me particularly happy to see 100% FDI in Railways, but seeing the apathy of the current system, perhaps we can call this a necessary evil. Maybe the rest of the world takes safety somewhat more seriously than us. Let us hope the Chinese do a better job in designing the new system (even though "Made in China" does send a shudder down the spine) and the changes are eventually implemented throughout the network.