Why did I come to IMT-Nagpur?

It has been over a year that I am here at IMT-Nagpur. Somewhere I feel that I should write what I think about this place, which is my home for past 1 year. Living in a residential institute is a one of a kind experience for me, a person who has never lived out of the home ever in her life.

When I decided to get admission in IMT-Nagpur, I left some of the ‘fairly good’ institutes under Mumbai University, which would have given me higher pay packages compared to IMT-Nagpur. Many people found the idea of going to a new institute, without any ranking and without any guarantee of placements, stupid. Some, who were oblivious to facts, were happy that I’m going to IMT, which is a renowned brand in the field of management education. But I had consciously opted for this institute. There were two reasons: first, being a resident of Mumbai and having friends everywhere, I exactly knew where the ‘fairly good’ institutes stand and second, I wanted to stay out of my home, my familiar circle of friends and relatives, and do something different. And it is different, what I’m doing at IMT-Nagpur right now; very different from what I have done staying at home and travelling 2-3 hours every day for going to the college and back home, being with my parents with a lot of restrictions imposed on me, asking their ‘permission’ even for small and silly things which I myself can take care of. Oh God! I really can’t imagine doing a management course and not doing it at IMT-Nagpur.

“Why so desperate to get out of home?” …this is the first question that would come to your mind while reading this, and many doubts to accompany the question. The answers are hidden in my educational history. I’m a person who was hyped as being ‘intelligent’ since school time. But I couldn’t score well in 10^th, and I must say, I disappointed my parents and teachers. When I thought of going for engineering, I decided to study a lot, and give my best shot to 12^th. I got good marks, got admission to RAIT, which had a very good ranking and good placements.

Coming from a typical middle class family, I couldn’t adjust to the RAIT culture in my 1^st year; couldn’t find any good friends; was afraid of ragging, which was excessive at that time; was lost in a world of diversity. Whatever the reasons, the fact is that engineering education was a downfall for me. I couldn’t clear my papers, in spite of understanding the concepts, couldn’t score well in the papers that I cleared and lost all the confidence in myself and my abilities. I should have gone to a psychologist, who would have helped, but nobody thought of doing it, because nobody knew what was going on in my mind. On the face of it, I was this shameless person, taking all the criticism on face, doing nothing about it; but inside, I was a person who had lost faith in everything, lost confidence in myself, the only thing giving me strength was the awareness of my intelligence. I had always been this bubbly cheerful person, very talkative and always in a group of friends. I was always vaguely aware of my abilities, my strengths and weaknesses, but never worked on them. I started sulking, stopped mixing with people, going to family functions and gatherings, having fun… basically I lost myself in those days. I couldn’t participate in any extra-curriculars also, because of the rules at my home: "If you study well, you can do whatever you want; but if you don’t, then... well… its better to stop everything else and start studying"… so I tried, and failed miserably…

Well, then I again tried, and could score some decent marks to make everyone feel that now I’m again on a right track, and finally could get a first class I my last year, with 60%, which was an achievement going by my situation… what I didn’t understand at that time was, this type of system was not suitable for me. I can’t just keep on reading textbooks and by hearting things out of them. I need some fun, masti, enjoyment in studies, where I can be creative.

When I decided to come to IMT-N, I was still in doubt as to what I am getting into… but with encouragement of some of my very good friends, I finally decided to take a call… and here I am… enjoying my life at IMT-Nagpur.

This place has given me a lot of things, most importantly, a chance to prove myself. I have not been able to do so many things at a time in my life before… maybe, because now I’m on my own, I can decide what I want to do for myself, how I’m going to do it and how much time I’ll b spending for it. I have got a chance to express myself here, as I never had got. Maybe, if I had gone to some institute with better ranking, I would have been in awe of the students, faculty, everybody and maybe, I wouldn’t have opened my mouth for anything. Here, I know if I raise my voice, someone is always there to listen to me, to support me, and that gives me my confidence back… boss, main bhi kuch kar sakti hoon! I have been a part of Corporate Communications Committee, participated in dramatics, started with KOSHISH, which is very close to my heart, tried to learn French, MS34 was a very good platform to get creative juices flowing… wow! This has been a roller-coaster ride!

I have learnt a lot here, including how to handle people, how to work with them, how to understand them, and most importantly, how not to trust everyone… I have made some pretty bad mistakes too, but again, this is life, and nobody is ideal. Who doesn’t make mistakes? Well, the one who doesn’t, doesn’t learn also. I think I have had lot of learnings here. I think I have made some good friends here, too and I’m hoping to continue being friends with them. I will write about them, later…

So… this is my story about coming to IMT-Nagpur… I will write more about the place in later parts…

Maximum City : Bombay lost & found

Born in Calcutta and lived in Bombay for 9 years of his childhood, Suketu Mehta hails from a family of Gujarati diamond merchants spread world over. The son of this ‘globalized family’; himself has stayed in several countries and is a full time writer. The time he spent in Bombay (he calls it Bombay, and not Mumbai) has been the most memorable time of his life. Hence, when he had the urge to go back to his roots, he came back to Bombay, and not Calcutta or Ahmedabad, where most of his family lived. He explored the Bombay, trying to take in the beauty of this crowded city which belongs to a slum dweller, a millionaire, a gangster and a clerk alike.

There has been much written earlier about Bombay, its roads, lanes, bylanes; the local trains, chawls, the bollywood, the underworld, the people and much more… But the way Suketu Mehta sees it, it goes beyond it all; he depicts the darker side of Bombay, which is much more human than we can imagine. The man has a huge amount of curiosity and a greater understanding of human nature, which makes you realize certain facts and think about your own lives with a broader picture of LIFE at the background.

The book is divided into 3 parts: Power, Pleasure and Passages. Each of these portrays a different side of Bombay.

The Power part is devoted to the ultimate powers of Bombay: Shiv Sena (Bal Thackeray), the police (encounter specialists) and of course, the ultimate Underworld. Suketu is incredible when he meets Shiv Sena workers in slums, then the shooters of the underworld, the brave inspector Ajay Lal, then Bal Thackeray himself and talks to Chhota Shakeel-the Don on phone. On the way he also stops at the mini-Pakistan, Madanpura and gives us insights about people’s lives there. He doesn’t stop there; he becomes a part of the script-writing team of the movie Mission Kashmir and gives some vital information about the famous Bollywood-Underworld linkages. With his illustrative language, he captures the attention of the reader, and creates a web where all these lives are entangled with a giant spider of uncertainty of human life looming over their heads.

Bombay is a maya nagari as they say- it is a land of Pleasure, with Golpitha (the red light areas), the bars and bar dancers, the mujrewaalis and Bollywood strugglers. Suketu meets these all, becomes the best friend of a bar dancer, who shares her life and dreams with him. There is also a male bar dancer who dresses like a girl, and is the main crowd puller at the Sapphire bar. Who would believe that this person is not a eunuch, not a gay, but is a lower middle class married man with a wife at home who helps him ‘get ready for the night’! Then there is a bollywood struggler who finally gets a break in a B grade film. Suketu gets close and personal with all of them, and creates a collage out of unseen faces, unknown lives, and unrevealed passions.

In Passages, he walks down the memory mines, in his school days, and the changing cultures in Bombay. He also meets and helps a struggling poet, come all the way from Bihar, to recite his poems to the elite classes and masses of Bombay alike. The section ends with a chapter in Jainism, where he portrays a family of a billionaire Diamond Merchant in Bombay, husband, wife and 3 teenager kids, gets diksha and become sanyasis to attain moksha. He describes all the rituals and gets a few questions answered from the swami maharaj about their routine, their reasons and their lives. In this part of the book he is caught between the two lives of the merchant, one with pleasures, other with a path to salvation; and wonders what makes people leave all behind and follow the rituals, which sound somewhat illogical in today’s world.

The way Suketu Mehta writes about so many lives is sometimes satirical, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes with awe, sometimes with disgust, sometimes with his own opinions about them; but what arrests the readers’ attention is that he never forgets that these are humans; be it a gangster or a bar girl or a diamond merchant. That understanding gives a greater dimension to his observations and he makes you think about your Bombay. Every resident of Bombay sees the city differently, it means a lot to him/her; but to each, it means something different. Suketu gives you a roller-coaster ride of the city of hope, which is an agglomeration of individual dreams, a mass dream of the crowd…

What is your dream? What is Bombay to you?

HuMaN LiFe iS sO CoMpLiCaTeD...

The way I have written the title of this blog... Doesn't it look complicated itself?

The question I have in my mind is that "Is human life really complicated, or humans make it complicated by their own deeds?"

I remember; my great-grandmother used to tell me stories of her childhood. She was born in 1910, passed away in 1993. I was 9 years old at that time, but I remember some of her stories. They had such a simple life! I admit, they were not given any freedom of thought or action at that time; societal rules and norms were very specific and strict. But they need not have thought about it. This system was made by God, and they would be benefitted if they obey the God. They were told to help poor, do good deeds for the benefit of others so that they attain Moksha at later stages of their lives. Men were supposed to go out and work, women were supposed to take care of home and children. They were happy living a simple life, where they worried the most about getting their sons good education so that they settle well in a convenient government job, and getting their daughters married to suitable groom from a well-educated family. I’m not saying that this system was idealistic, it had its shortcomings, but life was relatively simple then.

Even at my grandmother’s time and my mother’s youth, life was not as complicated as it is today. What with the effects of globalization showing in every nook and corner of the country, we have to think and take decisions at every stage in our lives. Where our traditional value system contradicts the norms of the new, modern world; a typical Indian youngster is always confused which one should he follow.

If you are not successful, you won’t get any recognition in the society. If you don’t have enough money to show off, you fear that people will look down upon you. If you don’t strive hard to achieve those upper positions in the corporate world, you’ll be criticized because you lack the ambition. You don’t have many choices for your own life. The system, the society, all your family, friends and well-wishers govern your life.

One fine day if you feel that I have earned sufficient money, now I want to stay at home and do nothing. Can you do that? The answer is: NO. The monster called society won’t let you live in peace. What if you want to quit living in this mundane everyday routine life, and do something radical or different? I agree that there are such different people in society, like Medha Patkar, or Dr. Abhay and Rani Bang, Baba Amte, Arvind Gupta etc. There are these revolutionaries who dared to do something different and were successful in it. Do you think, if they had failed, their ideas about improving society had not proven to be practical; would they be able to survive here? When we see one successful person, there are one million who have failed, and stamped ‘worthless’ by the society. Then why would anyone dare to think different?

Doesn’t this all make human life more complicated? First, create something called ‘society’, then create a set of unspoken norms that a human being needs to follow to stay in the group, then appreciate those who have tweaked these norms slightly to think something ‘radical’ and punish those who go beyond norms. I feel that we have created a vicious circle in which everybody has to enter, and there in no provision for exit.

Then there are some people like me, who have ample time to think about all these things and keep writing it all in a blog. We don’t do anything, but sit on the sidelines and let other people read and comment on it. For that purpose, after fire and wheel, we have complicated our lives further by inventing internet!!!

As aptly said by John Louis von Neumann, "If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."

I believe that Homo Sepian was happier living in Jungle...

Let the complications continue…

Confusions of a typical mind...

When we live in today’s so-called modern society, in India; we can see distinct types and traits of people. Some people are hardcore orthodox, some are really ‘modern’ in their thinking and behavior and third category is that of wannabes. And today I want to write about these wannabes. Majority of today’s middle class (lower middle, middle middle and some part of upper middle class included) are the wannabes. They want to show to the world that they are modern, they are the rational thinkers and doing something great for the society, be it the change in their dressing sense or letting their daughters go out and party (though closely monitored).

The key question here is; does dressing modernly mean it is modern thinking? Does breaking some archetypical social norms and trying to set new ones, deliberately mean rational thinking? Does copying western culture blindly mean that you are doing something radical? In most of the cases, the original, core mindset remains orthodox. It is just the outer mask that these people are trying to change.

Basically, if you see, no thinking can be termed as ‘different’, ‘radical’, or ‘modern’; simply because no two persons can think alike. Just because as a society, we live with some rules, regulations and unspoken norms doesn’t mean that we actually think those norms are good for us. There is not a single person on this earth who never had any urge to fight against some of the social norms which haven’t changed with times; I am sure of that.

There are certain incidences in our lives which we can’t exactly fit into the standard definitions. And being in the society, every other person expects every other person to define clearly their role and goals in life, to define their relationships in a standard format accepted by the society. The question is who constitutes the society? A bunch of hypocrites like you and me? Yes, I would certainly admit here that I’m a hypocrite. According to me, a hypocrite is a person who is aware of the truth but does not have the courage or guts to ‘live’ the truth. In this case, I would say that ‘ignorance is bliss’ because you don’t have to think about anything, just walk through your life along with a herd, and you live a respectable life in the ‘society’.

What about the people who are able to think rationally, but due to their upbringing and cowardice are not able to implement their thoughts? Practically speaking, they are the hypocrites, but I would say they are poor souls trapped in their own image and perceptions of themselves created in other people’s minds. “If I actually do what I think, what would the society say? Will I be ignored/ boycotted? What about my own ‘respectable’ future? What would happen to my near and dear ones? Will they have to suffer contempt of society because of me? What about my parents? They raised me with all that they have, isn’t it my duty to see them happy when they are old? Am I being selfish by just looking at myself and my thought process, disregarding the set norms? But if I don’t, I will be the one to suffer rather than a whole bunch of people who will get hurt by my behavior”… “Sacrifice, Sacrifice, Sacrifice… for whom? For a set of dumb people who don’t have independent thinking capabilities? Or for other cowards like me who don’t want to tarnish their own image which is collectively built over the years?”

Why do I need to define each and every relationship of mine very meticulously? There are many things which are unsaid and undone, just understood. Why do I have this strong urge to put everything in black and white, with no gray areas in between? Just to keep myself safe? Safe from what? Just to say that I don’t want any confusions and complexities in my life? Isn’t this the biggest confusion in itself? After a confusion happens, I try to mould it deliberately in some silly rules and norms so that, u know, I maintain the image that I and my parents cultivated for myself over these past 25 years.

I have my own set of relationships, be it my friends, my relatives, the person I loved at some point of my life, and the people who are close to me, but can’t be set into definitions. What exactly can you say about the relationship between a guy and a girl, if there’s no physical attraction, nothing of the mushy-mushy being-in-love kind of feelings, but just a mutual respect and mature understanding? Going by typical Indian society’s norms, either you cut off some parameters of this kind of friendship, be ‘strictly friends’ or you call the person your ‘rakhi brother/sister’, which has become a joke in itself, or you be afraid of not having any definitions and try to mould this relationship in socially ‘acceptable’ love affair, though the kind of feelings you have for that person are entirely on a different level? It is not exactly a friendship, not an affair, you don’t exactly think of the person as a brother/sister. You exactly know where your relationship stands, you are very clear what you want from your own life, you know it perfectly well that you have found out someone who understands you well, respects you, treats you like a kid when you need some comfort, treats you like a parent when he/she needs some advise, you have just found a common comfort zone with each other. How do you define this kind of relationship? How do you get on, accepting the conditions imposed by other people? Why to put an end to a beautiful relationship, just because you are afraid of ‘what will other people think’? Why not to stand straight and dare to call a spade a spade? Why not to get on with your own life when you know that you are 100% right and clear in your thinking? Why not, for once, refuse to be a hypocrite and do what you feel is right?

Why not to end the typical mindset, to end all the confusions?

Rains...

Yeh raat bheegi bheegi, yeh mast fizayein…

Utha dheere dheere yun chaand pyaara pyaara…

Bheegi bheegi raat aur ek pyarasa chaand!! Waah kya combination hai!!! I just love this song…

Why?

Because I love the way the lyrics show subtle romanticism… rains and moon are always associated with romanticism… be it any language or any culture… its universal…

What’s more? Our own beloved Bollywood always depicts all those romantic love scenes in rains only… Rain-drenched actresses are a trademark of Bollywood…

But that’s not the reason why I’m writing this blog… it’s the rainy season… and I love water in any form... especially when it pours down heavily from skies… I just love those heavy rainfalls, be it anywhere…

Right now I’m here in the hostel, away from home… and I do miss Mumbai rains… I know some people might laugh at me, because I love all those muddy Mumbai rains, even if its all dirty and water-clogged everywhere… I was one of the persons who was irritated by all that shabbiness… I still am, but the moment I sit in the window of my Thane home, a cup of masala chai in my hand, I just forget all that is shabby in the world… I’m just thrilled because rains are there… the way the raindrops touch my windowpanes, I feel that the nature itself is caressing me with its hands… it is calling my soul with open arms… “Meghana, what are you sitting there for? Come out, shake a hand with me, I want your company today”

When I hear that call from the nature, I loose touch with all reality and sophistication, and I just want to run out like a small kid, and get drenched in rain, only to find my mother scolding, “beta, you’ll catch a cold”… what the hell, I go out onto the terrace anyways, and let me tell you, my mom has never stopped me saying that I will catch cold… She herself comes out sometimes to get drenched, and we don’t remain mother and daughter, we just become two giggling kids, who extremely enjoy the rainwater and are thrilled to see the rainbow, if it appears in the sky…

My love for rains is there with me since childhood, and I don’t think I’ll ever care about the world if I want to embrace nature with both my hands, get wet in the rain and more importantly, just be happy that’s rains are finally here…

Every person has a child inside him/her, whatever be the age… and the child inside me just wants to run and run and run… to see the heavy downpour all around me, to see the nature welcoming me with all the greenery spread around, to realize that life’s here again, to discover that the smell of earth is sweeter than any perfume, to just be a kid and not to worry about anything in this world… just take in those moments of joy and absolute bliss… never to think again…