The Non Conformist.

So, if you were to describe yourself in one word, what would that one word be? Non Conformist, without batting an eyelid, pat came the reply. The brief moment, that followed ,had the room in an eerily pin drop stunned silence, while the interviewer processed the different answer to a pretty regulation question.

I sailed through that interview.

Rumour has it, when Michelangelo was painting The Last Supper at Sistine Chapel, he was pretty frustrated because no matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn't find the inspiration behind Jesus' face . When the Pope visited him and enquired what was taking him so long, like a true artist , an annoyed Michelangelo, irreverently, muttered that all he saw when he looked around were candles at the altar, not one distinguishable from the rest.

In this rat race, pause for a minute, step back and wonder if there is something about you that really differentiates you from being that candle at the altar, totally identical to the one next to you. Or have you become so engrossed, furiously, running around in circles that you can't see the futility of your meaningless and mindless pursuit.

The funny thing about choice is that it can be deceptively illusionary. When was the last time, we really made a life altering choice on our own? We, Indians, more often than not, have our entire lives scripted by someone else. Invariably, our parents decide what school we go to, what career we end up taking and in some really unfortunate cases whom we end up marrying. Our wives, then decide the colour of the walls and when the kid finally come of age, they dictate how we should spend our old age and this vicious cycle goes on ad infinitum.

Ann Ryan's school of thought talks about individualism, about making our own choices and owning up to those choices, time and again. About the need to do things because one wants to, not because its expected of him. About the need to be selfish and placing self interest over everything else. About living life on one's own terms and not falling into the trap of either social expectations or that of greater good.

Be different, Be Original, make your own choices, break free of the shackles, quit the rat race, enjoy life, have fun, laugh like a kid, stop worrying about the tomorrow, don't hesitate, don't be afraid, make your own choices, make mistakes, tread the unknown, do different things, do things differently, let go of safety nets, spread your wings, take the leap of faith, fall and rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

Remember , one day the dots will all connect backwards. For now, be irreverent, be a rebel, Be a Non Conformist.

I' m Still here

Breakups suck, there can be no two ways about it. More so, when you happen to be at the short end of the stick. More so, when it all hits you when you least expect it. More so, when you have, for the first time in your life, started to look at the future and dream of watching sunsets together. More so, when you have let down the guard to the only person who can stab you in the heart.

Dealing with the Break up is messier still. What do you do, when all the moments from the beautiful past come swarming by, what are you supposed to do, when your best laid plans for the future come crashing down, like a pack of cards, leaving a gaping hole instead. What do you do, when you instinctively pick up your cell to break some news to her, out of sheer habit, when the realization hits you that things are no longer how they once used to be. What do you do, when your dreams reflect the anguish of the heart , and half the times, you wish the dreams don't end while, at other times, you end up waking in cold sweat. How are you supposed to erase memories or fight dreams!

Be strong, Time is the best healer is what they all say but how do you deal with the pain of an anguished heart and ward off the sinking feeling in your stomach now. How do you numb yourself and stop feeling. In times of distress, hope is the first casualty but what you do do when hope becomes your nemesis and stops you from burning bridges and moving on. How do you deal with the addiction, while you still dream of reconciliation.

You pour your heart out to the people who care for you,a wee bit uncertain that they would understand. They do what they do best, they listen when you need somebody to hear your silent screams and more importantly, they stand by you and it all helps but in the end it all comes down to what YOU do. In the the last stretch, you are on your own, while they root for you from the stands. You look back, see their concerned faces, you look ahead towards salvation and yet you find your steps staggering and then to the horror of all horrors you find yourself exactly at the same place where it all began. Reminds you of running on a treadmill, no matter how hard you run, you are still, exactly, there.

You deal with the pain in all the ways that is possible, some sane while others totally off the charts, you try to numb yourself and yet can't stop feeling. You think, If only you could hate her, things would be a little easy but how do you start suddenly hating someone, you once cherished and loved with everything you had. You push yourself, try out unconventional methods, clutch at the straws, try fighting pain with pain till you stop feeling anything at all.But you still feel.... everything.

There is always a promise of a better tomorrow, there is always the belief that with every passing moment, some demons of the past are being purged. But none of it , numbs the pain you feel right now. None of this , fights off the memories you wish to cleanse off. You suppress them, you repress them but they all come back and when they do, they leave you gasping for they are as potent a force as any, especially when they ambush you when you are at your lowest.

There will be a day, I will wake up with a smile and realize that I have put it all behind me, but today, that day seems like a distant mirage, in a far away land. I just hope, I don't run out of steam before I reach there and I pray that when I do, I would still remember who I am or Who I once was. But for now, I'm Still here...

The Baba and the Fast

Ok so here is a Baba, who has a huge following, doesn't believe in anything western, is a staunch proponent of swadeshi, believes that homosexuality is a disease of the mind and apparently has assets worth hundreds of crores, notwithstanding a private island. And he happens to be a class 8th dropout. And now he has a cause. Bringing back the Black money from abroad. Sounds eerily close to NDA's main election issue!

So Baba, apparently not very happy with Anna taking all the limelight away in the last fast, even though he tried desperately to gate crash the party coupla times, decided to have a fast of his own. Big deal, my Mom would say, a Baba not eating food, Huh!! Oh, but this is not just any ordinary Baba and this is no ordinary fast either. This is the new age, filthy rich Baba and this time, he is joined by thousands of trusted devotees, And only this time, one can have a fast and yet eat fruits and drink water. And it's in Delhi to show the nation that this is not an ordinary Yoga camp but the clarion call for a social upheaval and revolt.

The fast also happens to be more fixed that most of the cricket matches that Pakistan plays. It is a win win for the Baba and a face saving gesture for the government. So the big boys from the center and the Baba meet, the Baba is actively and passively wooed. And the Baba agrees to call off the fast in 2 days. Oh and then there is the mundane talk on Black Money and a mechanism to get it back, the Baba, obviously having no clue into what he is gotten into, says one thing in the meetings and does a volte-face at his camp. Allegations fly thick and heavy. The Baba feels powerful and, like they say, power goes into his head. Why give up the fast, when you are on top of the world, because of it. He demands an audience with the Prime Minister himself.Nay, he summons the Prime Minister. And when that doesn't happen rakes up an issue that everybody got bored of a decade back, Sonia's Foreign Origin issue. So very original!!

The government gets bored of being treated as a puppet and sends in the cavalry. Two hours later, the same Baba, who was relishing his new life of having powers that be, as his beck and call, is found running in an alley, dressed as a woman with a Dupatta covering his face. When you take on the might of the government, You better be sure you have all that it takes. Common sense dictates that you either don't have that long a beard or have a bigger Dupatta, when you are pretending to be a woman. For, if not for your beard, you might have gotten away.

And now you cry foul and expect us to believe that the government was out there to kill you. So please help us understand, the cops who found you, when did they take you into custody instead.

And for all the bleeding hearts of our civil society, ruing the mauling of democracy and violation of freedom of expression, the 50k odd people, who got evicted out of the camp, in the dead of the night,weren't people but actually sheep. These aren't the people who either care and even know anything about the black money . Hell, over half of them wouldn't even know who our Finance Minister is . Faith, prevents them from thinking for themselves and they outsource the thinking part to wannabe powers like a fake Baba and do exactly as the Baba commandeth. These are not the people who bring about change or a revolution. These are the people who end up human Shields to protect the whims of their controllers.

Any sensible voice in India feels the same anguish at the state of our nation , at the all prevailing and seemingly indestructible corruption and government apathy but if some con man, using the faith that the foolish masses have put in him, starts manipulating and dictating terms to the elected government, then where really is the democracy we are crying for?

Some say , they don't believe in the man but believe that the issue was right. In that case, how can you let someone, you don't even trust, hijack your cause for his personal gains, fight your battle or be your leader. And for all we know, this is a narcissist individual laying the ground work to facilitate his entry into politics.

He didn't start the fight. The Fight was already on. He was just trying to cash in the limelight The promised revolution will come but lets not get so impatient and ahead of time that we put in our trust in any Tom Dick and Baba and expect him to lead the fight for us. Lets us not let anyone usurp our fight. The day will come, Our day will come but this day, today, is not that day YET and this Baba is definitely not the promised Messiah.

The Unstoppable Force

Ten years back, back in a very small remote town of Jharkhand, I happened to be a part of an intellectually stimulating discussion. Mamta Banerjee was touted to sweep the Assembly elections and excitement was in the air. Our school had more than a couple of young Bengali teachers and one look at them was enough to guess that they were excited like little kids. In the melee there was one young teacher who stoneyfaced declared that nothing can move the Left and as long as there was Bengal , the Left would be in charge of it, for it was an indestructible wall.

Such strong was his conviction, that I knew that I had to understand what it was based on. And who better than him to educate me on the source of his conviction. So I asked him. Till this day, I have no idea if his answer was that ridiculously simple or that incredulous naive. He said, Bengalis by nature are a very rational race and they will never elect someone who was so totally unsophisticated, crude and intellectually lowly. The Left gave the Bengalis a reason to think , a principle to live by and stimulated their brain sense. Bengalis loved to pride themselves as an intellectual people and hence communism as a philosophy appealed to them, for it differentiated them from the others.

Some of it made sense to me, a lot didn't. Communism, as a ideology was something I had learnt only coupla months back and even then, I could see so many flaws in it. What good is a philosophy, if it seeks to build a society from scratch and then predicts its doom for the welfare of the next one. Not to mention, the communist experiments had failed every where else, and the Bengalis were the only one holding on to its relics. If chanting praises of Marx, denouncing anything that is American or for that matter western as imperialist and painting graffiti declaring that China's premier is our premier or denying the very existence of the 1962 armed conflict with the PLA of the China or brutally putting down anyone who dared oppose the party ideology was all that was to communism, then I failed to see what was so sane or rational about it.

So convinced was that young teacher in the cause, that he gave up his teaching career , joined politics and became a CPM volunteer, the same ones, we hear on some days, killing villagers and on others, getting killed by villagers. Politics in WB must have the crown on being the bloodiest and most gory than perhaps anywhere in India. That election , Mamta came tantalizingly close but couldn't complete the home run and I was left to question myself, what if my teacher had been right?

The next assembly election came and went and the Left was still there as an albatross, unmovable and unshakable. As I understood the principle of communism better and started knowing more and more about life in West Bengal, I was forced to question myself, what good is an ideology if it doesn't help fill stomachs and how long can one go on with hungry families, starving children , unemployed youth and sick old men and yet believe in an ideology that the world has discarded decades back.

And then Prakash Karat happened and from being indifferent to the Left, I began to passionately hate it and everything associated with it. He had the guile to lecture the nation on how we were puppets to the US and all the time seeking more and more incentives for the Chinese, the same Chinese , who never trusted us. He almost felled a government on a nuclear deal, only because one of the partners of the deal was U.S and then engineered a Third Front , who had almost everyone marginalized in Indian politics and not one leader of any repute. He made tall promises but he should have known he wasn't a JayPrakash Narayan and when the Left lost its face in the national elections, had the audacity to face the cameras and say that the entire Politburo is responsible for the fiasco and not him alone, which is shameful because it was Karat's ego that drove a wedge with the congress on the nuclear deal or was behind kicking Mr. Somnath Chatterjee from the party.

And then the D day came, the voters in WB decimated the Left. The ideology couldn't feed them and hence had to go. Brains don't work on empty stomachs. And the same lady, who was once described as uncivilized, crude, unsophisticated and uncouth and irrational , got elected by a landslide margin into the Writers building. I wish I could look at that young teacher in the eye now and ask him why the Bengalis voted with their heart this time, paying no heed to the rational aspects. The indestructible wall, he was singing praises of, met an unstoppable force and got vanquished.

Another wall at another time had signalled the end of communism as an ideology, If only the communists had paid little heed to history.

My Persuasive Speech

The Premise:

I am the MD of a firm which provides innovative solutions and consultancy services to rural India. The source of our profit comes from grants from government affiliates, NGOs and a small percent from the rural population who makes use of our services. We have tie ups with Gram panchayats and our team keeps visiting the rural interiors, exploring more avenues to help them, they identify the needs, pass it on to our research and development wing who develop a prototype which is in turn sent back to the villages to be thoroughly tested, the inputs incorporated and the final product launched.

In a span of 2 years we have made some significant contribution to the quality of life of the villagers. Our products have directly touched their lives and in many cases enriched them. Some of the examples of our products are the mobile applications that help them the farmers know about the weather, educate them on better practices of farming, procurement of better quality of seeds, knowledge of better rates in the market, micro financing options, information on availability of loans in government banks and the various government and social initiatives that are already in place to cater to their needs.

Moreover , we have created a platform where millions of farmers, though our e-portal can interact , share their views, brainstorm on their problems and most importantly display a united front to help create policies to their advantage.

At present, we have a workforce of about 300 full time employees, which, as it is, is still woefully inadequate, considering the volume of customers we serve and the large geographical area we canvas. We are finding the going difficult as recruiting dedicated personnel is proving difficult. Moreover, in the recent past, we have witnessed an attrition rate that is a major cause of concern. Our employees are leaving our firm to either work with companies that cater to the urban needs or joining MNCs, leaving the Indian borders to go serve foreign customers.

This is a persuasive speech that I am giving to my employees, motivating them to be firmly committed to this organization and highlight the goodwill we are spreading in a sector that has long been ignored by others.

The Speech:-

Dear employees,

I first and foremost congratulate each one of you for the undying commitment that each one of you have exemplified in our mission to serve a sector that has long been ignored and forsaken, only because other corporations didn’t seem it to be financially rewarding. We wanted to tread new paths and not just reiterate on paths that were already taken. So, when other corporations were busy measuring their success by economic yardsticks, we were busy measuring it with the social satisfaction index, a scale that focussed more on the difference we were creating in the society than on the revenue we could possibly generate.

In a span of two years, our efforts have touched millions of lives. We have, almost singlehandedly improved the quality of life in thousands of Indian villages. Our products have made a difference in their lives. You all are living testaments to the love affair of this company with the Indian villages and how well it has been received and reciprocated. Little wonder then that our company is one of the most loved companies of rural India and that our teams are greeted like celebrities in the villages.

I come to you today, however, with a heavy heart. It pains me to announce that the attrition rate has reached worrying proportions. With 17% attrition rate, things look dark and bleary. Our workforce, as it is, is woefully inadequate, considering the volume of customers we serve and the large geographical area we canvas. We are finding the going difficult as recruiting dedicated personnel is proving difficult. To further compound our problems, our employees are leaving this firm to seek greener pastures, be it in companies that cater to the urban needs or joining MNCs, leaving the Indian borders to go serve foreign customers.

A long time ago, a young graduate, fresh out of IIT, got a job working in a PSU and against his wishes, got a posting in a rural village, where he found, he really had no job except signing off on some files that came his way, once in a blue moon. He kept sending off applications after applications to the central office, informing them of his predicament and requesting them to give him a posting that was more befitting his skills. But as you all know, government machinery has a pace of its own. To kill time, this young mechanical engineer made friends with a nearby small time entrepreneur who ran a dairy farm. The dairy farmer had no technical skills and his machines would break down a little too often. Since the engineer loved machines, he would often kill his time, by fixing those bulky and rusty machines. He advised the farmer to get rid of the antique machines and import new ones from Germany.

After a couple of months the engineer finally got a new posting. But as we about to pack, the famer came to his doorsteps and told him, that taking his advice into consideration; he had ordered the new German machines and now that they were here, there was no one qualified to run them and the engineer was the only one who knew everything about that machines. The farmer requested him to stay in the same village and help him with the machines. The young engineer was faced with a choice. He could either take up the posting in an urban city and live a comfortable life, or he could stay with this farmer in this rural village and create something new all together. That village, Ladies and gentlemen, was Anand, the young engineer was Dr. Vergeese Kurien, and the small dairy farm went on to become a co-operative Amul, the largest milk producer of the world.

Each one of you here made a choice. Each one you, could have stayed in a city and would have jobs that would definitely be more financially rewarding and materialistically comfortable. But you chose to work for the underprivileged. You chose to be here because you all are actually touching lives and transforming them. The amount of goodwill that you are spreading in the villages, today, is perhaps unparalleled.

If you remember, in your orientation, I posed you the same question that I am asking you today. Make a choice and stick with it. Every day, when you look yourself in the mirror, remember you made that choice. It’s very well your decision that can shape the future of India. Will it be a nation divided between the urban rich and the rural poor? Will it be a nation of Mercedes carts racing by bullock carts? Will it be a nation where the rich have quadruple bypass operations to clear their arteries while the poor lack a small vitamin drop at birth that will help prevent blindness? Will it be a nation where the cities have flyovers and overways but the villages lack even metalled roads? Will it be a nation where the cities are living testaments to globalization but the villages are all but forgotten? It all comes down to the choice you make. I m well aware that the ills plaguing our society are far too many for any one organization to correct but should that be the excuse for not trying at all?

Each one of here made a choice the moment you joined this firm and with each passing day and at each hurdle, you have re affirmed that choice. Each one of you have the unique privilege to waking up every day, looking at yourself in the mirror and feeling really proud of the choice you have made because it’s an effort at rebuilding the torn social fabric of india, a small effort but an effort nevertheless. I sincerely hope that you keep feeling proud of this achievement and reaffirm the choice again and again. Together we can make a difference and bring about the change. To end with a quote of RabindraNath tagore, Into that heaven, my father, let my country awaken.