Mountain

Norway wants to shift its border by 20 meters so as to gift a mountain to Finland, which has none while Norway has many taller ones! Read about it here. If only all countries could be this friendly, the world would have been very beautiful. But friendly gestures are done when countries are in friendly terms. And in most cases friendly terms is a phase, until there is some bad spark somewhere because of whatever reason - an illegal immigrant, a terrorist attack, a resource sharing conflict or a passionate sporting event. But such is the world and its ways. There will always be friends, non-friends and foes, different ones at different times.

But let's focus on another aspect of that gesture - gifting a mountain!!! I mean of all things... a mountain! Those guys must be really obsessed with risen masses of land - the Norwegians and the Finns - one to think it's a treasure they have and the other to miss them enough to consider it a gift. May be the latter actually meant - shuru kisne kiya - when it accepted the gift. If there's real joy in all this, it's cool indeed. But then, what's the fun if things are indeed as they are shown to be? Still... a mountain? Really? It's a strange obsession humans have - for all things sticking out - more the better. A similar obsession is with making tall buildings. There's this recent news that Saudi Arabia is building a 1 km long tower (read here) - 200 floors tall - I guess so tall that the highest floors would be in clouds whenever they visit Saudi Arabia. Would be fun to stand on the terrace and pee into the passing clouds that would go and cause rain in another country! Must be great living in the desert and doing hankypanky with clouds that are not yours anyhow.

In India we have some of the tallest peaks in the world. Our neighbors also have some. Some of our Gods live there... no kidding! I recently saw the movie Everest. It's one sad story of trekkers and their expedition to scale the tallest peak going terribly wrong. I once went with a few friends of mine to climb the tallest peak in the Sahyadris - Kalsubai. We didn't really know it's the tallest when we went there. It was a lazy Sunday morning during the rainy season, and we just wanted to go somewhere for fun. So, clearly, we didn't prepare much for something this big. I don't want to describe this whole trip... long-story-short - we gave up after climbing half way up - it got dark and scary, we ran out of food and we were tired. Well, I don't know if it was really even "half" the way up that we went, but what the hell! I even write in my CV in the extracurriculars section: Avid Trekker - scaled Kalsubai - the tallest peak in the Sahyadris! Well, I did visit the place... That's how CV's go. You do a few lines in Java and you are qualified to write Java under your skills. You get something self-published and call yourself a published author. You stand for some time in a hip-deep swimming pool and say you know swimming. It's fair.

Speaking of mountains, there's mountain of work piled up. Lemme take care of it. It's only like that one Finnish mountain, though - not very high. So can take it off soon. Bye for now.

May be...

Being from these elite institutes of the country puts a great pressure on you to do something that the world admires. Especially in times like now when lots of young guys and girls fresh out of college are starting interesting ventures. Many are failing of course, but we are told that's part of the game. As this new breed is sweeping the business world, people my age are wondering how to catch up. But most of us would soon behave like all older generations - claim respect just coz we have some gray hair! And gulp all ego.. and, while the heart gently weeps, work for these youngsters who are clearly not as smart as we are... come on, elders are allowed to think that way about those younger :)

I myself have had dreams, most of which I forced myself to see, of owning and running companies. And discussing such ideas, or thoughts about ideas which don't come, is one of the most favorite topics of gossip among most people in their 20's and 30's in urban India. The other hot topics being girls and sex for guys, and guys and relationships for girls! (Well, I am just guessing for the latter.) Right now I am part of 2 whatsapp groups where startups keeps coming up as a topic. One is of my friends from IIT and the other is of my friends from IIM, The IITians seem to have more interest in anything related to entrepreneurship - which I can safely generalize about all IITians, as can be seen even from the large number of founder CEOs who are IIT alumni. But not many who are IIM alumni (IIT+IIM not considered under IIM). A very basic reason for that is the culture in these institutes. In the 4 years at IIT, we hear the word Entrepreneur so much that many IITians get inclined to adopt that as the way to go about in life. In the 2 years at IIM, all we hear to that extent are "CV", "Resume", "CV Point", "CGPA", "Job", "Globe" etc. etc. And so all most MBAs want to do is make a good CV, get a high paying job and "globe" their way to the top! And therefore, drawing an inference here from the general observation, in my whatsapp group with friends from IIM, conversations on entrepreneurship lack any real masala.

Anyhow, this bug - entrepreneurship - just flies around without biting me. I am not sure if startup CEO life is what I want. Sometimes I feel these things have been stereotyped too much, to create an unnecessary psychological differentiation where none exists. May be things are not too different either way. May be the barriers to entry into that world which are mostly mental are created by its inhabitants to make themselves sound cool and their achievements too big for common people to aspire for, But then, I am obviously not qualified to say all this as I've never even stepped into that land and felt it for real. I take back what I said... will say it again after I experience it myself and if I ever do. I find this funny - taking back something said and recorded... but since it's considered a legitimate way of striking invalid communications, let's abuse it!!!

The thought of creating stuff that the world finds useful - makes their life easy or fun - is quite exciting. For lazy people, the excitement lies in the thought itself and in nothing beyond that! A true entrepreneur, I feel, should theoretically be a doer, and should love execution more than ideation. Is that true? For great thinkers, there are ways in which thinking itself can be something that can influence the way the world works and even earn money for them. Lazy people have ways to be doers in the world of today. I think I am somewhere in the mid-point in this matrix of traits - thinker, doer, lazy - perhaps a state many call the comfort zone. Probably need to stretch in some of the dimensions, and add an element of risk - may be, I can be an entrepreneur too!