Sad

9 people died by falling from the top (12th floor) of a building under construction near my home. A few others are critically injured. A slab broke off, apparently. It is extremely sad and unfortunate indeed. Just a few days back, a guy died at the same site in a similar accident. This is a reflection of the poor safety norms in most work places in India. The culture of jugaad leads to too many compromises in safety, quality and accountability. We live with that as the rich/powerful get away without being held responsible, the poor risk their lives as they don't have any other option, and the middle class just accepts without knowing enough and becomes a victim when things go down. And probably, contrary to what we generally believe, we are also somewhat reckless folk, and more adventurous than one in his/her right mind should be. We are like that only!

Oratory

Oratory, especially that at the most watched platforms, in the current times, is a skill that is less of what it used to be once upon a time. Good speeches still generate some euphoria, but it's less the skill of the speaker and more a lot of other factors that make public speaking so easy now, especially at the topmost platforms where the speakers have all kinds of tools which help them deliver content; and in the end all they do is just that - deliver, without putting much of a brain to it. And even the content is not written by the speakers... so basically all they do is stand on stage and act like they mean what they say. And then these news channels analyse that bull-shit for hours, as if it really mattered. A lot of time and energy can be saved if the content is directly made public, and we avoid all the unnecessary drama. Unless, of course, the speech is supposed to have an immediate psychological impact on the audience - like creating some sort of ecstasy about something and they go and do something they otherwise won't in their right minds. I guess Gandhi's and Hitler's speeches had such impacts on people. Perhaps Obama's speeches did too to some extent - in making the people vote for him - and he delivered them well in spite of just reading stuff on teleprompters; stuff written by someone else, of course. And one may say that every speaker would like such an impact if he can manage. And therefore, there is a strong argument in favor of live oratory in any case. And if we separate the content - read or rehearsed - from the delivery, the latter still requires the human and personality element so as to be really impactful... so we can't really replace the person with a robot that blurts out the content in the best possible manner as per the intended impact. But for people to be impacted by a read-out piece even by a human will increasingly get difficult as they become more and more aware of the fact that it is just acted out by the speaker and is not coming from deep down his mind, especially with more technology getting used - and technology has a turn-off effect in speeches. Teleprompters, for example, are designed to give an impression to the audience that they speaker is looking at  them, while he actually isn't. And the moment you discover that first time, you do feel cheated somewhere deep down. Given that, if someone can manage conventional oratory, he can sweep the crowds away still and have a competitive advantage too. Perhaps Donald Trump is managing that to a significant degree.

Brexit and Trump

Like all minds, mine also keeps working and thinking all kinds of crap, which most of the time is worthy of being posted on this blog - given the kind of standards I have set for it - but typing those down in a way that I also sound smart and literate requires a lot of mental preparedness which we call mood, which I get very rarely, although even when it comes, it is debatable whether I really sound all that.

That was a really long British kind of a sentence, which reminds me of the hottest gossip of the world at the moment - Brexit. What a funny term it is - I can launch a biscuit with this name that is also a bread, the brown one, and also has some x - my secret ingredient - to make a delicious yummy and tasty Brexit. I don't know what I need to do to copyright this idea... but like those idiots do on facebook to protect their privacy - I hereby declare the above mentioned idea as mine, and anybody who copies will have to pay me money of the order negotiable based on my mood during negotiation.

They say Brexit will lead to the next recession. And it will be real bad, I hear. And looking at David Cameron's face these days, I can tell he's sitting in an exam he hasn't studied for. The vibes are all negative if you hear world news. I don't know how big a dent one bunch of countries - a 'kingdom' it is called - ruled by a queen who also doesn't seem to have a clue on what's going on - can have on the whole world. But history tells us they are really capable of screwing everyone for their own survival. Anyhow, if I lose my job because of all this shit, I will start calling myself an entrepreneur to sound cool. And tag myself a CEO for some time, so that whoever hires me (after the Brexit is poop) considers me in higher league and makes me top management - a VP or something.

There's another mess waiting to spread all over. It's called Trump. Now although Trump sounds to me like an underwear brand - for males - this is really a guy, whose face resembles those fat dogs who look like they are smiling like humans do, but they are really just trying to spit out all the shit inside coz their ass is so choked and constipated.

This guy - Trump - talks nonsense like it makes sense, and sometimes it does. I am not the one to worry too much about sense, though, as long as I am getting entertained...  I bear Bhalla parivar in ye hain mohabbatein, for example, and never complain. But please don't judge me... I have a right to get entertained by any crap. For your information I did stop watching Sasural Simar ka when it became too meaningless. So I too have some limits you see.

A lot of people say Trump will screw the world. And like Brexit, he will also be chosen by people. How ironic! But if he indeed makes it to the white house, and if the world really gets more messy, especially for Indians in IT like me, I will have some more time as the CEO I plan to become if laid off. I may make it big too if I persist enough. My pani-puri thhela will be my office and assembling plant. And the product shipped right into customers mouths through steel carriers - with onions and sev - in customers' hands. And customer takes over the product logistics after it's shipped to the plate. FOB price of Rs.20 for 6 units. Again - I hereby declare this idea as mine, and anybody who copies will have to pay me money of the order negotiable based on my mood during negotiation.

this moment... is gone

Imagination - an interesting ability that we humans have, that enables a beautiful world to reside within us and also outside. So much so that it is hard to tell which is real. Dreams are another way of enjoying a presence beyond the waking reality. If you never wake up, then in your mind, is the dream all there is? I don't have a strong enough recollection of my dreams to say whether in one sleeping session I have one dream end to end, or a set of smaller independent ones. I think it's the latter, but don't feel confident in telling for sure. Why don't I? Am I lying somewhere with a deeper-than-natural sleep induced somehow, dreaming all this I call my life, like they show in the Matrix movies? While it doesn't seem like we have control over our dreams, we certainly have a handle on our imagination, although it can be argued that at some end of the chain of causality, we don't really know where thoughts and ideas come from. Without going that far, if we choose - like we do - to picture our thoughts in more video-like fashion rather than snapshots, we can take them to an end where scenarios plays in our minds in their finer details. That requires us to have enormous control on our minds, given all the disturbance they're subjected to. An awareness that the situation is imagined, yet living it in the mind like its happening for real - it's closer in nature to virtual reality of the technology world - and dreams in our sleep. And like in a dream, it is sometimes possible to forget the unrealness of it and get so immersed in it that one forgets his/her real identity which is outside the dream or the imagined state. Is someone's illusion someone else's reality? Within layers and layers of imagery, am I just an image? Am I dreaming? Am I imagining? Am I being dreamed? Am I being imagined? - this person that is me at the moment. But wait, the moment's gone...

Digital

Every IT company is talking about focusing on "Digital" these days. I've seen lots of these 50-60 year old leaders in large IT companies saying in one breath that they'll focus on Digital, IoT, AI and Cloud. Even the younger ones talk all this shit but I won't accuse them of stupidity as they are closer to my own generation. Even the older guys are not stupid for sure - I must say - as I am an Indian, and I should respect old people and Gods. I figured that sometimes when they say Digital, they mean and include IoT and AI as well. May be something else also. I am not sure whether Cloud is also implicitly meant. Perhaps it is. Perhaps when they say 'Digital, IoT, AI and Cloud', they actually mean 'Digital - IoT, AI and Cloud'. The hyphen is lost in all Indian English accents.

The first thing that irritates me about Digital of today is that the word 'Digital' is used as a noun, while it is actually an adjective. Remember Digital Watch, Digital Washing Machine? But what the hell does it mean to say - XY% of our revenue will come from Digital; or - we are very upbeat about Digital; or - We will invest in Digital. Digital what?

Here's a definition of digital (adjective) from dictionary.com
...pertaining to, noting, or making use of computers and computerized technologies, including the Internet: 'We are living in an increasingly digital world.' 'Digital activism uses social media to achieve political reform.' 'His blog is a great example of digital journalism.' 'Digital technology has revolutionized the music industry.'

This brings me to the second thing that irritates me - what the hell is this stuff that is newly tagged Digital now? Doesn't everything done through interconnected (is that even necessary?) computers come under Digital technology? What the hell is new here?

Probably newer applications are emerging due to internet becoming more ubiquitous and accessible through means never imagined before, and that has opened a whole new world of applications and possibilities in doing things. That can be seen as an expansion of the whole Digital arena. Why this separate fuckin' term called digital - the way it's used - which doesn't even talk about all things digital and is not even grammatically correctly used?

Or may be it's just me... I need to do some googling to understand if I'm missing something but am feeling too lazy... you can use that to your advantage and call me stupid, I don't mind :)

Note: The image in this post is copied from the internet without noting the source.

Meaninglessness of all we do...

This astounds me. The meaninglessness of it all. So much of crap that we do all the time pretending it's all a big deal, yet none of it is of much consequence. In jobs it does earn us our salaries, so at an individual level official crap still has some monetary value. Even that is all a huge waste at organizational level; created coz someone higher up had to show he was doing something and simply didn't understand what's really to be done. Crap trigger is always top-down. And crap flow is both top-down and bottom-up. Is that personifiably true as well?

But money does not really assign meaning to what we do. For an individual, meaning has to be something beyond money. It's something that justifies the act by leading to an outcome that makes the world a better place in some manner, however small. And that outcome has to be visible enough to be really motivating. Otherwise, it's again no real meaning. It's like those hundreds of slides created every week by millions of managers worldwide to send to their bosses every Friday - stupid status reports - knowing most of them won't be read or understood. But they have to be made, coz someone more powerful wants them, and that's his way of making sure the progress of work is on track. It does meet the purpose for some bosses to some extent.

There is an interesting issue with us which makes the whole concept of meaning look upright and upside-down at the same time. We want meaning yet we want to get crazy and excited. Challenges motivate us, but challenging work is frustrating. We prepare the most rational strategies, yet we don't follow them, coz we are only good at making them. We like to sleep. We like to eat. We also want to be slim. We like privacy, yet we want a social life. We want mobile devices, yet we want work-life balance. We like to drive but we don't like traffic. When on bike we hate cars on the road, when on cars we hate bikes on the road. And everyone hates those walking in between. And walkers hate everyone in return. We like going to expensive places, yet we want them cheap with discounts. We go to malls and not buy anything. We buy things coz everyone does. We wear ties, which serve no purpose at all. We hit humans and love God. We take credit for good job but dump work on others. We take work that can give us recognition. We bully the weak and complain getting bullied by the stronger. We watch TV serials which show routine life, but find our own routine lives boring. We are obsessed about nudity, although we're all the same bodies. We don't like the smell of our own shit. We can kill plants and eat them, but killing certain animals becomes sin. We are okay with killing mice and mosquitoes, though. We enjoy alcohol and drugs that dumb down our minds, yet we take pride at our intelligence. We make strange drawings on our bodies and feel proud about it. White ones want tan. Black ones want to be white. The middle ones want to be white too, and then seem tanned. A woman saying she needs a man only for making babies is awesome. A man saying he needs a woman only for making babies is sick. Well there's a background to it - men have a long legacy of sickness of lot of kinds over ages. Let's pass that. We kill in the name of God, yet we don't have a clue who that is. The winners write histories to show them as good and losers as evil. Everybody dies, history remains. For whom? We can die any moment. Reality is that we will die some day, yet we live like we have forever. We are lazy, yet we want to achieve so much in life, be on top of the world. We push tasks on Friday to Monday as if it would never come. We want promotions in jobs, yet we don't want to be accountable for anything. We get inspired by what rich people say while they are at a place much different from where we are. We admire global Maxima more than local Maxima, yet we talk about setting milestones. We hate our bosses and what they do, yet we want to be promoted while it will only lead us to our bosses' position. We are masters of contradictions, yet we talk about consistency. We admire children, yet we aspire maturity. Do we become nuts when we are screwed?

Such fucked up minds we are, and yet we talk of meaning!

Singing in the Chorus

I love singing. It is an ability that is inborn and instinctive in me. Back in the 80's and 90's when I was a kid and lived in the Railway colony in Bilaspur, I had a secret life of my own where I would instantly pick up any Bollywood number that fell on my ears - the lyrics would be imprinted on my mind which would set it up for me with the tune. I'd sing it out - loudly, when nobody was listening to me, and in my mind, when I didn't want to be heard. I dreamt of going to Mumbai when I grew up and trying my luck in Bollywood. Udit Narayan was my guru, like Dronacharya was of Ekalavya. I learnt all my singing by listening to his songs. His voice mesmerized me, and I tried to copy him.

Fast-forward a few years and I was in IIT Bombay. I was selected - rather volunteered and didn't get rejected - to sing in the chorus for a bunch of songs in the Performance Art Festival (PAF), where hostels 8 (my hostel) and 10 (the UG girls hostel at that time) were together going to perform a play. It was called Asakt, and the team had chosen quite a few nice songs to be included at various points during the play - So gaye hain from the movie Zubeidaa, Hillele jagjor duniya by the band Indian Ocean, Dhuaan dhuaan from the movie Mission Kashmir, O nadiya jahaan teri rukh jaaye - don't know the source of this beautiful song. Except for the first song, the rest of them were to be sung by a male - KK, a 5th year senior was going to sing all of them. I, GP and a few girls from H10 were the chorus-team, and formed part of the overall music team. Being in the music team was a big advantage for a freshie, as now he didn't have to do the prod work, which included carrying long bamboo sticks around for making the sets and all the stuff for the backdrops, etc. - basically slogging all nights doing whatever the seniors asked him to do. But it was seen and, I guess, indeed was a good opportunity to network with the seniors, if you really cared for that.

The music team also had 2 guitarists - Kedar and Srinath, and a lady who played the Synthesizer and also sang the song So gaye hain. Sorry to have forgotten names of all ladies here. I remember the guys' names as they were from my hostel and I had further associations, not so strong, with them during my later years at IITB.

I envied KK as he was the lead singer for so many songs. He sang very well - was probably the best singer in the campus at that time - and was probably a trained singer. He played many instruments too. And in addition, it was his last year at IITB, and his last chance to sing his heart out and be heard at that scale. He truly deserved it. He was the music director for the show.

Being clubbed with a girls hostel, H8 guys had a unique opportunity that year - to work with the girls, and it was supposed to be fun. The girls didn't do much of prod work which involved lifting weights and setting them up. So that part of the job had to be mostly taken up by the guys - who must have cursed the lottery or whatever that led to us getting paired with the girls hostel. But from the perspective of winning in the competition, partnering with girls gave a competitive edge for sure as their contribution in cast, acting, script and music is unmatched otherwise by guys. And when girls are around and watching, guys perform better too.

I was an extremely shy and introverted kind those days, and had a tough time acting cool or talking to guys who seemed cool or whose first language was English. The music team seemed like full of such guys and girls. I didn't have much of a concept of conversation, communication, sense of humor and flirting in English, which for me was purely a language for official purposes, exams, lectures, letters and emails. I am a shade better now, having seen and dealt with more of the world over the years, but I can still be seen replying in Hindi when someone who I know speaks Hindi well but still asks me something in English. And in addition, I don't like mixing languages when talking... so that confuses my blabber even more.

This music team had daily practice sessions for many hours starting after dinner and till late in the night. The venue was a small room at the back of the B-wing of H8 designated as music room. While the lead singers and the guitarists had a lot on their plate having to practice all the songs and the music, the chorus-team was relatively idle. Me and GP used to go on time each day.

GP used to be highly enthusiastic about this. He would look excited, engage well with the seniors and explicitly wish for the success of the show - and looked, and am sure was, quite genuine. I, on the other hand, was always disinterested, bored, indifferent, silent, introverted, disengaged and lost. And I am hardly ever able to successfully express my strong wish of anything becoming successful, coz deep down I am often okay even if things screw up. This would be good for a saint, but for normal humans, wanting something strongly helps one achieve it. And expressing it well helps build the team spirit.

When the chorus-team's turn came to sing during the practice sessions, I'd sing along with GP and a couple of girls... some humming, some lines. I used to pour all the Udit Narayan I had in me into those few lines. But that's not how you sing in the chorus. You have to sing such that your voice blends softly with those of others and you hear one breezy sound. But I found singing in the chorus very boring and unmotivating. It felt like being in a herd where you have no individual identity or scope for recognition. More importantly there's no scope for putting forth your best performance and enjoying that moment. Any attempt at leaving a distinguishing mark for yourself is considered a mistake. And with that, you are expected to still draw some satisfaction in hope that some day you'll have your chance to sing in front.

The hope wasn't without a basis for me, as KK would pass out and a few years later, I was going to be in my final year, and if I was good enough, competitive enough and assertive enough of my seniority, I'd be allowed the lead position too. But I didn't find such a slow progression exciting, and didn't even participate in such events after my 1st year. I know that was stupid, but I did what I felt like. I did an even more conventionally stupid thing - I dropped out of the Surbahaar team (which did an orchestra every year), after getting selected in their auditions when I was in my 1st year at IITB and performing in that year. I did get 1 solo song to sing - Mai nikla gaddi leke from the movie Gadar - an Udit Narayan number - all for myself - along with 2 girls and 2 guys who sang the chorus... KK got 9 songs that year! But even the Surbahaar team did more than a month of practice and I couldn't enjoy all those long hours with that bunch of cool guys and gals for reasons mentioned above. And the thought of doing that every year didn't seem exciting to me. I signed out by not turning up the next year, and the team didn't seem bothered to ask me why. They might have noticed I was missing. Probably I didn't really matter the way I was. May be now I am more the kind of person who'd fit it. But if I stayed on somehow in the team that time, I could have benefited from the progression and got many more solo songs in the later years, and may be my personality would also have got upgraded for good. But I was stupid, lazy and careless - listened to my reluctant side.

Outside IIT, such progression is highly unlikely in the field of art. One doesn't generally see a guy singing in the chorus becoming a lead singer after some time. One doesn't also generally see dancers dancing behind hero or heroine in bollywood numbers becoming heros or heroines themselves. It rarely happens that someone starting his career as a comedian or a villain becomes a hero later on.

But in companies, most people do start their careers by being part of the 'chorus-teams'. However, unlike a musical piece, in offices one does have an incentive and encouragement to create a differentiation and recognition for himself/herself and work out a faster path to the top. And there is place for those who want to hide in the herd - out of choice or compulsion - and be lost without anyone knowing until someone notices a voice missing and to be filled in, or needing replacement.

In any case, chorus is still an important element of a melodious song, even if the singers in it don't get any credit and are left unknown. It's partially about the reference frame. The micro you go, you can identify leads within chorus, although not singing like it's a lead coz the singer also has a reference frame, and in that, he/she's part of a chorus. Go macro and leads may merge to form a chorus, albeit cacophonous coz their reference frame gives them a lead perspective. And of course, going micro and macro does not make much of sense if the listeners are also bound by their reference frame, like we are. So it's on the singer to break out of the choruses of life and be heard... by others and himself... the audience he/she chooses... and the song he/she sings!