THE REAL LEARNING!

New workshops were always a happy time for me. A time for meeting new people or even if it were just the old people I knew, it was a change of place that made me happy about having the workshops. I was in a similar state of mind when the talks of outbound learning program began. Not-so-acquainted people plus the promise of a really fresh and close-to-nature surroundings, made the prospect of attending the workshop really enticing. The last few days of work before outbound learning, I was literally dragging myself to office and pushing reluctantly to work hard. And then the journey commenced and after a lot of hustle and bustle for nearly 28 hours, I finally reached Pegasus – Bangalore.

After meeting the new people and not-so-new people and having a sumptuous lunch, I sat down in what appeared to be more a house veranda than a class room with a really heavy head. If anyone just pushed me with a little finger I would have fallen asleep. I could vaguely comprehend the host asking questions about how we felt the campus was etc. And then, he uttered the ghastly sentence which jerked me from my blissful state to one of panic. Yes, he had asked the dreaded sentence – he asked us to introduce ourselves and give a hobby. HOBBY! What does he care even if I can become invisible for a hobby! Why do people feel the necessity for asking such questions? I felt like a mouse which was doing all it can to avoid the trap but heading towards the trap, all the same. My mind was as usual groping around desperately for what my hobbies were and not finding answers. I was just hopelessly waiting for my turn to come. Then it was the usual scheme of events. It was my turn to speak and I said, “I like watching movies and listening to music, especially film music”

First instinct is to ask what is so wrong with having them as a hobby. But watching movies and listening to music were not my hobbies. To put it in comprehensible terms, watching movies or listening to music is like having tea in the morning and talking to my parents once in 2 days. It is what I do to keep my day/week going. It is a habit. Not a hobby. Now don’t brandish a dictionary at me and ask me to read the meaning of the word hobby. That is a wasteful activity. I know that it means anything that occupies your time after what is supposedly your occupation. But think about it. Do you really call eating, sleeping etc as your hobbies?

Listening to music or watching movies is like that. I don’t get any mental revelations on seeing movies or listening to music. What my mind is really occupied with when I am listening to music or watching movies is what needs to be looked into carefully. So the racking of brains started. 3 days of the trip I decided to keep racking my brains to understand what I do when I listen to music. After 1 hour of total mental combat, I resorted to listening to music for resolving the headache. (Typical!)

The song Katrukullai from the movie Sarvam started playing and my mind purred in contentment. I really love the sound effect that came through this song. It was like drops of rain falling, singing and making music with the wind. My mind was filled with a beautiful picture of a lush green forest through which sunlight came in and gave a beautiful glow to anything that was light green. The sunlight was so tender and warm that it totally made one forget that sky was actually laden with grey clouds waiting to burst into rain. Even so, the rain that fell was not an outburst. Our clouds there knew well how to relieve themselves gently. It was a pleasant downpour where each drop had the leisure of floating to their heart’s content in the air and dance their way into the ground. The mischievous wind meandered through these droplets, romancing with each one of them; dancing with one, lifting another drop to a height and then dropping it suddenly, making 5 drops of another drop. This game kept playing at various degrees and then…. BANG! Groan… I do this with every song I listen to. I get transported to a different world, stay there, watch the beauty, feel the beauty and get lost in that world. And slowly, 5 minutes by 5 minutes, song by song, my time is gone. So at the end of 22 years, being a hopeless romantic, imagining worlds and romance in unseen ways, I had lost viable options for a useful hobby. I wish the situation was not so hopeless. I thought things must change from now. I must do something useful. Inside me, I knew that nothing was going to happen. It was totally unstoppable. My heart was never going to listen. It wanted to be transported to different worlds. Probably going to these places was what I really wanted. I just looked down at myself. Definitely not, I thought to myself. I hate journeys. I wanted to be directly transported there. Like disapparating in Harry Potter.

Basically it was my fetish for grandeur achievements in the field of science and reasoning that made me feel being a mere imaginer and a romantic is not so “great”. All said and done it was something pleasurable to me alone and did not give anyone else any happiness in anyway. Seriously, what do you care if I went to the next galaxy in my mind and came back here? But of course you would care if I could paint that picture I saw in my mind and show it to you. Just like the art director of Sarvam managed to show in his video. (Leave Arya and Trisha, I am talking about all the green in the song) Having a half baked occupation of time is of no use to anyone. It is dangerous as well. Why? Well by listening to songs and watching movies I am opening all the channels to my heart and sending nothing out as my expression. Lot of images, words, voices everything that stimulate me settle with no place to send it out. And a weird combination of events may unleash all the experiences and may culminate in me taking the wrong decision and choosing the wrong people to bestow my love upon.

That being the magnitude of the problem, I still stand by what I began the blog post with. I am in dire need of an activity (called a hobby) that will let me express and share all the beauty that I witness and I am sure to explore all possible opportunities.

THE MYSTERYOF THE MONTHLY BLACK-OUT!

Any conscientious youngster who just set foot into the work world and started earning would like to think for a moment on what happened to the ‘hard-earned’ salary, 30 days after its receipt. The girl in our story let’s say Ms.R (for you see the girl is very shy to disclose her name) had similar intentions when she saw her salary account almost empty at the end of the month. Let’s just say this particular musing failed to make its mark upon her mind. In the next few days her mother called her up. The conversation went this way:

Mother: Hey I was wondering if you could book tickets for our train journey to Visakhapatnam.

Ms.R: (uh oh!) Uh? Train Tickets?... Um.. How much would that cost?

Mother: WHAT?! You exhausted all the money in the account??

Ms.R: (How on earth is she so quick on the uptake?) Not all the money.. Not yet!

Needless to say, what happened in the next hour over the telephone conversation was strong enough to make Ms.R sit in one place and focus. What happened last month? Why did she have to bear that excruciating conversation with her mother on her poor thriftiness with money? Among million other miserable thoughts she had at the moment, she was wondering whether she will ever grow up in her parents eyes. Will there be a day when they will think she can handle things in a responsible manner?! The thought scared her for some reason she could not comprehend. So she decided that this month she will monitor all the ‘money flow’ very strictly. Before she sprung into action, she tried to think of what happened to all the money last month. The whole month was blacked out in her memory. She could remember a lot of money in her purse being given away. The receivers’ face seemed to be a blur. She could not remember no matter how hard she tried to. This retrospection however, soon lost its intensity and she was back to her life. However, she carried a promise that she would be observant this time about money.

On another Monday evening when she came back home, she felt a void within her that seemed to sap all her energy. Her eyes refused to see, ears refused to hear, nose refused to breathe. She could feel an invisible hand holding her rib. She was surrounded by a sense of urgency. She had to do something soon. She had to live. She searched her house for something that might help her. She saw a lot of greens, reds and browns in the vegetable tray. COOK NOW?! ARE YOU KIDDING? IT’LL TAKE FOREVER!!

She threw open her doors and ran as fast as she could with all the life within her getting drained. She ran and ran finally found the place where her nose finally agreed to breathe. Then she found something in the air that made her glide as though there were no force that would offer her more happiness than that in the whole wide world. She found herself mouthing the words: “One… One…. One…. One Pani Puri!”

Ten minutes later after the void stopped troubling her, she groaned because now she could remember the receivers. There were atleast ten such pani puri walahs, sometimes the snacks seller in the movie theatres, sometimes this void would accept only strong chocolate truffle or only pizzas or pastas and nothing else for its abatement.

She crumbled down with the realisation of what she had become.

An insufferable FAST FOOD-AHOLIC!!

She remembered with a slow pain taking over her head, all the instances where her hand willingly gave away money to these vendors without even thinking how much it was giving away. She hit herself on the head. How can the hand think?! She should have thought carefully before giving away.

She thought helplessly as to how she was going to stop this the following month. The mind seemed to go round and round, like a dog trying to catch its tail but seemed to find no solution. She wasn’t sure whether she could imagine a life without pani puris, chocolate truffles, rich icecreams, pizzas and pastas. After this blunt realisation, her mind went back on its normal routine.

The next day, it was 4 30 PM. She was back from the plant and a familiar hand caught hold of her rib and her trembling hands caught hold of her purse. She groaned..... This was going to be a tough month...

Since the author has unfound experience in this addiction, she recommends ‘Mother-cooked-food’ as medicine. To others who have a spouse close by, spouse-cooked-food is also a close medicine though it may not be as reliable as the former medicine.

RESPONSIBILITY!

I know! I am a pathetic blogger. Blogs are supposed to be short and sweet and frequent. More than a one year gap in each blog posts does not qualify as even decent. I hope to blog more frequently from now on. However, since blogging is a way of expression shortening it down is not my cup of tea as of now. :)

This chain of thoughts started on my 3rd day of work at my company. As of then, I never had even the faintest notion that I could be responsible in anyway. But then, a gallup online strengths finder test said my first strength was RESPONSIBILITY! Seriously, I didn't think any questionnaire however detailed it maybe could predict a human being so well. Sure enough, here I am 3 months after joining in the company, no sense of responsibility professionally and personally. :P

However, kudos to my company, I have learnt so much about how irresponsible people can be. The corporate picture of the company was rosy and still continues to be rosy. Clean floors, excellent interior designing, excellent cafeteria practices, dustbins everywhere, neat washrooms, the list goes on... Then I came to the Plant where the manufacturing goes on, the atmosphere is as un-international as possible. I agree the plant is in the process of construction of a good interior design but the looks of it is not what I am going to talk about.

When I was a kid no matter what I learnt well, I learnt one thing. If a place is not my house, then it is somebody else's and it should be maintained with the same dignity. It was a painful lesson that I learnt when I was scratching with pencil on the house walls and my mother taught me the lesson with all the thrashing :D In our house, if we drink cofffee in a paper cup then we walk till the dustbina nd throw it there. In our house if mother gives us something to eat in paper plate we crush it nicely and throw it in the dustbin. In our house, we replace the doormat if it is too contaminated with outside dirt. However, in the plant apparently no one has an in-house attitude. Nobody has a sense of responsibility even towards the mess they created.

Every morning I come to the learning center to find the chairs kept astray. Not arranged in the positions they were kept. The paper plates with food and half filled coffee cups lying around. Thanks but I don't eat or drink leftovers!!
Even in college and even here, when I see such insensitive acts, I feel like going and littering the homes of the concerned parties. How much time does it take to walk till the dustbin and put it in there?!
Then once when it was raining outside, I wiped my leg in the doormat and walked in and my colleague walked in without doing so. I left more footprint trails than she did. So much for being concerned about keeping the hall clean!! I assume doormats also come in the foray of projects and viable payback periods!!
I am not highlighting these as a defect in my company. I heard from my friends that the situation is the same in most plants. My question is why do these companies go for an outwardly portrayal of responsibility in the corporate world while it is actually not so in the plants. Either make that dirty or make this neat.
Ultimately, I may not be the one who is putting those paper plates in the dustbin ( though I do it sometimes!). It will be one of those workers. Why should they clean the mess we created? Imagine how much sensible work they could do when they were not arranging our chairs or throwing food residues in the dustbins!

In all my years of academics, I was never an excellent student. I was bordering on average. It was a thing that always pained me. But when I came to college and here at work when I see some superiors who must have proven themselves well in academics, behaving so irresponsibly it really gives me some sense of relief! I did miss on academic intricacies, but I learnt much more crucial lessons in life that are apparently difficult to learn.

My question to everyone who do not put mess in the dustbin is just this:
"How the hell did you pass UKG?? Did you copy??"

FESTEMBER 09

It starts today!! I am hoping it will be more fun than what I have had all these years.. :)
I'll fill you all up after it gets over :):)

ADDICTIONS

Every song has seven notes written over and over again. We find this whole generation hooked to it. We all have mobile phones & keep using it continually to the exclusion of everything else. In fact I have known of friends who simply looked at their mobile phones hoping it will give them solace somehow, as though it will suddenly utter words of comfort or transform itself and give us a hug. I have come to realise that these are much more subtle and difficult addictions to get over.. And so is writing and so is everything that lends pleasure to any of the 5 senses: the eyes, the ear, the nose, the tongue and the skin... And so I, who am an irrevokable addict to the calming feel-good breeze of bangalore, the love of seeing greenery all around me, the love of listening to music, the love of tasting good food, loving the kind tender feel the touchpad of my laptop has on me, the love of writing and expressing myself which leads to further train of thoughts sensually are all Vices I have to be beware of.
Beware of??? Its what I have been doing all my life... You would understand the gravity of my situation if you were as helplessly dependent on any one of these for your day to get along well.. If doing anything else depresses you and drives you to one of these activities...... Say sms-ing in your mobile, switching on the television as a resort to depression.. These are few everyday-life things that we as technocrats are used to but do not understand the grave danger the addiction to these things cause. They all just eat into us and our heads in ways that we cannot understand. It is a virus which does not exhibit any symptoms until the matter becomes very serious.

My father used to tell me a story of one angulimaala (in sanskrit or prakrit this means a person who wore a garland of fingers around him). This angulimaala was a bandit who lived in the forest. He lived by robbing people who entered the forest off whatever possessions they had and then brutally murdering them and then wearing their fingers around him as an honour for having done the heinous act. The Buddha being the fearless and all-embracing soul changes him through an exchange of intellectual dialogues which I have forgotten (forgive the ignorance and the memory failure). After Angulimaala becomes his disciple he comes to the village as all his other disciples and has to live just as they do: by begging for food from the villagers. The villagers livid with anger at his crimes and not ready to forgive him, threw stones at him when he came on his first round for begging. He was severely wounded. Then the Buddha who comes for consolation gathers that Angulimaala has been more injured at his heart than his body. Angulimaala breaks down to the Buddha as the heavy burden of Guilt descends down on him. He explains to the Buddha that he did not bother about how many more physical injuries he sustained but he could not bear the fact that he had committed such heinous crimes and he did not if he was worthy of forgivance at all. The Buddha assures him that much more heinous crimes could be forgiven and all that was required was surrender.

Whats the connection to this and my first paragraph must surely be what you are all wondering. The lesson I gathered from the above story is that crude and simple minds understand through simple words. A murderer who does not understand more than ten words can be brought to the right path by explanation through those ten words. But its difficult to get across to a so-called educated and intellectual mind which knows more than a million words. In other words, these subtle addictions that I talk of: glorification of the 5 senses in anyway is a worse addiction to get over than the murders. Because a thief knows he is wrong but connoisseurs of music who cannot live without listening to music think that they are not wrong. That they are doing the right thing by being addicted to music and even if the Buddha came and told them about it they would probably be very cynical about the advice. They would not heed to him immediately like Angulimaala did. Fancy the Buddha telling a college student proud of being hooked to sms-ing that it is wrong to be addicted so much to a sensual pleasure, he will definitely get a deaf ear. He will also get a few blows if he is lucky. As I hold it, it might take some superman stunts for the Buddha to get across to the present world. The situation is that none of us are looking for a master. We believe we are masters of our own lives. We seem to know where we are to lead ourselves. For example, I would not take one word from my friends to decide which direction I should take my life to (though I seek a lot of reassurances from their side). So whats the point of this excruciating blog?? My point is that we are all addicts in subtle ways we do not recognise. How to recognise if we are drawing the line appropriately?? Keep an alert look out for senses. If they like your present way of life too much then its better you learn to withdraw slowly lest you should become helplessly addicted. Thats what I am going to do.

Selfish

Face it! The world is full of it. Not even a soul who doesn't possess this vice. And I am not going to be a holy saint who preaches to people saying "My dearest children, we must not be selfish and kill each other". There is never a sentence in calvin and hobbes that is wrong and hobbes is right! "We are here to devour each other".

Now why does it require special mention? All of us are grown up enough to know we are not good people and we dont require a "Hi Everyone :):)"blog to tell us that. Lets rewind our lives back to the time when we were innocent children (yes even if you knew everything about life then you were still innocent!). Ask a child and it will tell you that it wants to work towards the environment, it wants to do good to the society etc., As a kid I too wanted to do good to the environment. But look at me now. I have become this painfully mediocre person who does not care about anything other than herself. A full day will pass and I would not get even ten seconds to think about what good I am to the society. Maybe I am wrong but at least in my friends circle I see people working hard everyday and achieving well, not to do good to the society or the environment but to themselves.

Yes thats how it is. The world has become a savage place. But if we have the slightest inclination to save our future generations then we would think about whether we should be so selfish after all.. Fossil fuel reserves will exhaust very soon, CO2 levels will increase to unprecedented levels. An appropriate evaluation is a summer in Bangalore. 4 years ago a summer in bangalore would be equivalent to a winter in trichy or chennai. Now, its only slightly better than a summer in chennai. This is what each of our selfishness put together and magnified does to our society. It can make a "pensioner's paradise", a "garbage dump".

In another year, I am going to graduate as a chemical engineer and all my friends will graduate as some engineer as well. But I dont know out of the 700 of us who are going to graduate how many of us will involve ourselves directly in the good of the environment. (hardly 2 or 3, and I am being very generous) And we are supposed to save mankind in another 20 years, during the prime of our lives.

I did not blog to say we all should drop all that we have at hand and work towards the environment but we can do little things that can save the community. We can segregate plastic waste. We can switch off an extra luxury light that we may be using. In future whatever work we do, maybe we can set aside a portion of our salary towards this cause. But something has to be done!!

Transcending all communication barriers!!

Three years of engineering in this place has taught me loads.

For example even if you get up at 8:15 you can reach on time to class at 8:30 but you have to sacrifice your breakfast. You can still finish ten experiments in your record note book if you start at 11:20 for a 1:30 lab but you have to sacrifice lunch. Its completely justified to while away all the remaining time.

Apart from all such trivial things there's one great lesson I learnt from the college. You should never evaluate a teacher based on his/her language.

Mrs.C is one of the best teachers we have in the department. A typical class of hers runs somewhat this way:
"How it is that that is you will do this way?? You should that is know what you are doingu.. ('u' is that typical tamilian 'u')" It never matters to us that she talks this way because she teaches mass transfer really well. "Partial Condensation will that is give more efficiency" It does not really matter that she said that in a not so perfect english. We still understood that partial condensation gives more efficiency. But Mr.A, nickname shushu by a mr.10 of my class :), has an additional problem. He has to breathe out and hiss like a snake in between every sentence. So a typical sentence in his class will sound like:
"The reaction.... ssss.. will reachesssss... (breath)... completionssss... (someone laughs) (so he goes to his place and hisses and than says) are you understanding or not?? now whats microfluid and macrofluid?? (thats a long sentence so one more breath and..) ...ssssss..."
But still I understood that he wanted to say that a reaction reaches completion.

Thats the most precious lesson that I ever learnt... That i can transcend all communication barriers now :) Which is why you definitely need to be a part of an institution like this :)