Musings

Ritu committed suicide…Oh my god, I can’t believe this!!! Why has she done this? Was she really this weak? But she seemed so confident & so lively…Ritu was one of my professional acquaintances, with whom I was interacting almost daily. From her external appearance, she seemed to be so confident, so enthusiastic, so optimistic…always in some bright & bold outfits, always speaking of her dreams & wishes to grow in life…always speaking of her party packed & shopping filled weekends…In fact sometimes, I used to be envious of her “happy” life. I was so wrong; it was all so showy & so pretentious!!! In her suicide note, she had written that she can’t cope-up with the challenges of life & she is tired of unfavorable circumstances in her life.
Last week, read about the suicide of model Kuljeet Randhawa also. Shocking again…Then about Nadira, who was also living alone for past 30 years…Sometimes back, Parveen Babi & before that Nafisa…The list is endless…
Well, frankly speaking was definitely shocked with all these celebrity deaths because of loneliness & depression however wasn’t affected too much, but the death of Ritu has left me pondering & thinking…I don’t know how many people like Ritu must be giving in to life these days, but such celebrity deaths definitely throw lights on the fact that increasing number of people are giving in to the pressures of life these days.

For past few days, even I am feeling sad & perhaps depressed (well, don’t know if its depression or what). Not happy with so many things in my life. I am aware of certain facets of my life, which can’t be changed at all. I also know that its better to adjust with the circumstances which can’t be changed but somehow not able to adjust & not able to come to terms with the reality or maybe reality is too hard to adjust.
Apart from personal life, professionally also things aren’t very smooth. So much unhealthy competition, so much trick games, so much manipulation & so much to fight!!! Sometimes, feel like giving up all the desire to achieve something in life & live a very peaceful & low profile life. Sincerely wish for just living for the moment & not worrying about tomorrow…But can’t help it.

Day in, day out we are so much bombarded with phrases like “Strategic Planning”, “Vision”, “Goal”, “Future Map”, “Competitive Strategy”, “Way Ahead”, “Right Positioning” etc. in our professional lives that we have simply forgotten the meaning of phrases like “living for the moment”, “be yourself”, “simple thinking” etc. in our personal lives. You simply can’t afford to live for the moment & not to think ahead. If you aren’t going to rack your brain & think strategically, then you will have to really face some tough difficulties as so many people are just eyeing on you to take your position away by any means. If you aren’t aggressive, then you can’t survive only, forget about growing ahead!!! If you aren’t super confident & extrovert, you simply can’t accept it in public as in today’s age there is no place for a normal introvert person. Its better to pretend to be confident & optimistic than to accept your real self. In personal life also, you need to have so many things not only to have a proper existence rather also to meet the expectations of your peers & family. You need to have a decent job & apart from basic necessities like decent accommodation & food, these days you need to have some inevitable gazettes & gizmos without which your life can’t function at all. The earning capacity has definitely got increased but so has got the expenses. The job scenario has definitely got changed, but so has got our expectation from jobs. The living style has definitely got more advanced but so has got the levels of stress. Depression, anxiety & stress are the buzzword these days and are mostly associated with the youth. It has become as common a disease as flu or cold.

Sometimes, I really wonder on the quality of our lives. Why are so many people giving in to the pressures of life? Is it because life has become very difficult or is it because our expectation from life has changed? Is it because we aren’t able to achieve desired things in our lives or is it because we want to achieve too many things too early in our lives?

Update on 14the Feb’06 (10:07p.m.): Please note that this blog is not about death of any particular celebrity rather its about common people like us.I have left a detail comment in comments section for those who have misunderstood it to be a blog on celebrity deaths. Ritu is not a fictitous character.She was one of my known friends whose suicide had left me shocked & made me ponder over our lives.

Does anyone remember the old ad – “Arey yeh PSPO nahi janta where everyone exclaims & looks so astonished & the guy who asks about PSPO looks so embarrassed & fool…Well, every time I go to a party, I remember that ad because of the exclamatory reactions which I have to face from the people. Last week also I went to a party & again faced the same problem. I was being offered drink & I very courteously told that I don’t drink & again the same exclamation – “AREY, YOU DON’T DRINK!!! WHAT, YOU DON”T BOOZE!!! COME ON YAAR, SO OUTDATED!!! YOU ARE LIVING IN GANDHI’S AGE!!!” These are few of the comments, which I generally come across. Every time, someone offers me a drink & every time, I have to listen to one of these or similar kind of sentences. I face similar reactions in almost every party I go & if it’s a corporate party, then toh you are completely tagged as archaic, antiquated, unprofessional & what not. Frankly speaking, I think I still get to listen to lesser comments as being a female, not drinking is somewhat acceptable in India but if you are a male & if you have gone to some parties especially corporate or professional parties and if you don’t drink then toh forget it. You will not only be tagged as antediluvian, unprofessional etc. rather people will start expressing doubts on your masculinity too & will pass comments like -“BE A MAN YAAR“. The worst is that those who drink will make sure to convince others for drinking by giving some illogical & out of the world reasons. O.K. you love boozing, then carry on, why do you convince others for considering such drinks as if its elixir of life kinda drink & why do you attach some kind of weird stigma to those who don’t prefer to drink? The worst is that I find many people giving in to the pressure of such peers & friends & start drinking as they think that if they will not booze then they will be considered conservative & unprofessional. Well, till date I am not aware of any study or research, which proves that boozing enhances your intelligence or professionalism. Also not heard of any report, which testifies that if a male doesn’t booze then that means there is some serious problems with his masculinity or any formal analysis which concludes that if a man doesn’t drink then he is not a man enough. Still so many people find it to be such an important code of conduct for parties.
Well, I seriously wonder if boozing has really got some connection with being modern, forward, progressive & professional? Is it really such an “in thing” which can’t be avoided at all??? Why can’t those who don’t prefer to drink accept it openly? Why do people especially males need to give some lame excuses for not drinking? I don’t want to sound like a wisdom tree but believe me, I am not aware of any of the benefits of boozing, but yes, I am definitely aware of the tremendous hazards & terrible aftermaths of boozing…

Finished your graduation??? Don’t know what to do? Don’t want to really study but still want to make money? You aren’t having any good academic record or interest in any subject but then too you want to have an entry & justify your existence in the corporate world…Well, very simple…get admission to any B School existing in the country. Nope, I am not speaking of IIMs or any other top 10 B school. Of course getting admitted to such top B schools is difficult. But don’t worry, there are easier options too…like getting admitted to B schools offering so-called “autonomous certification”, “AICTE approved certification”, “foreign degree”, “world class education” etc. All these B schools claim to be “A” category business schools in their mass media advertising. By the way claiming to be category “A” business school is very easy these days. Thanks to the n numbers of survey results being published by different magazines every alternate month. Except for IIMs & a few other known good business schools, all other surveys show drastically different results for different B schools. On top of that these business schools also show some weird benefits in their advertisements, e.g., large campus with swimming pool/gym, centrally air conditioned, excellent canteen etc. Now how on this earth a swimming pool is related to a management degree, god alone knows!!! Also what is the point of advertising about their air-conditioned campus when the students once out of such colleges will have to do direct selling of products like credit cards, home loans etc. in scorching sun. Similarly I am not able to understand the connection between excellent canteen & managerial skills. Perhaps such colleges want to satisfy the taste buds of their students by offering such food as the management of such colleges must be aware that once passed out, the students will have real difficult time to even have a normal meal in any restaurant by their meager salary. The best out of all these tactics is to write “excellent placement record”. Now on what parameters, they qualify their placement record as “excellent” is still ambiguous to me. How do they get the courage to prefix the term “excellent” before their placement record is quite wooly for me!!! The mockery is that all these “B” “B schools” (B category B Schools) charge some huge fees because of these so-called benefits offered by them & students keep on paying such abruptly high fees in hope of getting some great job with “lucrative” pay-package.

Well, frankly speaking, even I haven’t done my MBA from any of the IIMs or so. But I have done my MBA from a reasonably good institute & if I do the cost benefit analysis (fees vs. my salary), I am not having much grievances as being a university degree, my institute has charged us a very low fees. Well, I am working in a reputed organization & supposedly handling a good portfolio but if I think of the nature of job, to be very honest for initial one full year of my job, I never did any managerial or so-called “strategic” work. I did some stupid operational level & moron work only which was nowhere related to any of the papers studied in MBA. After doing moron job for almost a year & half and because of my good academic track record, finally I got the so-called “managerial role” which was still way beyond those marketing fundas studied by us in our classrooms. Sometimes, I really think as to what does MBA course teach us because of which it has become such a craze & a basic qualification for getting a job? Believe me friends, I seriously think it only teaches us how to exceed your confidence more than your competence!!!

I know that with the mushrooming growth of B Schools, it is very easy now to become a management graduate but what is happening after that? Management graduate even after paying huge fees in lakhs & lakhs to these “B” “B Schools” are doing the job of sales executives & getting a salary as good as a normal graduate gets.Few years back, same happened with Engineering & Medical courses. These degrees were craze in earlier days but because of these hundreds of private colleges in every city & donation seats in almost every college, everyone with no knowledge & intelligence started to become an engineer or doctor. The value of an engineer or doctor got so diminished that they started to work at the lowest salary possible. I think the same is going to happen with MBA also. Its high time now that the students should understand the difference between a “B School” and a “B” “B School”. Its of no use to waste so much of money in such schools in hope of getting some excellent job with some great package. In fact the Govt. should not give affiliation to any such “B Schools” which are just going to mislead the students by showing them rosy pictures of their career. Such schools are not “B Schools” at all, rather they are “C Schools” i.e., “Cheater Schools”.

I was standing in a mob & suddenly I was pushed with a great force by the mob. Oh my god, I was just jammed between so many people. Everyone was just pushing or pulling each other. I tried to turn back & come out of the rushing horde, but it was simply impossible…Just with the push & pulls of so many hands and shoulders, I moved from one point to another & finally entered the gloomy conduit… & after that I can’t explain my exact state in words… , sooooo many people at that cramped place. It looked as if the whole city had got confined to that place. Females were just screeching & screaming at each other. They were just trying to save themselves from falling out of the channel. In order to make their way out, they were just pulling hair, duppattas or whatever they could catch hold of. After observing the whole fiasco, I desperately wanted to come out of the place but it was not at all possible. I felt that the whole conduit is moving at a very slow pace with thousands & thousands of voices floating around me. I was hardly able to stand straight over there.
Finally after sometimeI found a few people trying to move out & I also followed them. I experienced a sudden jolt & then oh lord …… everyone was pushing me, all of them wanted to come out. Some other lady’s duppatta got stuck around my neck & I was actually feeling suffocated & it was so difficult to breathe. I screamed with tears in my eyes. For a fraction of second I wasn’t able to move ahead & then suddenly because of pressure from back I fell down. I was half in that conduit & half on ground, shouting & crying but to no use. People just passed over on my hands & shoulders without thinking even once that they are actually running on a human body. My hands got badly hurt & I started shaking because of pain…but till then I never got the chance to get up from the ground. Then I saw a kid on the ground just beside me who had also fallen because of the mad crowd & he was actually bleeding from mouth. But noone was bothered & the mother of the kid was just crying & trying to pick up her child from the ground. I somehow managed to get up from the ground & I was shaking badly…
Nope, I was neither held in some riot nor at some place which caught fire suddenly. It wasn’t either any natural disaster or bomb blast. I faced this havoc while traveling in a central line local train in Mumbai. Day before yesterday, I just thought of going to Siddhi Vinayak temple & since I wanted to reach fast, so decided to take a train. Also I thought that since it wasn’t peak office hours, so the trains would be relatively emptier. But I was totally wrong. I had traveled by local trains earlier also but my this journey was the worst journey of my life. After somehow coming down at Dadar, I came to know that it was some “Ambedkar Festival” that day because of which the whole city was going towards that side. But the rush, the madness can’t be put in words. Noone was caring about what was happening to others, everyone was just rushing ahead.
I am anyways quite skeptical about traveling by local train & after that day’s incident, I have almost sworn in that I will never take a local train even if I will have to walk for kilometers. But I really feel sad about those who can’t avoid local trains because of their location of job or other reasons. They all lead such a tough & sore life over here. Riding a local train in Mumbai during peak office hours is almost like winning a battle. Not only local train, everything over here, be it finding accommodation or conveyance or any such thing is getting difficult day by day. So, many people are migrating to Mumbai because of job & career but I really wonder if the infrastructure over here is strong enough to support so many people???

“It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts. ~K.T. Jong”.

Last night, while lying on the bed for quite some time, I suddenly realized that I was speaking to myself. The thoughts which came to my mind suddenly made me realize that its long since I have thought anything about myself. I had been visiting others so frequently but its long since I had visited myself. The change in my existence, the change in my personality, the change in my nature…..oh my god, so many things have changed in me & I never realized it with the passing time. In this daily race between priorities of home, career & family I never thought of my own priorities. In fact, few days back, I was having some free time & that time I used to feel really lonely. I used to feel bad about my forlornness & tried to keep myself busy with some or other activities. I never tried to sit peacefully & think about myself. But after my yesterday’s encounter with solitude, I realized that I never wanted to be alone as I was running away from myself. I was missing the absence of others, as I wasn’t enjoying the presence of my own self. My rendezvous with solitude made me realize that I wasn’t considering my existence worthy enough to think about it. My solitude gave me the time to introspect & think about myself. It gave me the solutions to my so many unresolved problems. Well more surprising was that it wasn’t anyone else who gave me these solutions, it was me only who found out these solutions. It was me only who made me realize my inner strengths which I used to have. I remembered my struggle, my patience, my determination, my courage, my ambition & my dreams. I think somewhere in the daily rush of life, unhealthy competition & demanding relationships, I had lost myself. I had lost my inner drive & vivacity. Thanks to my solitude, I found these again. Earlier I had read a few things about solitude, but I realized the importance of it yesterday. I realized that you can only feel unhappy by your loneliness if you don’t enjoy your own company. I realized that its important to visit your own self once in a while to recognize your own strengths. I realized that if you are actually lost & you don’t know the way ahead in your life, then you should just sit quietly & think peacefully for sometime and believe me, you will find some or other way out. I realized that the best & most peaceful moment of your day is when you are actually not speaking to anyone else but to yourself, your ears are not listening to anything else but to yourself & your eyes are not looking at anything else but at yourself.

She was again bidding farewell to me with wet eyes & tight lips. The same inevitable question on her face – “when will you come again & for how many days”? Feeling really heavy since I have rejoined work after Diwali break. I don’t know why but this time I can’t forget the melancholic face of my mother, her sealed lips, her weak stature & her tearful eyes, which were having millions of unanswered questions. Maybe the realization of the fact that mom is getting old day by is impressing upon me. Maybe its sinking in me now that she will not be there with me forever. Maybe its difficult to accept that now I will never be able to spend my life at my home in the same carefree way as I used to do as a kid.
Since, the day I have started to work, I think I have hardly spent a few days at my home with my family because of the stringent leave policy of my company. Earlier it used to be a week’s long trip to my home town twice a year but after getting married, those very short holiday trips got further subdivided between my in-laws place & my mom’s place with naturally more number of days to be spent at in-laws place as it is expected from a girl to give the first priority to husband’s family after marriage. To be very precise, I think I have spent total 5 days at my home in past 14 months.
Sometimes, I wonder on all those who are like me, I mean those who have left their hometowns for making a career at metros or abroad. Are they all happy with their job & money? Are our jobs worth the love & relationships, which we have left behind? Can our money ever give us the same satisfaction, love & happiness, which we used to have alongwith our parents? Aren’t we selfish kids who have left our parents behind at the time when they need us the most?
Well, I know that our parents sacrifice a lot for our good upbringing & education & so its very important for us to have a good career & earn money. Even if I know the hard realities of life & the importance of money & career, then too, I am feeling restless. I am feeling jittery to realize that with the passage of time, mom is getting older & after some years she will not be there. Despite, this inevitable realization, I know that I will be able to spend only those 5 to 6 days with her every year because of job and marriage. My rational brain says that I need to pursue my job & career but my emotional side wants to leave this job, career & everything and return back home and be the same little girl who used to find the world in her mother’s arms………

Maa, why don’t festivals seem to be festivals without all of you? Dusshera has come, but not even a single day of Navratri looked like an occasion of Puja. Something is missing Maa……, something which I can’t explain. Not that people aren’t celebrating here, but all I can see here is glamorous Dandiya or Garba nights wherein some DJ is playing music & people are dancing. We do go out for festive feasts outside but nowhere I can find the same satisfaction which we used to have when you used to make those festival special dishes for us. Even the simple kheer made by you was better than these exotic festival special sweet dishes served by grand restaurants. Yes, we have taken new clothes but I haven’t found the same excitement at all which we used to have as kids for getting new clothes especially on festivals. You know why have we bought these dresses especially? Its because all these Garba & Dandiya nights have got dress codes wherein you are supposed to wear only such types of clothes. You know what, here people don’t gather themselves in the evenings to have fun & enjoy the Navratri, rather everyone is supposed to pay money to go to these Dandiya & Garba nights.
Maa, Diwali is also going to come soon. I know you must be busy arranging for whitewashing of our house as you still believe that Goddess Laxmi should come in clean & new house. I still remember those days when you used to make us clean our rooms during Diwali vacations. Not that we aren’t going to celebrate Diwali, but not by decorating our house & worshipping Ganesh & Laxmi, rather by enjoying the vacation at some CHILLING place. Yes, instead of welcoming Ganesh & Laxmi at their houses, people lock their houses here & go out for vacations as this is the only time when you get a leave of 3 to 4 days from office. With the attractive tour packages offered by travel agents & Diwali special nights arranged by hotels, its an ideal time for people to go out on holidays.
I still get nostalgic when I remember those home made sweets which you used to make for us, those crackers which we used to play in the colony & those gharondas which I used to make with Bhai & the excitement with which we used to decorate the same. I wonder if ever my kids will experience such sweet things & more than that, will they like such things at all???
Sometimes, I really wonder on the extent of commercialization of our traditional festivals. I really wonder if these kids who are enjoying these Dandiya nights ever know the reason of celebrating Navratri & Dusshera? What does Vijaya Dashmi mean? Do they know the reason of celebrating Diwali? Do they understand the meaning of customs like making Gharondas or welcoming Ganesh-Laxmi? Are these festivals just meant for those glamorous dance nights & lavish holidays at alluring locations?
Really miss, the festivals celebrated with all of you Maa…………

Is Optimism Difficult?
“Every cloud has a silver lining”, “Make a game of finding something positive in every situation” & “In the middle of every difficulty lies some opportunity”……………these are some of the quotes with which we all have grown up since our childhood. We all know that we should be optimistic & we should never lose hope. But has anyone considered the extent of audacity one requires for being optimistic in some really hopeless situation!!! How can one be optimistic when one knows that things aren’t going to improve? How can one have the sanguinity to find some opportunity in the middle of some difficulty when one is aware of the negative aftermath of the situation? What about those, who have always been optimistic but haven’t seen the end to their darkness? What about those, who try to be optimistic but the austere reality of the situation pull them down?
Does everything happen for good? Can one be always OPTIMISTIC? Does OPTIMISM really yield positive outcome? Does OPTIMISM really lead to happiness & success? Is being OPTIMISTIC difficult?