I believe in love- By Don Williams

I don’t believe in superstars, organic food and foreign cars
I don’t believe the price of gold, the certainty of growing old
That right is right and left is wrong
That north and south can’t get along
That east is east and west is west, and being first is always best

But I believe in love
I believe in babies
I believe in Mom and Dad
And I believe in you

I don’t believe that heaven waits for only those who congregate
I like to think of God as love, He’s down below, He’s up above
He’s watching people everywhere, he knows who does and doesn’t care
And I’m an ordinary man, sometimes I wonder who I am

But I believe in love
I believe in music
I believe in magic
And I believe in you

Well I know in all my certainty
What’s goin’ on with you and me
Is a good thing
Its true
I believe in you

I don’t believe virginity is as common as it used to be
In working days and sleeping nights,
that black is black and white is white
That Superman and Robin Hood are still alive in Hollywood
That gasoline’s in short supply, the rising cost of getting by

But I believe in love
I believe in old folks
I believe in children
And I believe in you

:D Thank You

Later

Thank You god for the last year. Thank You for everything. Hope good things are in store. Hope I get to learn a lot from the kindness and goodness and imbibe some of them. Thanks for the lovely times and the togetherness. Thank You also for the absence (or I would never know the silkiness of the voice). Thank You for the distant touch. And thank You also for the more familiar caress. (They both are most coveted). Thank You for helping me open up a little bit and unravel to opportunities. Thank You for the first few times. And thank god also, they sped past me or I would never get to see the last few ones (And they were brilliant too).
I thank you for the privilege of sight and smell and touch and taste and sound. For how they're magic in tandem. But more importantly sight of apples and smell of perfumed hair and clothes and touch of sweet moles and the sound of drunken voices losing clarity of speech or not-so-drunken voices articulating in the same rhythm every time and the taste of food most delicious.
I hope life presents many an occasion to celebrate and party. To discover and explore more wonderful things or to keep those old wonderful things, wonderful eternally. But even if that were not to happen, O God, I belong here, and here only :)

bring some sleep to me!

it's close to quarter to seven in the morning, too early for me. But i've been up for close to an hour and half. And why I am writing is a> I need to sleep very badly but i dont get sleep. I need to sleep very badly so that my day goes on smoothly, without my head swaying in the class and other places, in sleep.
b> I did some very funny and stupid things in the last some time.
c> And perhaps, these things are worth a mention.

But believe me. I didn't want to put you through this. But it's the lack of sleep that making me do this.

Anyhow, i got up to pee with my bladder almost full. Then as I was entering my room, the darkness and the silence of the campus beckoned to me. I thought it might be interesting to explore the campus this late in the night or early in the morning. There were some nice strains coming from some rooms- dave bruebeck from one. There were some interesting colored lights in some rooms- yellow, orange and blue-ones that make you sleep. In the community room, one lone guy was playing pool all by himself. There were insects and toads making that quintessential night-noise. Watchmen spooking me out with the whistles and wrapped-attire. But it was beautiful. The campus looks pretty even in the night. I might miss this in a couple of months. But i'm not sure.
I know how this works with me. Happinesses, sadnesses, disappointments, nostalgia, euphoria don't sink in at the time of particular events causing them. And by the time they sink in, they just become too belated for me to feel them.

Anyhow, I manage to surprise myself every now and then. Another stupid thing I did for which I am extremely angry with myself is that I left a pretty shirt in the mall that I was trying some new shirts in. This is because I put on my sweatshirt straight, without realizing that Id forgotten to put something on in the middle. I realized this only when I came back, put my sweatshirt off did I realize that. I've searched it inside the sweatshirt. But I can't find it.
I just pity my absent-mindedness so much.

Oh by the way, i would also like to take this opportunity to write about some other interludes in this otherwise busy and unenjoyable semester.

Zoo has come over from Bombay. She stayed with me yesterday. We chilled and chilled, talking about a whole lot of things. But mostly about family. I think, now we might not be the children our parents would've loved to have. I mean, we're still nice and sober and sociable, but we've moved on a different direction from the ideal ones. Zoo and I don't belong here or there. But it's our background. But it's just the background, that is why it's called that.
We have gol-gappas every now and then. We also saw, Marley and Me yesterday. The whole film is like one happy ending, except the ending, which is a little sad. Maybe, just maybe, I will want a nice lab when I grow up.
We'll meet again tomorrow for a bit. We might go to Chocolate Room again to have some bailey shots that could uplift all and sundry. I don't want her to go. But she has work.

Anyhow, Mink paid me a visit last week and I was loving it. We chilled and chilled. And we did a lot of other things also. Ate lots of italian and mess food. Kept sneaking him in and out. Made him watch some films like Billu and Dev D. In the latter, he kept rubbing his hands and warming his eyes to them and asking if I could see it properly. I think the colours of the film are to be blamed. Besides I slept in the film, also because of how sparsely I had slept. We fussed over things and in the middle, I broke-down like a vase- like the vase, who is otherwise pretty sleepy.
I missed it, the last week. But I've been a little busy too, to miss it too much.

I saw some other films such as Mirch Masala. I love the film, i love the women, both the rugged, swarthy village women and the more sophisticated ones. I liked the bitchy and the kind ones. But the kind ones were always in love. In fact, someone who's shown in love in a film, is also almost always shown to be generous, which might be. One does become one-notch more generous, kind, sympathetic and humane, in love. (or whatever)

Then we played Tennis. One day was just fantastic and in PK's words, we continued to trade blows one after the other. I would play well and she would up her skill and vice versa. But I can talk on the phone when I'm playing and she can't. That's because I play single-handedly and she double.

I have been up for close to two hours. And I really want to sleep. I was hoping this would induce me to sleep. But sunlight has already advanced the day in my room. I might go and watch Oscars then and see how people dress, but I just don't care enough I think.

In anticipation of more gumption, activeness, work, fun and happiness.

Later

places and times to live in again and again!

the last one week has been a phase of 'yeses' and 'noes' and 'heres' and 'theres' and ofcourse lots of good things, places and people.
the hopes and disappointments that i was talking about in the last post, finally gave way to one beautiful journey that was really one i'd like to live again. Not that I anyway forget any of my journeys, but i think there are very few that i think about for a long time afterward. It was one of it's kind because it encompassed a lot of different experiences, slow time and fast time, slow mind and fast mind, opulence and roughing up (and both to death), adventure, trial, numbness of mind and body, speedracing of mind and body and many more.

I'm sorry for such a horrible and vague description, but as I think and write about it, these are the only expressions that come to my mind. Maybe, just maybe, I can try to explain them, but the point is my language (i mean superlatives) is not rich enough to describe a lot of things. I'll attempt nevertheless.

Ofcourse, it's not an itinerary so I will again not start with where we started. But things which are top of my mind. It all began with a BIG lie. I don't usually lie, so this was different. One led to another and yet another. And I realized if I can't catch up with my own lies, I start fretting and fumbling.

So I was supposed to go somewhere else, and I landed somewhere else. Anyhow, where I landed was this place of enormous beauty, depth, fecundity and untouched by pollutions of the plains. Our resort, the warm place was perched on top of a mountain, led by roads which would not accommodate many vehicles horizontally. Our room afforded us the most brilliant view of green, brown, cement and snow occasionally. I was only wondering about the little cute-eyed, cheek-tanned little kids who inhabited those little silos. The place was cold, but unlike a lot of cold and damp places, there was warmth in the room.

We hiked and walked uphill and then downhill, all of which was fun. Sometimes, we would take the short-cuts to the next step on the mountain, climbing the rocky terrains, circumventing the winding roads.

We wassailed in the warmth of embraces of occasional smokes and bon fires of the mountains and 'magic moments'. Got a little laughy-daughy and a little dotty-shotty. It was great fun, watching people in the drunk state.

Slept well, very well, waking up in the middle of the night, amid the little tiny twinkling bulbs of civilization that paint the landscape in the night to talk a little bit of comforts and last-nights and next-mornings.

Ate well, very well. We ate in the quaintest, little 'gallas', eating whatever that was available. But mostly I junked it and junked it by eating 'American Onions' and 'Spanish Tomatoes'. Thanks to my company. They made sure these were abundant. We dreaded sick, puky, uneasy feelings amongst us and therefore carried medicines all along.

We also went to a few places that we disappointed us. But what the hell. Disappointments are necessary. One would never know otherwise that there were other people in the world, who could occupy the hot springs and geysers that you thought you once owned. One would also never come to know the real value of beautiful living on the hills.

Anyhow, it all came to an end, like i knew it would. There was some tiredness, sure and some pain in the coldest sleeper class I've known. But like I say, one has to just look around a little bit to find warmth. There was some sadness too, that a lot of good and fun had just come to an end. But in the hope of many others to come, we'll wait.

Later

And determination and dashing hopes and the letdown got the better of me!

It took a whole lot of purpose, some disappointment and it's abatement to come back to this link and start writing. Truth be told, I was dilly-dallying a lot about writing lately. Not because I had nothing to write, but because I had too much of it and I didn't know where to start.

I can draw tens of analogies. It's like a pending phone-call that you have to make for a long time, and with time the task becomes more and more of a task. So when you're talking to a long-lost friend, the call is that much briefer as against someone with whom you've talked everyday for very long but you still don't stop abruptly to fill silences with coughs or 'one-second's'.

It was like an infinite abyss, only it was a little more finite than that. It's like preparing for CAT, when the tomes and material from the class would just keep piling on and that day, when I had to start studying, pick one of those papers up would be pushed. It's AVOIDANCE. I do get it, it's one of those stupid mental things, like a disease. I avoid checking my mail because it's inundated. I fear looking at the thick heap of newspapers that remain unread. Similarly I avoided writing and avoided it like plague.

But anyhow, in my day-dream I was slated to visit this beautiful, pure and unused peak-station called Narkanda near Simla about which I was really kicked. We were going to take trains, buses, cycles, walks, toy-trains and the works to reach. But then, something came along and that shattered like a pack of cards tumbling down with a slight sigh.

Then in another dream, I was going to Rishikesh to white-water raft. Admitted that I don't enjoy plain as much as height and water as much as earth and beaches as much as apple orchards and rafting as much as cycling, but again, Rishikesh nahin kiya to kya kiya. Anyway, things happen in their own time sometime. Maybe, this dream was much better timed than the last one, or maybe I must be faced with hiccups. Maybe hiccups are good. They take you out of reverie.

That is what this last week has been. A bally reverie. I am relieved and relieved like it's a dream. I have just chilled all of last week. But even in the past when I have chilled, I have not really done that. I mean, it's not this unadulterated chillness. My mind is usually on a pending assignment or pending exams or the dissertation or placements.

But now that I am placed as a 'Research Executive' (no idea, what kind of a qualitative researcher I will be, but I will certainly try to be my best and try to learn as much as I can), it's certainly bliss. Anyhow placements also are a true test of character. They help you know so much more about yourself than you thought you did. One has to constantly make trade-offs, especially in trying times like these. There's patience on the one hand, where you wait your time for the right company to come and then hope it would take you and then there's a sense of urgency where you sit for all companies, letting companies say 'yes' or 'no' to you.

People go through so many emotions during placements. There's euphoria and disappointment and indifference and relief and despondence. One might buckle under pressure or carry on.
I think they are like auctions. Pressure builds up and builds up and it's the trailing positions that become more sought after.

I hope I start my career with energy, enthusiasm and a spirit to learn. I hope it's a good fit for my journey and I in return am a good fit for the company. I also know for sure that everyone will be placed, but it leaves them stranded in a sense. Like the way my mind is divested, theirs probably is invested in many thoughts.

People have changed their facebook and gtalk status messages. Nerdy for example said 'Energy' because she's going into an energy company, which will pay her truckloads. There are others who have kept 'Happy to Help's' and 'Desh Ki Dhadkan's' also.

The good thing has been that I;ve done a lot of new things. I went on a looong bike ride to a beautiful and serene bird sanctuary called Thol with a friend. I also let some of my bi-sexual tendencies emerge. I tried to learn the bike. I tried to fly kites and launch them. I set some full ones to become one with air. Also, it was a good time to be taken with or stricken by love or hatred. There's enough time to fight and discuss about natures. Even if you're thinking about not-so-productive things, it's just filling some empty space.

There's more time to dream a new dream every day. And certainly there's more time to play more and improve. There's more time to sit back and introspect. There's more time to mourn. And there's ofcourse time to bounce back.

Later

p.s- i just hope very badly that it's not read by some people, I wouldn't wish read it.

long time again!

it's been such a long time that i may as well have forgotten how to write. i'll try nevertheless. i'm back at home for starters and i'm doing the self-same things i do here, ever so regularly. sleeping till slightly late, having the long-drawn conversations with 'the parents', but ablutions and bathing every day but i'm not complaining so much because i do them quite unwittingly.

Before I tell about the last 10 days or something, i will tell that as of now, i'm loving tennis. yesterday also, after dinner, despite mum's repeated no-no-no's me and debo went and played tennis in the club. But it was a mud court against cement, which gives better bounce to the ball, i think. But I also changed my racquet, so it took me a while to get used to that also. But it was very very satisfying. Debo like always was acting smart (The other day, he told me that even if he's at his ugliest best, mum n dad would've been prouder having him than I). He played really well. I wonder if it is his talent or my lack of it that makes him emerge better. Anyhow, the thing with him is that, he plays a lot of sports and if that's the threshold of a decent sports-man, he's just that much shorter in all of them, thereby not making it to any sport swimmingly.
But ya, this other couple of players came along and asked us if we wanted to play doubles with them and we acquiesced obviously. For the first time I played a match, and it was revealing I tell you.

Anyhow, that's that about tennis. Today's i'm leaving for rajasthan all over again. This time with my family and the extended one. I hope to have lottttss of fun, and Zoo will be missed :D If however, anyone wants anything from Jaipur, let know. It's going to be a bit of an unorganized and fun trip i feel because our tickets are not confirmed and we're giving it a shot anyway. This will be a test for mumma's patience. She's cribbed ample about it anyway. But she's usually like that when we're leaving for some place. She will keep working and working and then she will keep complaining about our not doing anything. She delegates also very badly. Like I peel potatoes while she cooks them. Like she's simon and i'm garfunkel :( It's just that I've heard simon sing alone and not garfunkel and also i think i heard it in a film. Or might it be because my dad perhaps prompted my mum to buy some Satyam shares, which obviously she's vastly disgusted about, what with the fiasco Ramalinga Raju has put his company in. Why Why I ask did he have to do this to Satyam. Like corporate really needed this because otherwise it was shining and thriving right??

Anyway, all of last week, we worked on Account Planning workshop with O & M on Tata Sky. Such a horrible account I must say. How will people feel about it if it's gone?? Not badly sure. It's not like it's a nail/mole that you'd hate to part with. Anyhow, this business of positioning is very cryptic. I wonder, if people must feel close to brands had it not been for marketing! Anyhow, working with disparate individuals, who may have wished to swap groups if that were possible was worth undergoing. It just told reams about how it can be sooo difficult to work in teams even in real organizations. Even so, in all the psychometric tests that we're asked to take for companies, working in teams is an imperative they invariable test. I dont know if I must answer correctly or correctly. Because I perform perhaps better when I'm alone but I'm still a team player and maybe it's the former that they'd deem more appropriate to recruit.

Then again, there are other things. Year's coming to an end. A new one is going to begin. My resolution is to start playing tennis matches :D Maybe it's time for me to start thinking about atp, no no not wta yet :d I will read more like always. I mean, like I always resolve. And Im going to be placed, yes I'd better be placed. And if that happens, I resolve to work very hard.

Then I'm extremely glad that this last leap year happened or I would've missed a lot. If I dont write this year, I'll write next year ofcourse but i'd probably toggle back and think about the last year and write about it maybe. (In any case, making public promises makes you commit a little more to the cause maybe.)

But this or that, I'm thankful for the good things and extremely grateful for all the lovely things and peoples and times and songs and dances and hang-overs and meditations and promises and their fulfilments. I'm hopeful that the not-so-lovely ones can teach me a lesson. I'm indeed glad for the journey with both this and that :)

Later

of some more of the same things!

it's been a long time since I wrote. I think i'm forgetting how to write but that can't be because there is no such thing, that would be like forgetting to think and experience and see and observe and all of that.
anyway this past week has been good fun. i've had different kind of classes in modelling and analytics and in some market research.
there was a weekend, which I spent outside of the campus with the Kazirangan school friend and his friend, both of whom kept me interesting company over the weekend. In my mind, I would think about a lot of things that they would say and do and I thought some of them were very amusing. But I got to eat some nice Gujju and sweet food, especially made at home. I got to see how Gujarati sounds properly. I mean after having spent a lot of time in Ahmedabad also, there is little exposure we've had to Gujarati culture.
Anyhow, I saw Transporter 3, which was stylish and good-looking and really really fancy. I mean the violence also seemed less painful maybe. And driving and hitting suddenly delight me I think. I also saw Dil Kabaddi and I don't know whether to like it or dislike it. I mean there were times in the film when I liked it a lot and there were others when I hated it. Overall I think the sex comedy was good fun, one could laugh at it, laugh with it and scorn at it. Plural reactions and feelings it evoked in a matter of 2 hours. But I love the actors. There is no Abhishekness or Priyankaness in them. They are just brutally next-door and pretty in that sense. I mean I like it when I see people repeat clothes in films, keep their hair slightly tousled and not ironed all the time. I like it when lips look black, eyes look less kohly and when some pimples and some wrinkles and some fat show. I think that's very sexy.

Anyway, so we had a big report and presentation to make, which were both done at the nick of time. We worked in a fairly haphazard way with other group members. It was slipshoddy and I think more than anything else, it turned out to be a collection of disconnected thoughts thus leading to no cohesiveness. But these days that's how working on assignments with group members has become. Not like work, where more often than not we would find seniors and juniors who will make us go round their little fingers and who will go round our little fingers, respectively, everyone in college is at the same level. So group exercises have lately been split into many individual parts, where only the person who does that small bit becomes responsible for that part. Eventually, who would be responsible for the final part also becomes a matter of great concern and contention. Infact, work suffers immensely because no one feels it's their baby. Anyway, I like brainstorming and I like debating over issues, discussing things over and all that, but I don't think it happens anymore. Not in token, unreal assignments in college.

Anyway, I've dabbled with many sports lately. I was on tennis, but since PK has gone, I've played Badminton, in which I continue to s**k. I've also played table-tennis in which I continue to lose track of the ball. But anyhow, one day suddenly I think, I will show phenomenal improvement when everyone will look at my game with wonder and awe and admiration. But till such time, I will continue to dabble.

We've also gotten a good amount of shock from the placements committee. I may not be passing out with a job in my hand, what with the stupid meltdown, which had to and absolutely had to intervene and conspire against innocent children like me (sob..sob) and I think, there are shocks that I've still not been able to absorb properly, therefore I send my expressions-of-interest for any company coming to the campus, much later than the deadline is over. But I also don't forget to apologize to the committee. But then I dont know how to do this. To hedge my risk, I may have to sit for all companies that come to the campus, but if I do this, I may miss out on the righer and the more preferred companies since we will be out of the process at the first event of any company showing any interest in any candidate, in essence obliterating every company and every single candidate on the same level. Look what the world has come to (sob sob again)

O, lately I have been very fascinated with pictures. I love to look and appreciate them a lot. Lately also, Ive come across better photographers and cameras and subjects I think. But whatever it is, it's great to look at pictures and look at them again and again. Infact, I have this very very interesting picture on my desktop, with a baby held so close that he can probably hear the heartbeat :D, and it doesnt stop to fascinate me. When it does, it will be removed from my desktop and stored with good care in the archives. I think, it's also got to do with babies. I mean, there is something very telling about pictures with babies and how they are held or looked at. I mean, Freud might have something to say on it, on why such pictures inspire a lot of admiration.

Anyhow, I have to go and watch 'Shwas', an interesting Marathi film. So while I catch up with it, let everyone else sleep and dream really well!

Later

Nike's global optimization strategy

We have a massive International Marketing assignment on 'Using consumer Intelligence to create global brands' and we're using Nike's case study.
It's quite interesting and I'm reading this book called 'A new brand world', gifted by Zoo and written by Scott Bedbury, the man who worked for athletic shoes as well as caffeine (read Nike and Starbucks), which by the way are both so interesting and important parts of contemporary cultural vernacular.
Anyhow, I came back to Indore from a very homey MICAmpaign there. Home was brilliant as usual. I fought with mummy over stepping on the wet floor after mopping and over getting proper tickets booked and taking the print-outs on time with my dad and over everything else with my brother. And I also freaked out when my tickets were not done. But as a result I am educated far more in e-ticket booking rules and about how easily my eyes well up sometimes.

Anyhow, we played tennis again after a longish sabbatical. After the first few knocks, our rust also gave way to more freeflowing action :) PK played with her new racquet and I with my new shoes. But they totally bit and bit and now my toe pinkie is a splinters. :( but I will get used to my shoes while they take the shape of my feet, which i'm told are gigantic.

Till I'm able to finish this case on Nike and reading this book, I hope to not call it a night.

Later