The Budding Writer

Do you have it in you to be a successful writer? The fundamental question to answer here would be: what is the definition of a successful writer? I believe depending upon the person you ask there could be 100 possible different explanations. Someone could define based on the top 10 NY times best sellers, another based on the number of copies in print, the winner of the Pulitzer prize or the most famous one in the kind of genre you are speaking about etc. My own personal take on this is that the theme of the book could be anything from religion to science fiction to crime comedy, but the book should be able to engage you in such a way that you will not be able to put down the book and it should remain a force in your sub conscious for your mind to come back to it in your discussions / musing about the books.

The budding writer should also consider how the best in the business are doing it. More or less a good template would be to come up with a gripping story outline, develop strong characters, do thorough research on the background and the period in which the story / characters are have been set. You combine all with some neat narration. And still it will not be sufficient. There should be enough twists or the so called “taking the breath away” moments. The most unexpected character will end up being the murderer in Agatha Christie novels. Dan Brown will mesmerize you by mixing some ancient old myths of Jesus Christ with fiction. Ken Follett’s vivid description of the middle age kingdoms will actually take you back there. Osho will explain the religion and the path to eternity as if it is adding salt in your curry. P.G.Wodehouse charms you with the light hearted cheeriness and bonhomie of his characters (how could you ever forget Jeeves). John Grisham makes exciting drama out of otherwise mundane court room proceedings. The smooth and sweet prose from the Jeffrey Archer will not let you put the book down.

Also there is one genre which a writer can never write. They are the so-called autobiographies. Either it is Gandhi or Mandela or Tendulkar or Iacocca, all of us want to read the biographies of the famous and inspiring personalities only when it is said in their own words, thoughts and emotions.

And then there is this famous “Writer’s Block” thing. It tells you that churning out your very first book is the most difficult thing to do and once the flood gates are opened; there is no stopping to it. Looking at this in another way this is a fair consolation to all the aspiring budding writers to hope that it is only the early stumbling block to get going. Honestly I believe this is more to do with a block in the mind than in the ability to write. If you have a talent to write, sooner or later it will flow out by itself and usually it also shows in your regular job correspondence / general communication etc.

Having said all the things above, I have thought quite a few times whether I have that special “ability” to be a budding writer and eventually turning into successful one. All I managed to do a few blog entries like this one. And the honest answer that has always come back to my writer aspirations is a “NO”. I figured out that I am good at reading and open to all kinds of genre and that the ends of it. And what about being a reviewer / critic? It is not my cup of tea either.

Continental Marriages

My definition of a continental marriage is that the bride and groom are from different continents.

Have you ever looked on facebook or some other social networking website at the marriage pictures of our beloved Indian Desi with an American/European? What are all the emotions/thoughts that were running your mind when you look at a family photo of newly weds? What are the things that clearly stood out? The difference in skin colors (all the more visible when the Desi is a south Indian), difference in cultures, the Desi women in glittering sarees, the fairer people in long wedding gowns and 3 piece suites. Have you ever wondered how will they survive together with so many vast differences between them and with very little knowledge of the customs and traditions of the other side?

On the contrary, I would say that it is much easier for them than a full traditional Desi/Desi marriage. For example take the case of Indian groom and an American Bride and compare it to the marriage of Indian groom and Indian bride. So does the American bride as compared to her Indian counterpart has to

1. Stay for a mandatory few days at her in-laws place and enchant the family of the groom with undeserved/unreciprocated respect, dignity?
2. Touch the feet of her in-laws every day even though the only result of it will be pain in the back and the heart?
3. Prove her innocence that she never talked to other boys (forget about mentioning trips or movies together) in school or college? And forget about even mentioning things like smoking and alcohol.
4. Answer the questions about the dowry and other special gifts from her parents?
5. Make tasty seasonal special dishes for festivals and special occasions, which some how arrive at every other week in the Indian calendar?
6. Produce a male heir with in a year of marriage? And worry all the pregnant months that it might actually turn out to be a girl child?
7. Stay with her in-laws and cook for them everyday?
8. Listen to advice every minute on cooking, running the house and all others things under the sky?

All the deviations in the standard expected behavior of the American bride can be attributed to the lack of knowledge of Indian customs and traditions. Unfortunately for the Indian bride, she is expected to know/do all the above by default with out asking any questions. So who has it easy in the life at the end? And not only the American bride, but also imagine the easy life of her Indian groom. All he has to say every time is: "Oh mom, she doesn’t know. Forget about it".

I recently caught up with an old Indian friend who married a European girl. And he spoke of small amounts of friction between his mother and wife during his child birth. But then we could always make a logical conclusion at the end that it is due to the difference in backgrounds, cultures, and customs etc. etc… And now how can you explain the never ending stories of the daily BIG amount of friction of Indian bride and her Indian mother in law?

So my free advice to all my unmarried friends or to the Indian community is to have continental marriages. As long as your love for each other is strong, you can forget about the perils of differences in cultures, customs and traditions and also stop worrying that you might be part of the divorce rate statistics of America and Europe. True, your partner might drink alcohol once in a while, but these are only small disadvantages as compared to the great benefits you can have by avoiding an all Indian wedding.

The Artificial Smile

Over the Xmas/New year holidays I tried to organize our family pictures. It became noticeable or kind of self evident after looking at a few hundreds of pictures that most of the time we are all smiling to the camera but the smile in most of the pictures looked like an artificial one. A feel of the genuineness to the smile is not visible in the pictures. My wife's explanation is that it is because I am a bad photographer and I always tell every one to look at the camera and force them to smile. And that the genuineness of smile comes when the people are at their natural best and camera has to capture them unknowingly while they are happy and smiling. Forcing people to look at the camera and smile will only produce the artificial smiles. This sounded like a reasonable explanation and I almost believed it myself.

And then I came to the pictures from the years after our son is born. Now comes the amazing discovery, I find the artificial smile in all of us in the pictures i.e. me, my wife, friends, parents but not in the smile of our 2 year old son. Then I looked at the family pictures of other friends (it is amazing that you can see so many of family pictures in a few minutes on facebook), the smiles of the all the children in all those family pictures seemed very genuine, but not of the Adults. The smile of every child is pure, heartfelt, joyous and is conveying a deep emotion that is missing in the smile of all the adults. So I would say it is not an artificial smile but it is a corrupted smile.

So what causes the corruption of the smile of the Adults? Exposure to the real world? The gang rape in Delhi? Terrorists? Stock markets? Dirty politics? Greed? Jealousy? Or all of them together? The evolving and progressive civilizations only seemed to have corrupted our smile. True, we are living comfortably and luxuriously as compared to our stone aged ancestor, but what's the point in living a life which does not seem to produce genuine smiles?

New Year Resolutions

"What are your new year resolutions?" This is a common question I hear 2 weeks either side of an upcoming new year. Are we really supposed to have some resolutions or some action plan in place for each New Year? Why can't the New Year be just a celebration? Why don't you set the resolutions for other celebrations such as Xmas or Pongal or your Birthday?

I do not have any set resolutions and for me the life in 2013 goes on as it was in 2012 and in 2012 it went as in 2011 and so on. Of course there are some amazing changes as part of the daily life such as my son started walking, speaking, singing and then running J and so on. There are also other changes like arrival of new top level management of my company (again in less than 6 months?), Obama got reelected, Britain is producing a royal heir, Dravid retired and Tendular doesn’t want to even after finally scored his 100^th hundred, etc. My point is that these are part of one's daily life and like Rahul Gandhi's marital status nothing has changed on a grand scale.

Few years ago (read as 10 to 15 years ago), I have to admit that I was naïve enough to really believe that only people who have achieved some thing significant in the last one year should celebrate the arriving New Year. And all others should sleep quietly as the clock ticks past midnight (it all looks silly to me now and imagine the loss to business establishments when 99% of the world is sleeping quietly on 31^st night). I even allowed myself to be upset with people who do not believe in this crap theory. And then my dear friend Cnu( thanks mate !!) brought me to earth and to some matured thinking.  New Year is just a reason for another celebration with family and friends, it does not matter who you are or what you have achieved with your life.

Let us come back to the resolutions part. This is something that really does not make sense to me. Here is my side of the thinking. Let us say your New Year resolution is to reduce 5kg of weight by the end of the year, now:

1. It can not be that out of serendipity you realized this exactly at Dec 31 midnight. You perhaps knew that you need to reduce your weight since a few weeks or months or may be even years. 
2. So in those months/weeks/years you simply kept postponing action, even though you knew you have to do something about it. Or perhaps you waited until the Doctor told you. That’s really a bad beginning/start.
3. It's in human nature that for many of us, the action items like weight reduction, which are started with lot of vigor and zeal eventually will run out of steam. The good openings usually have bad endings. But here in this case you already have a very bad opening.

Well, the point here is if you have to do something, do it now and do not put it in some resolution list for some new year that is coming 3 months or 3 years later. And because you do it now, sadly you will not have any New Year resolution list any more. And that makes it just an occasion to celebrate with friends and family with out the added weight of resolutions, action plans, time tables etc.

And lastly, at the risk of being termed as arrogant and doing some copy right violations, I fully agree with Calvin below.

Kill more chickens or plants?

Frankly speaking, I do not understand why so much fuss happens on this topic of Vegetarian versus Non-vegetarian. In my opinion, over the decades, the topic has been given lot of undue importance which it does not deserve (even many great personalities seems to have spent a lot of time on this).

For me this entire vegetarian / non-vegetarian thing boils down to a simple conclusion: Each individual forms his own perspective based on his cultural/religious background, upbringing, education and also possibly with influence from friends, family and society. And perhaps there are possibly many reasons which make this topic more complicated than necessary

1. The definition of vegetarian is kind of very subjective to the individual. I heard in places like Kolkata, Kerala etc. Fish is considered as vegetarian (and compare this to the fact that Mahatma Gandhi stopped drinking goat milk because he was not sure any more that it is vegetarian). By the way the best input on this came from my ex-colleague: he simply said that lamb is vegetarian because it eats vegetarianJ.
2. There are all kinds of religious reasons based on Caste and rituals (No comments here except to say that I have lot of those religious friends who are strict vegetarians at home and eat only non vegetarian outside or when they are abroad).
3. And then there are people who declare a particular day in a week as a vegetarian day. (Wow, what a kind heart. So many animal lives on this planet are saved.). I do not mean to criticize any one, my Father does it as well, but honestly I just do not find the logic in it. Either you eat non-vegetarian or you do not eat. That’s all.
4. And then there are people who do not eat even eggs because they are non-vegetarian, but are expert chefs in all kinds of non vegetarian dishes (known as moms).
5. The Animal right activists (and all those supporting movie stars and celebrities) and their pleas of treating animals as living creatures like all other human beings and fellow mates (Oh.. come on, don't you guys think the trees and other vegetarian based green stuff have life too? Isn't it painful for the trees when you pluck their fruits or cut their leafs for you to fill your stomach? Who gave you the right to justify that killing more plants is better than killing more chickens. Is it OK just because that the plants are more silent than animals? And even if the plants cry, we also collect it and consume it (known as rubber, glue etc.)).

I believe that it is quite OK and acceptable that each individual has his own perspective on this topic and the perspectives can be totally in opposing directions. But that doesn’t mean your perspective is the only right thing in this world and all other guys are committing unforgiveable sins which will take them to hell (if ever there is a hell) or make them take a re-birth.

And now lets get few facts right.

1. Human body does not seem to have any problem to digest both vegetarian and non-vegetarian
2. If you have studied well enough at school, you would probably remember that our teeth are designed to eat for all kind of purposes. Some to chew, some to bite etc. And of course this serves well enough for both Vegetarian and Non-vegetarian purposes.
3. Our ancestors before we invented concepts like farming, housing etc. some how survived in caves and probably eaten everything that is possible to lay their hands upon.
4. Since the world population is exploding, it is unavoidable that you need to find a way to fill all those additional hungry stomachs. So let us concentrate on feeding those stomachs than to concentrate on to whether to feed with plants or chickens.

Now having said all these things, what do I do? I do not eat pork or beaf, based on so called upbringing / religious reasons (and funny enough, to quote officially, I do not believe in God).

Never the less, do I want my 2 year old son to become vegetarian or non-vegetarian? I do not care, I just want him to grow up to be physically strong, stay healthy and keep smiling those joyous, innocent and heartfelt smiles only a pure soul of a child can smile.

The Down Under tour

Like millions of fellow Indians I looked forward to our Indian cricket team's tour of Australia. I made myself to believe the media stories and articles that we have a real chance this time. Our aging mighty stalwarts will take the Australian bull by the horns and will tame the raucous beast. I was skeptical of the similar stories during the England tour; somehow my sixth sense told me that it will end badly in England. But in Down Under I expected it to be otherwise. And as it happened, history repeated itself and we ended up with many similarities between England series and this series in Down Under.

1. In both the series until the last day of the first test, it was more or less even. And afterwards it was a steep downhill for Indian team.
2. Sachin's hundred was expected with each innings he played and it never happened (poor Sachin, I want him to score that hundredth hundred badly mainly because it will give him some peace of mind for the rest of his life. And Sachin, do not ever think of retiring with out that hundred even if it means retiring at the age of 45. Alternately BCCI can invite Bangladesh for a test tour and we will send you as opener. The bottom line is that the rest of your/our life with out this hundred is not worth it.)
3. It’s a complete white wash in both the test series. And as I write this, our team is trying hard to not to reach the finals of the triangular one day tournament. The first of the finals is in Gabba and there is no way our team can win a game on the bouncy pitch there. So what's the point in trying to reach the finals itself?

A small note about the bowling in the series down under: After the end of the first test, Dhoni said that we need to find a way to get the tail out quickly. So in the second and subsequent tests our attentive bowlers have made a master plan, they bowled so cleverly that the tail does not even has to come to bat.

And what can I say about the batting? Each time I woke up at midnight (with an alarm and at the grave risk of waking up my 1 year old son, I live in CET time zone) only to watch that all the batsmen have decided that it is best to either sit in the pavilion or standing on the ground fielding. It seemed like too much work to concentrate, flex your muscles a little bit and hit the cricket ball. They all have come to down under for a nice vacation with wives and what a pity that all other Indians are thinking that they have come to win some cricket matches.

And now they write about rifts and the lack of unity among the Indian seniors. Probably it is the wives who started the fight first and then the players themselves. But in any case there is too much money involved, every one wants a piece of it and of course the big brother (called BCCI) will force them to patch up.

What next? In 1 month's time there is IPL 5 and afterwards a T20 world cup. Once the IPL is underway, every one will quickly forget this forgettable tour of down under. The next away series is only in 2013 and do I need to remind every one again that history repeats itself?

The mother of all evils

Perhaps I am overstating it. Or perhaps this is an understatement. And I dare to say that the mother of all evils in our Indian society is the comparison of oneself with others i.e. with friends, relatives, siblings, neighbors and anybody you can come across. It's best explained with the famous power cut example. They say in the land of never ending power cuts, when the power cut happens, the first thing you should do is to check in the neighbor's house. As long as your neighbor also has the power cut, it is OK and the sweltering, heat, mosquitoes and what not all becomes manageable. (And for the record the electricity people are mean guys. Some time they cut the power only for a full street leaving all the rest of the town blazing in glory. Then this brings out all other kinds of emotionsJ)

And the whole funny thing about this malaise in our Indian society is that there are no boundaries to this comparison thing. You compare about any thing and every thing under the sky. Perhaps it is not funny but stupid. I am sure it's common to hear some of the following statements in your daily life. 

• That neighbor's son is getting more marks in school than you.
• That lady has lot of jewellery and I have nothing.
• That neighbor has new iPhone 4S and owns a SUV.
• My maid servant is more "haraami" than yours.
• My favorite actor/actress/sports person is better than yours (come on guys, grow up).
• My in laws are more sadistic than yours.
• My son/daughter is school first and does not waste time in stupid games (really?)
• What is your rank in the school?( First question to any school going kid you came across)
• Whats your caste? (this could be asked in a number of different indirect ways, this is altogether a different beast and is out of scope of this post)

 

You might argue that it is not an Indian thing but the whole world is like this. Possibly it is true. And perhaps it is not a surprise in a world where your life's progress is measured by how quickly you make money, the ultra cool cell phone you have or the luxuries you lead in your daily life.

And there are also people who argue that this comparison leads you to aspire for better things in life and otherwise you are a dumb a** staying at the same place forever. To some extent its true that this comparison thing (when not overdone and applied in right amount at the right time) might have a little bit of positive effect on education. Also I can say that I really care whether my son is doing well at the school or not and this is usually measured by the comparison based ranking system or a GPA. But when my son grows up, I definitely do not care if he has the highest pay or the most expensive luxury car among his friends and school mates. All I care that he earns well enough for a good living.

Eventually you can see that I myself already accepted that I myself am part of this malaise and compare against the others (of course, I have Indian blood in my veinsJ). But I try to stay away from the comparisons of wealth, luxury items, pay checks etc. This some times might make me a "non progressive dumb a**" or a boring guest in social circles, but this also brings lot of peace to my day to day life. Is this way is the right solution to the mother of all evils? May be not. And do I preach all others to follow the same approach? Never, who in the world cares about my preaching anyways?