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Thursday, December 24, 2009
I am extremely sad and hurt, and not for the first time because of my blog.
It is something that seems to be so inexplicable initially but once you think about it, all of it starts making sense. The writing of a blog is, in my opinion, all about putting down your feelings and emotions in a manner to which you will be able to relate, some time in the future when you go back to the blog and reminisce about the days gone by.
In the process, however, one tends to write of memories the way they came about, not shrouding them in any manner of propriety. In conjunction with this, if one also names people in the blog, it no longer remains mere memories associated with one's own self or actions. The interpretations start coming in, scope becomes broader and the probable impact of the written word is deep rooted.
Reminded of the same today through some context, I was made to realize that in the communication age of the present, reference checks for jobs, opinion formation by friends and so much more happens through an online search for a name that a casual remark in a blog can cause much unintended harm.
I appreciate this and have made necessary corrections. However, what still beats me is the indelible impact the writings can have on an individual and my relationship with the individual.
Is it not correct, then, to write about things in a lingo which was so common and acceptable in the context and settings the memories are from? Are things so far removed that the banter of yesteryears is being taken as the slander of today? Why does a mere play on words have to be taken as an expression of opinion that does not even exist? How can the blogger express his feelings such that no one is able to look at it so dispassionately, dissect it line by line, and yet not be able to read between the lines?
I am, definitely, extremely sad and hurt.
Posted at 01:36 pm by Nitai
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Wednesday, December 09, 2009
At a friend's wedding last month, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that most of the closest friends of the groom in attendance were actually class/hostel mates of his from senior secondary school. The fact that the school in question was my own school, the famous (notorious?) Delhi Public School, RK Puram, only added to the nostalgia that swept over me with this realization. To imagine other school class/hostel mates being so close to each other after so many years and at the same time, there being so much distance between my own friends from that era and me, it was a saddening thought.
And then I met this hostel mate of mine, who I was reasonably close to, at the airport this weekend. Both of us were coming back from weddings of people both of us knew, just that I went to one and he to the other. Seeing him there brought back so many memories, what with the recent remembrance that other wedding had initiated. I was, however, shocked at myself, especially with the lame enthusiasm that I greeted him with. Instead of meeting like long lost buddies, we met like strangers, some bit of it may be attributable to the insanely early hours of the day at which we met.
I was also chatting on the internet a couple of days before this weekend meeting with another hostel mate of mine and he seemed pretty disillusioned as well. Keeping in touch is so easy yet so difficult. Life moves on and so do circles of friends but both of us agreed that it is up to an individual to pick and choose who or what they want to retain out of the different phases of life. Retention of friends for good is so much a personal trait rather than being explained by any amount of providence or even the age old excuse of lack of time.
Having felt and said all this, I just thought of putting my thoughts together and go back in time some 12-13 years back (how time flies!!!) and write about the people who mattered probably the most in that period and what I have left of those associations now. So here goes, this one dedicated to DPS RKP, my alma mater and all things/people related to it:
Arnav Hazarika Som, extremely popular with girls, the rock-listening, guitar-playing variety...compete antithesis of what I was at that point in time. And yet we became close, close enough to share a bed (two single beds joined together, don't get any ideas!) in a room of nine people (yes, we had nine people in one room!). I learnt a lot from Arnav (or Ronnie as was his nick name) and I looked up to him, wanting to be like him some day. It was only much later when I met him during my MBA summers stint in Kolkata that I could see myself as coming anywhere close to it.
I met him last at the Delhi airport just a few days ago and though I always knew that he was in Mumbai, I could never really initiate any contact. He is now in the private equity arm of a Times Group company and from what I could gather, doing well for himself.
Shivanu Kohli, the quintessential serious and shy guy who would work really hard and not party at all. He was actually a contrasting personality, outwardly silent and yet innately loud and extremely vocal. From a reasonably large town in Haryana, he had the famous Jat temper but displayed it very rarely. Butt of our jokes for the way he looked, he never complained, at least not initially. As we became more comfortable with each other's company, he did use to flare up at times but as I said, it was once in a blue moon. Very serious about IIT entrance preparations, he was the one who gave me the news of my selection and was rather short when I hinted that probably he did not read my rank correctly, especially when he had the misfortune of not being selected at all.
I met him last at the MBA entrance group discussion for SP Jain Institute which was about 5 years back. I later came to know that he had taken up a job at Coke post his MBA from SP Jain but I have no clue where he currently is.
Dipanjan Das, the suave, boarding school old-timer, with lean, chocolate boyish looks, the perfect gentleman that girls would love to take to their parents, someone who could naturally converse in a language and of matters that were still alien to me. Dipanjan was almost always soft spoken and the last of participants in any kind of revelry that we may end up in. He almost seemed to look at us in amusement as we started to rejoice the hostel life and freedom associated with it, having already been there and done that. Teased no end for his alleged flings with the fairer sex, he could be the perfect display of grace and yet the right amount of silent anger that is capable of putting others to shame and silence.
Last I knew (through social networking sites), he had completed his MBA and was with GE. I have not really interacted with him even once after school and I am not sure if I will get to, in the near future.
Snehesh Mitra, the closest of all my friends in school, he was the boisterous Bengali having stayed his life in Bhagalpur in Bihar. Loud and vivacious, handsome and good looking, and yet a little elephant footed when it came to girls, very impulsive and emotional, not too keen on working so hard as to spoil whatever fun there was to be had, Snehesh was very likeable, at least to me. We literally hanged out together, separated only for the classes in the morning (we were in different sections). I could be very comfortable in Snehesh's company and I guess he did not mind mine either.
I would have met him last about a year after school when he was in Delhi preparing for IIT entrance exams and I was there for some administrative work at the CBSE office. I know (again from social networking sites) that he is married and working for a start-up in Bangalore. Even though I have his email id and probably even his contact number, I haven't really been able to re-initiate anything.
Sumit Kumar Jain, another Bhagalpuriah, but as different from Snehesh as chalk is from cheese. Very confident and assertive, except from some sort of complex that he seemed to have on account of his height, Sumit was one smart cookie. The perfect all rounder, he could score in academics, speak and act passionately, look good and charm girls, the works. I did not really kick it off with Sumit but we were still very cordial with each other and when it came to having fun at the expense of others, neither of us were found wanting. Always willing to rock the party, Sumit could be relied upon for the lighter moments but may perhaps not have been as much of a partner when things went wrong for me.
Last I spoke to him was through a social netwroking site when I pinged him out of the blue and got an encouraging reply in return. Nothing happened after that and the last I know, he graduated from IIM Calcutta and was working with HSBC, first in Mumbai, and then somewhere in the Middle East.
Mudit Bhargava, the guy who impressed my uncle the first day he came to drop me off at the hostel, very organized, diligent, and a shining role model for those in our age group...the sort of person who comes across as well read, a thinker who can act without delays, someone who knew how to manage time between whiling it away and utilizing it wisely. Mudit was another person I used to look up to and even be in awe of. Hailing from the snow covered hills of Simla, he fluctuated from being extremely warm to even cold at times. I never really was able to figure him out completely because he seemed to display only as much as he wanted to, as much as he wanted you to see and know.
I chatted with him on the internet a few days back and got to know that he is married now, and after working for about four years in India, is currently completing his PhD from the USA.
Shameek Sharma, the Surd, the epitome that defined the phrase "happy-go-lucky" to me for a long time, he was one of those who probably changed more in the course of those two years at school than anyone else, even me. The day he came in, he was accompanied by parents and a whole lot of books. While the rest of us were just looking at the place and making things sink in, he seemed to have already got a head start that even the seasoned Dipanjan seemed to be surprised at. Dismissed initially as a book worm, Shameek came back strongly to become one of the craziest people I have been around.
I have been witness to his status updates on facebook but am completely clueless about his whereabouts nevertheless. Again someone I haven't met after school, his contact details can be found out without much difficulty but I haven't really done anything about it.
Ajit Bhaiya, closest in terms of background to me, he came from a small town in Bihar, born to middle class parents, soft spoken to a fault and even stammering at times, with a physique that had nothing to write home about...Ajit or Bhaiya, as we used to call him was always playing the downtrodden. Ajit was brilliant, almost a genius when he did come to apply his mind, which unfortunately did not happen too frequently. He was amazing at physics and my savior a number of times when I had frustratingly little clue about what was happening in the middle of all those levers and pulleys. Being close to Snehesh was the common link between us and even though we were never really very close to each other, we did spend a lot of time together at school.
I came to know from Mudit while chatting with him the other day about the tough times he has had ever since he left school and the fact that he is currently back in his home town, doing tuitions in Physics, the subject he liked the most. I had last chatted with him on the internet some 5-6 years back and have had no personal contact with him ever since.
Kaushik Kishore, part of the room 9 and a half (we were the nine 9's, of course) was from Patna and to put it kindly, pretty raw, significantly less raw as compared to me but raw, nevertheless. An ardent procrastinator, Kaushik was one of those who you would like almost instantaneously. Prone to agreeing to whatever someone said, he was hardly the types who would get into an argument. Laid back and relaxed, the only thing that ruffled his feathers was the specter of studies, about which he seemed to be pretty fussed.
I found him on one of the social networking sites a few weeks back and pinged him to get a moderately welcoming mail in reply. I did not really follow up and am still as clueless about his whereabouts as I was before the communication that I started.
Shivam Bansal, another 9 and a half, son of a businessman, used to the luxuries of life but not spoilt at all, not exposed to the tenets of the modern world of rock "and all", Shivam, popularly called Bansi, hailed from the temple town of Varanasi where his father had a going business. I remember Shivam as keeping pretty much to himself but having the most cordial of relations with almost everyone. He was not one to bring the roof down with his own antics but was definitely not a spoil sport when in the middle of things that shook the world.
I have absolutely no clue of where he is after graduating from IIT Delhi. Not to be found on any social networking site either, he has literally vanished from the earth ever since I last met him at school.
There were so may others that keep coming to mind as I write all this and it is so difficult to write about all of them for want of space and time. There were, of course, my room-mates from the second year, the brilliant and accommodating Saurabh Siddharth, and the extremely cheerful and nice guy, Animesh Agwarwal. There were others I used to spend reasonable time with...the mousily-active Shyam Agarwal, the genius, singing-songs-in-the-reverse Keshav Kunal, the soft-spoken giant Ashwani, the brash and super intelligent Abhisheks (mota and patla), the eternal fighter Sandeep Jaiswal, the good looking to-be-doc Ishtiyaque Hussain, the dapper joker Sachin Talwar, the heart-of-gold-image-carrying Nikhil Singla, the crazy genius Manish Jalan, the seniors and the juniors...the list appears to be endless.
And then there were the girls, very few of them I actually came to know first hand...the long haired shy singer Aparna Sharma, the fiery though diminutive Deepanvita Upadhyay, the bold and beautiful Mayuri Khanna, the short and sweet Supriya Goswami, the hot and happening Shruti Nayan (not from our batch but who cared!).
The list and the memories can just go on and on but this will have to do for today's quota of nostalgia. I just hope that despite the changing nature of life, I can get back to those glorious days, if only in my memories of people associated with them. Better still, won't it be great to be sitting together with some of them in some familiar cafe, sipping a cup of coffee and refreshing our collective memories?
Posted at 12:56 pm by Nitai
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Monday, November 30, 2009
I recently attended a friend's wedding in Kolkata. I intended to write a tome describing the events around the wedding but petered down upon realizing that although these events deserve recounting, things may turn out to be a little uncomfortable for some, including me if I did go through with the idea.
Amongst other things, one year is behind the day Mumbai (and to a less extent, I) faced one of the most horrifying and terrible nights. The night of 26/11, as it is fashionably called by the press and the Mumbai glitterati, will remain etched for quite some time in my mind, as it would in the minds of many others who were directly or indirectly affected by the events of that ominous night. I can only wish and pray that those affected get the strength of spirit to go through whatever they have been forced to go through.
There is a new chapter at work and I am supposedly heading a new vertical that has been set up to analyze client investment portfolios. Christened Investment Analytics, the team is responsible for marrying the generic research and product recommendations that is generated by the Products & Research Team with the client specific requirements provided by the Relationship Management Team. Typically, this role is performed by the Investment Advisory practice in most of the global private banks but the work is not as appealing here. As it has turned out, most of the work is aimed at assisting what would have been an investment advisory practice. Going forward, the practice may become bigger and closer to the Investment Advisory kind of a vertical and the responsibility to make that happen, scarily enough, lies on me.
I have been having a good time generally over the last few months with busy weeks and busier weekends. Movies, plays, meeting family and friends, going out-station for weddings...I have had some really nice time recently. I only hope that the run continues and I do not slip into one of those pseudo-depressions that I have the habit of doing.
Posted at 03:16 pm by Nitai
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Kabhi hum kaminey nikle, kabhi doosre kaminey
Main 'fa' ko 'fa' bolta hoon
Abe 'fa' ko 'fa' nahi to kya 'la' bolega
and it goes...Dhan ta nan. One of the most anticipated talked-about and hyped movies of the year, Kaminey does not disappoint, not in the least. In spite of the overwhelming majority coming out in fully voiced approval of the film, there is always the lurking doubt in one's mind as one watches the scenes unfold. Will it live up to the expectations built by such strong feedback coming in from almost all quarters? Is it another case of might becoming right and people following the herd and talking in a certain manner just because everyone else is? Will all the talk about getting your brains along for the movie and respecting viewers' intelligence be just a carefully orchestrated PR strategy? Is there really path-breaking, cult-forming cinematic excellence at display?
It may not perhaps be said that Vishal Bhardwaj's effort is perfect but it is as close to it in today's times as it can be. Building up the story and all the while challenging the viewer to continually think, interpret situations and get the hang of the story a la Johny Gaddar or DevD, Kaminey seems to have vowed to not let the viewer slip into mental slumber. All events of import post the interval are linked to stuff that is not explained by dumbing it down but more so in passing reference, by just displaying events as they take place with the freedom given to the viewer to form whatever conclusions she wishes to form.
The thread of the story is not lost anywhere what with the careful plot construction that takes place, involving all characters in a blitzkrieg of slides in the lives of the twins, Charlie and Guddu. There are a lot of characters intertwined with these two and the beauty of the movie lies in the finesse with which each one of these supposedly ancillary characters are sketched out. You can not help but wonder at the ingenuity with which the screen comes alive upon each appearance of the Maharasthtrian-speak politician of Amole Gupte, the fiery Marathi mulgi of Priyanka Chopra, the cocaine-addicted whacko gangster of Chandan Roy Sanyal, even the bit characters of corrupt narcotics cops and other gangsters (some of them even imported from Africa).
Vishal Bhardwaj, it will suffice to say, has done it again. Not only has he done an extremely fine job in directing a motley crew of relative newbies to the formulaic Bollywood, he has also worked wonders with the more established cast of Shahid and Priyanka. Shahid delivers on the front foot in his twin role with the two brothers actually coming across as being as different as chalk and cheese. The beefy, catcall-inducing gangster is innocently devilish while the stammering simpleton comes across as the eyes-averted, mentally slow and introverted idealist.
Priyanka Chopra does a fine act as the fiery and gutsy modern-yet-traditional belle who can lie through her teeth, plan much before she gets to act, and even shoot at her brother (in clear deviation from the standard Bollywood lore...even though the gun was out of bullets when she shot it, she did shoot) as long as the end is clear and worthy. Not too much to look at sans her made up and glammed avatar, she still comes across as an actress who is taking leaps and bounds to the grease paint.
As mentioned earlier, each of the other actors in the movie deserve special mention for the way they have, under Vishal's able direction, of course, brought alive the various characters of the movie. Gupte, Sanyal and Co., take a bow!
To top it all, the music of the movie really fits the folds almost seamlessly. Whether it is playing in the background to add to the excitement of chase sequences, or in the foreground in all its psychedelic glory, "Dhan ta nan" rocks...and so does the rest of the musical score re-emphasizing the multi-talented genius of Vishal Bhardwaj. Even the placement of the timeless classic "Duniya me logo ko dhoka kabhi…" is spot on. Consider innocuous songs like phataak, or the one accompanying the celebratory bridal participation in what is supposed to be the groom's baraat, nothing seems to be even an inch adrift.
The story line of Kaminey may admittedly be slightly thin and oft repeated in the Mumbai (or is it Bambai) film industry (identical twins caught up in each other's lives) but it is the treatment that gets this movie up to the tops. It is the small nuances that tease the viewer to apply her mind, to decide for herself if the movie is up to her standard or vice versa. What makes this one special is the pun in showing an auto rickshaw with its clearly displayed meter reading "For Hire" as the corrupt cop is shot down. What works for this movie is the immensely humorous jab in the bad-guy Shahid replying to the plea of the good-guy Shahid of his wife being pregnant by asking him tongue-in-cheek, "to kya meri kokh ("coke") ujaadega?"
Posted at 12:10 pm by Nitai
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
It's been ages since I last wrote and this time, there are no excuses. I just did not feel like writing. Every time I came to see the blog, I felt like updating it but never managed to gather enough verve to actually sit and write something. Not that there was a dearth of things to write about...quite to the contrary, actually. Not only from a strict news point of you, but even from the emotions and sentiments ruling my life, there were so many things I should have recorded but I did not. Well, better late than never!
Getting on to the news front first, I bought a house in Mumbai...that's right, a dwelling place in one of the most densely populated and costliest cities in the world. That is the good part. The bad part is that the house and associated liabilities have resulted in a fixed monthly expense of about Rs. 80,000 and that is without taking into account the other, relatively variable expenditure that one will have to make towards regular expenses like maid, electricity, cooking gas, car fuel, groceries, etc...most of which is being covered by Priya today but that will only last for that much more time.
The office, incidentally, has also shifted to Kalina, which is only 3 odd kilometers from my new home. What this means is that I have now got additional two hours of my life per day, all to myself. I have started utilizing these two additional hours properly. While the one in the morning goes into exercise (I have actually started running and to my utter surprise, I have managed notwithstanding my leg), the one in the evening goes to reading (one good habit that I had put on the back burner for a long time).
Amongst other news, my car has become a wreck and the driver is threatening to leave (not related to each other but still...). Now Sunil, the driver in question, has been serving our family for the last six years and since he belongs to the native place, the trust factor is pretty strong. From my side, I have tried to treat him well but the promise of Mumbai does not fail in getting anyone. Having spent his driving career in Jaipur and Delhi, Sunil has realized, having come to Mumbai, what the possibilities are...how endless they seem once you are free to pursue them...and free is what he wants to be.
Okay, now that we are done with news in its strictest sense, time to do the transition from news to its impact. The transition, of course, starts with more news and this one happens to be that I did not get any special treatment from my firm this year (and this includes bonus and salary hikes which I did not expect, as well as promotions and role definitions which I did). That's it...I have said it and I don't care who reads it.
Obviously, all the news has resulted in a combination of some extreme sentiments. There is, of course, happiness, joy, pride, and a sense of achievement on the family owning a house in Mumbai (celebrated in part via two housewarming parties, one for the college junta and another for the office people). At the same time, there is sadness, disappointment, disillusionment, and a resignation to fate that has resulted from news at work.
I have become so befuddled with all this that I don't know whether to be happy or sad nowadays. The end result is that I have become such an explosive mixture that at times, I hardly know what to expect from myself. A friend tells me that I am dead and have lost my sense of humor, another tells me that I am into some sort of depression, my sister has stopped talking to me since I flare up at her at the slightest of things, and I get tired of any conversation that lasts for more than a minute or two.
Posted at 01:38 pm by Nitai
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