त्या रत्नाकर तीरी...

त्या रत्नाकर तीरी...

हिरव्या झाडीत लपलेलं,
मिट्ट काळोखात दडलेलं,
रवी तेजात उजळलेलं,
काही गूढ आहे त्या रत्नाकर तीरी.

चारी प्रहरी धरती कडे झेपावणारा,
पैल तीरी गगन मिठीत विसावणारा,
कोणाच्या प्रेमात सुखावणारा,
कोणाच्या शोकात विरहिणी गाणारा,
आहे कोणी त्या रत्नाकर तीरी.

सप्त नद्या इथे विसावल्या,
चार युगं इथे उलटली,
सहस्त्र आदित्य इथेच तळपले,
नित्याची नक्षत्र इथेच कोसळली,
त्या तिथे त्या रत्नाकर तीरी.

ह्या इथे उभी आहे आजही सीता,
चिरंतर प्रेमाच्या वाचना पोटी,
ह्या इथे आहे तो,
शतजान्माचे गोफ धरुनी हाती,
त्या तिथे त्या रत्नाकर तीरी.

सुख-दुःखाचा तो भोगी,
का सहस्त्रालान्कारी वैरागी?
प्रती निमिशी जन्मलेला चिरंजीवी,
का स्थितप्रज्ञ हा कालचाक्राचा स्वामी?

Chennai Diaries-2

To shop or not to shop....that is the question

Compared to shopping, esp. for clothes AND esp. in Chennai, Hamlet's "To be or not to be..." dilemma seems far simpler.
I think half of the mankind (sorry human race) only shops because is it scared of going out naked.And since clothes have this annoying habit of wearing and literally tearing off, we're all forced to go shopping for our fig leaves.

Shopping is a pain in the wrong body parts, but in Chennai it can be like a Greek tragedy- you know like Odeipus where the hero has to gouge his own eyes out or some such.
To be fair to Chennai, she has just two of these torture chambers a.k.a MALLS. There is of course Chennai's worriginnal Spencers' "Mall" but I am not sure it counts. In other, less cultured cities, this (poorly) air-conditioned flea market would be called Palika Bazar.

So if you are Adam & Eve and have munched on the Forbidden Fruit and need something trendier than leaves, you should head out to either Express Avenue or City Centre. I personally prefer City Centre- nothing to do with the stuff you get there. It is just that at the EA, I have to pay more in parking per hour than my car's insurance AND spend at least an hour trying to locate my car/ escape route AND I don't even get insulted by a valet!!

Shopping is an experience that one must relish (or so a shopaholic buddy tells me). If there's any truth to what he says, at City Centre your "experience" begins in the parking lot. I think Pan's labyrinth had fewer levels & Rome had fewer catacombs. At the "valet wonly" parking, I have been given such disgusted looks by the valet that for a moment I thought I had just asked Ratan Tata to park a perky little yellow-as sunshine Nano.

If you are shameless enough to survive that (most of us are), you have just passed level-1 of Wolfstein 3D!

Once the bursting-to-the-seams lift has spewed you out on the main floor, the first thing that hits you is the pseudo-french, fleur-de-lis covered, poorly ventilated chambre grande and the sheer population density of that place! I am told that the original Bastille had fewer people- I would've shown you the data but Stalin doesn't like it and I don't like the idea of Gulags a la Chennai. You'll need just a moment to catch your breath. You'll be surprised how quickly you can get used to low oxygen levels.

But that is not the pièce de résistance.

At the centre of the Great Hall of Kazadum (if you don't read Lord of the Rings...shame on you! that's the great underground hall of the dwarves), you'll always find a guy (or a girl with a guy's voice) shouting unintelligibly at a gathering crowd. I once managed enough pluck to ask why he/she was so angry. Turns out he/she was playing Derek O'Brain (very very dumbed down version) to dumb kids and dumber adults picked out of the unsuspecting crowd. Honestly, for kids that grow up in India's "intellectual capital", some of these kids were dumber than the dumb red-necks on "Are you smarter than a 1st grader"!
If you cannot match their decibel levels and if you know that 2+2=4, this isn't the place for you. Step away before you are picked on.

If you are suicidal and want to stick around, I recommend an ipod, Bose headphones and Dropkick Murphy at full blast. You'll go deaf but at least you'll enjoy it.

When shopping, it is my strategy to minimise the pain. Zero in on the target, buy, pay (too bad I have to) and leave. And for all those like me who barely know the difference between a work shirt & casuals, multi-brand branded stores (try saying that 3 times faster) are a blessing. These crowded places have rows upon rows of identical clothes that people like me can safely buy.

But not so in Chennai,

I think it is a law passed by Thiru. Karunanidhi Kalaingar that every store shall have plentiful stock of iridescent clothing- not just shirts but brilliantly colourful bottoms as well. I swear I have seen fluorescent underwear in the men's section. (I suspect that is why He wears sunglasses ALL the time).

If you are persistent enough- or simply don't have clean shirts anymore like me, you can find a few light blues, whites and stripes safely hidden behind all the shimmering gold and red (in the men's section- I don't think anyone would dare see the drag queen section after seeing the clothes they stock in men's ware).
If you find such a shirt, hide it, sneak it to the cash counter, pay and get the hell out. I once asked a shop-boy if they had anything sober he gave me such a dirty look that I thought I had just blasphemed against Rajni (WARNING: NEVER DO THAT). In my defence, he had showed a violet shirt with yellow stripes when I asked for a formal shirt. In his defence, well, at least it wasn't satin.

And since we’re on the subject of shop-boys and other people who work these glitzy stores, you must know the truth about them….They’re Immortal Gods and You are a tiny spec of a mortal bothering them to no end. Or at least that’s how they treat you.

Once while trying to buy a Gucci Sport (yeah I know what it is- if you travel to work by local trains you’ll have to discover the over-priced, coloured, booze in funky glass bottles) for a friend I was repeatedly told saaaar this is cheeper saaar. Well, I am pretty sure he was trying to play a Jeeves on me but it got just a wee-bit insulting after he tried to shove the tiniest bottle of a roll-on deo in place of Gucci. Aren’t they supposed to up sell?

But nothing compares to the insult reserved for anyone who needs an alteration. Since all trousers are made in one size and I am made in the wrong size (, I always have only two options- either alter my height or alter the trouser. The first is usually far more painful. After being promised that I’ll get the pants altered in “max to max” 2 hours, the alteration guy gave me a dirty look and asked me to come back after minimum 36 hours.

Money changers in the Jewish Temple would have been more sympathetic to a leper. I think he was disgusted that I had passed over far shinier trousers in favour of a dull grey. It took me an hour of sweet-talking (very very limited skill at that), yelling (great skills there), threatening and swearing words only I could make sense of in the whole store but finally he agreed to cut & sew my pants in just 3 hours! It took me just about an hour to hunt for my own trousers from his “out box”. I think it’ll be easier find my bro I lost in a kumbh-mela.

All said and done… after much adventure I was able to put a clean shirt on my back & a pair of decent pants on my bottoms.

There are of course more harrowing stories about finding pathetic, incestuous Arundhati Roy alongside Jane Austen (may her soul torment lesser) in the “Classics” section of a book store. But this is not about less than life threatening shopping experiences so I’ll let that pass.

One thing you must appreciate while shopping in Chennai- the people who have done this often enough have a sense of resigned calm about them. Since I am but 25, I hope never to achieve that Buddha-at-shop stage.

I have been sitting on my brand new pants far too long to write this piece of crap…I don’t want ‘em to wear sooner, one trip to Azkaban per year is scary enough.

Let's turn the sand clock...

Are all the memories meant to scatter?

Are all dreams of long long ago meant to fade away?

If they are then why does the green meadow remind me of the time when the whole world was only the school's fields?
Every breath of cool breeze is fragrant with the years that I spent breathing it....
Over there by the river we spent our summer mornings collecting golden snails....
By that stream we plucked hyacinth- our secret adventures as kids- far away from the prying eyes of grown ups....
When my naked feet tread over this moist green grass I remember the smell of freshly cut grass in the school's yard...

I keep looking backwards....
To see if can find once more the smell of wooden study tables and old story books...
To hear but once the laughter of childhood friends
To feel for one day the joy of the first rain flooding the streets so that I can miss school....

Maybe just once let us try and go out on a bitter cold December night for star gazing.....
Try and look for the burning red Betelguese, the brave Orion, the flying Pegasus.... watch star after star trace its path before our eyes till they grow sleepy...
Till Leo finally leaps over the eastern sky heralding the coming of a brilliant day and long sleep....

Let's pretend there are castles as we once did .....let us go find where Merlin hid the sand clock... only to turn it back....

Let us go on one last childhood adventure...

Let us try and find ourselves once again....before the start of a new day...

Chennai Diaries...

To explore new lands… to go beyond the yonder hills where the Sun’s frame is wrought in fire and to sail beyond the Seas where he dies each day…

Isn’t that how all those famous Greek or Roman travelogues begin? The hero has a completely useless itch for finding out what weird people live beyond the “Pillars of Herackles” and he drags in his equally jobless buddies to take up a treime and sail pointlessly.

Of course the hero would come back, how else will we know of his exaggerated tales of slaying hydra-headed monsters (he squashed two tiny harmless green tree snakes), mastering Poseidon’s fury (the wind got rough, deal with it sailor!), defeating Medusa (a lady with a seriously bad hair day) and sleeping with a 5 handed nymph (let’s not get there)?

Well there were those and then there were people like Columbus and Vasco Da Gama who cause the real damage. Their girlfriends probably got really tired of these fellows drinking away at the local wench’s tavern (pardon my Spanish) and decided to, how to put it lightly… follow up on their goings on. Turns out they found no place to hide and had to take to the sea.

As our luck would have it, they ended up reaching somewhere. Imagine how simple our world would have been if Da Gama hadn’t ended up all washed up and drunk on the Calicut coast! The Brits would not have followed his frilled tail coats and no one in India would know what English is! On the flip side we wouldn’t have had awesome racist) movies like…ummm…. Indiana Jones.

But then Vasco’s pal Columbus would not have found the stupid Americas and we wouldn’t have had one financial crisis after another.

On the plus side however, Indians would never have invented our own version of English (it has nothing to do with the language the old English hag and her brat pack speak) and we would not have to slog away at outsourced nonsense in tiny claustrophobic cubicles.

Also, the British would never have bought a tiny speck on cow dung covered sandy little hamlet called Chennaipattinam and it would never have spawned into a great cultural and intellectual garbage dump called Chennai.

Which brings us to where we are going with this. Of all the (un)lucky morons who’ve ended up in Chennai, some of us are doomed to live here longer than the stipulated character-building (read “gas-chamber torturous”) few months. Over the next few posts, we’ll be discussing their plight, after all some people have to document how the wretched live!

Getting wet in the rain...

Have you ever tried getting wet in the rain? Not scurrying away trying to keep yourself dry in vain?
Have you ever tried getting out of your warm bed and stepping out in the rain?
Stepping out barefoot on the wet floor....feeling the first drops touch you like no one and nothing ever can...tender yet cold?
Feeling it trickle down your neck, your body, touching your gentle face?
And the warm air mingling with a hint of a shiver?

Do you still hear the songs on the strong monsoon wind ?


Have you ever tried seeing the world from behind wet eyelashes?
Looking out to see the azure blue sea turn deep and uniform grey....
Like someone's beautiful grey eyes you think you once knew long long ago...looking out at the endless horizon, both distant and near?
Have you seen the ends of the world shrink before your very eyes as the grey skies bend down to kiss the grey sea far far away?

Have you ever heard the sea sigh with some silent grief, long forgotten by the white shores?
Feel it breathe a deep, heavy breath with you?
Have you ever felt the yearning of the white waves as they wash upon the yellow sands- the yearning to be here and somewhere else?
Do you also hear their call...to be wet, to be cold, to be free, to fly on the sea's gales, to be wild, to be just yourself?

Have you ever felt them beckon you...body, mind and soul?

But then,....

.....have you ever felt any of that while you stand all your life by the window ........ never trying to get wet?

पावसाचे गाणे...

किती छान पडतो रात्रीचा पाउस... कधी शांत, कधी वादळी पण नेहमी मनस्वी...

एखाद्या मृगनयनीच्या डोळ्यांइतके काळे भोर आकाश... आणि त्यात क्षणार्धात लाखाक्णारे सूर्याचे ते तेज- आभाळाच्या शिरेवर सौदामिनीने रेखलेली ती क्षणिक चित्रे!

दूर कुठेतरी कोणाच्या मृदांगाला जीव आल्या सारखा नाद येत होता. इथे वार्यावर मृदागंधाचा श्वास जाणवत नाही पण कुठेतरी- माझ्या घरी अजूनही वार्यावर तेच अत्तर सांडत असेल ना?

आणि मग एका चापलचरणी युवती सारखी येणारी पावसाची सर! हा क्षण असाच राहावा ही जाणीव होण्या इतकी सुद्धा शुद्ध राहत नाही मनाला.

रस्त्यावर फुलांच्या पायघड्या पडल्या होत्या... आणि पावसाचा एक एक थेंब मल्हारचे सूर लावत होता - अगदी शांत हळुवारपणे उल्घडणाऱ्या गाण्याप्रमाणे- नव्हे! तुलनेत माणसाने गायलेली प्रत्येक नाझुक चीज देखील कानावर हिंसा केल्यासारखी वाटेल इतके शांत सौम्य ते त्या पावसाचे गाणे...


आणि अशा वेळी अगदी धुंद धुंद झालेली रात्र....

कोणासाठी हे सारे? कोणासाठी पडतो पाऊस असा.. कोणीही बघायला नसताना, सार्या इंद्रियांना जाग यावी आणि अनुभवावा असा सोहळा कोणासाठी?


स्वतःसाठीच असेल बहुदा... का माझ्यासाठी?


पाऊस कसा स्वतःसाठीच पडतो? .... रात्र कशी एकटीच धुंद होते...

ह्या पावसात कधीतरी एकटेच ओले चिंब भिजयाचय... पावसाच्या गाण्यात बेसूर होऊन साद द्यायची आहे...

पावसातल्या निलगिरीचा श्वास भरून घ्यायचाय...
एकदा परत कागदाच्या होड्या पाण्यात सोडायच्या आहेत...

एकदा परत ओल्या मातीच्या किल्ल्यामध्ये दिवाळीचे दिवे लावायचे आहेत...

एकदा रात्रीच्या ह्या हळुवार वार्यात स्वतःला विसरायचे आहे...
फक्त एकदा धुंद होऊन जगायचय...

An MBA’s Mother Tongue Part-4

Exhibit No.2:

The author of this post (“me” in English) has used jargon to justify the ancient Japanese kimono as the perfect example of New Product Development. So convincing was the presentation that the professor confessed that the nearly extinct Japanese garment is a beacon of cutting-edge technological innovation. In English, this might be called making a fool out of someone. However, it is truly considered as a matter of perspective.

It has been said that it is such use of jargon that makes the world of business so incomprehensible. However, the world of business is so complex that no one really understands it anyway. Hence, one must has to learn this langue culturel so as to appear to be knowledgeable. The appearance of being efficient, intelligent, truly gifted et cetera are far more important than actually being all of these.

In passing, one must also mention that jargon is not used merely to demystify the complex world of business. It is also used to argue about anything, mask one’s disgust, profess one’s love and even contemplate spirituality!

Here’s an actual example. Readers can attempt to translate it into English.

Exhibit No.3: Religion:

Student 1: What bhaiyya, (a term borrowed by the particular speaker from Hindi) what do you think of Buddhism? I mean, it became like Hinduism in the 5^th Century. Would you consider that as a merger? I think it was a successful acquisition. Lack of involvement on the part of the upper management, no leadership. What do you think?

Student 2: Oho, sirjee! Such ultimate philosophy!(Such terms of respect translate as: “you dumb a**” in English)

Such and other exhibits abound. But this is an blog post; not a dissertation. And as SIBM MBAs, we know how much jargon to use in an article and how much to cram into a dissertation. Hence, I would presently restrict the scope of my discussion.

However, interested individuals can read further samples of this unique jargon dialect in my other published work: “The Optimisation of Forecasting Process for a Computer Manufacturer – a Summer Training Report” and my forthcoming “Six Sigma Dissertation”.

Other excellent examples of SIBM jargon include all the examination papers with A or A+ grades.