Its All Within.

Strong leadership comes from within. When one is in control of one's own life, it translates into better understanding of the external situations and it is when confident decisions are made. 


Internal harmony is achieved by following one's beliefs and not giving up when the going gets tough. Too often people surrender themselves to the beliefs of others and stop being themselves. Or, they seek comfort by aligning themselves to a pre-set notion. A good leader goes out and tries to unravel the complex situations using his/her own judgement and experience. It takes courage to look at tough situations in the eye and believe one would make it. It is where character is formed. The fear of losing is also something which pegs one back. One should not lose sight of perspective. There's a life to be lived. A moment's loss does not mean the end of everything. It is more like a stumbling block and keeping things in perspective acts like a shock-absorber. Also, people who give up too easily or take shortcuts may achieve the short-term goals but are not battle hardened. Grinding it out in the middle inspires confidence amongst those looking up to you and helps garner respect. Respect is earned overtime, through the small things one does which get registered in the subconscious memory of others. 


At the end of it all, those who take the path less traveled may not have it all, but they put themselves in a better position to achieve something others have not and are more likely to be remembered. In this world where everybody looks like a mirror copy of something or somebody else, there is a need for people to stand out and be counted. 

Dear Eyewash, the Anonymous E-Mailer..

Dear Eyewash, 

You've been a regular this past one month and a half and i'l be honest, have rushed to see the mails on news of receiving them. Tabloid stuff. Investigative journalism. Oooooh. Very Nice. However, On the eve of the departure of the Outreach teams, on such a poignant moment, i would like to share my views on a few things. The fingers were itching, cant help. This is my post, not anonymous, and i take full responsibilty for what i write. Have the popcorns ready..

Firstly, "Eyewash" is so passé ! Too much anti-bacterial. Would much rather prefer iWash. Hope you like Apple. Not the fruit. Apple Inc.. ipods, iphone, ipad, get the point? All blockbusters. Sex appeal man. Universal acceptance. Need to reposition yourself.. and dont tell me you're majoring in marketing. would be a let down. seriously.

Secondly, Thank You for the anonymous mail actually. The one mail in which i was a direct recipient. I'm not talking about the contents of the e-mail, just the fact that it was anonymous. Grew up reading Famous Five n Secret Seven and in every second book, there was an anonymous letter. Else, to have lived a life without being a recipient of an anonymous mail would have been so not hip ! (Enid Blyton.. we connect now!)

Thirdly, How about starting a franchise? i mean, in the latest mail, the sender claims to be sending the mail to you as well. You're the Big Boss now !!  Which actually has potential you know. The Placement Cell can connect you, anonymously ofcourse, to various corporates and other B-Schools and the likes,  and the anonymous model can be replicated. You get the recognition. and as the movement spreads, YOU, my dear friend, automatically are an entrepreneur ! How cool is that, huh ?! Our own Julian Assange. Wooopeee! The girls love such guys. Anonymously, ofcourse.

Fourthly, as you would know, i'm jobless right now (Damn you placement cell !) and although when i was younger, i had other interests to keep me occupied, you know - cricket and EA sports and orkut and facebook and going into girls' profiles and seeing their pictures and downloading some of them and secretly wishing one of them was my girlfriend and then occassionly visiting those other sites you know, hehe, yes i know - anonymously, things have changed off late. So, if you have a vacancy, especially proof reading your mails, grammatical errors, making it gender neutral etc,  do drop me an e-mail and i will be happy to be at your service. terms and conditions later. 

Fifthly, i know you would have stopped and listened to conversations, wherever they may be happening, regarding your mails (boost to your ego, eh ;)) and as such, you'd know that you're a big thing now. So, the point being, ever thought of merchandising? Dude,  You're seriously wasting yourself in this 2 year program, you know. I mean, how cool would a black tee look with the words "iWash, do You?".  See.. get the point? 180 senior batch, 180 junior batch + you mentioned Alumni in one of your mails, look at the potential man! Who needs placement!  and we even have Addopensa to print the tees!  Oh wait, Eyewash, Siva.. Damn!

Sixthly, You've become a regular mailer now. Why not put your creative ability to more use and write for Reminiscence? you and the others who claim not to be you but God-damn still mail, do write with passion, i can see. so why not channelize that passion and actually write more. Everybody should write more. On various other aspects as well. Chetan Bhagat's initials translate into Consumer Behaviour. He knew. feel the pulse. You're anonymous man.. not like you're nobody.  Just do it.

Seventhly, Your organisation structure needs refinement. Organise a cell / club. Yup, the Anonymous Club. Chipkao a poster someplace (not the canteen plz, as it is, it gets overcrowded) and ask people to gather at a particular place. And from some place anonymous, note down the names of those who turn up. They're the people who'l be in your club. Hold meetings anonymously - dont tell them the floor, class etc till the very last minute and if you want to go social networking, then Facebook offers you the facility to create secret groups! there's a solution for everything. Can always have your own logo desiging competition you know. 

Eightly, and i'm serious about this.. i want my Email ID in the "Sent to" Field and not in some BCC MCC. Seems sooooo vulgar! Dada comes rushing in asking if i got the mail. i say "Yes", Dada askes : "Where?" , i state "BCC" , Dada goes "Oh Tu hoga BCC, Bhen Di !" :(  And I mean, I like others am a social animal (more on this later) and want to know my importance in your opinion. In the ONE mail in which you had my Email ID in the sent to field, it was AFTER Anuj's ID. Now dude, that hurts! Have you never heard of Inter-Flat rivalry? does it mean nothing to you? Now Anuj, for 3 days teased me about the fact, ok?  And random people get a mention in the Sent To field and not me.. Such a  psychologically demotivating factor!  Do something about it. Pissed off. Bigtime.

Ninethly, At the end of your emails, Puhleez, for God's sake, write Second Year Students minus Raj Shekhar, because seriously, intentionally-unintentionally inferring me as a sender of those horrendously written mails without paying me the loyalty (plus extra for those silly mistakes - sample this, from the mail sent today,  "one dirty wish does spoil the whole pond" !! WISH ?! isnt it supposed to be FISH ?!  Are you a vegetarian or what?) is not making any business sense to me. seriously. 

Tenthly, I hope you're in the Sparsh Club and Join those wonderful wonderful bunch of people as they go around helping others and doing their bit while on field visits and otherwise. Your Mails are about the placement cell and You're concerned about your placements, else you would not have been anonymous. Accept it. So whilst crusading for everything you've mentioned and continue to say, i hope you'l be present at the following event -  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=165853833485671 . Its a Flash Mob, against sexual harassment of women in Delhi Metro and one of my school friends is a co-founder of the entire thing. Awesome people those. So, hopefully, you'l be present at the event and yet not present (anonymously present idiot, duh!) and help in a good cause. Event details on the page itself. 

That is all i have to say. Got some assignments pending. How about an anonymous mail about them someday? you'l get univocal support. my assurance. And yes, if some of the above mentioned ideas appeal to you, or not, you know whom to thank. 

oh, and between me and you, i never knew and had to search to know Eyewash stands for a mild solution for applying to the eyes for relief of irritation etc. Thanks.

The Second Post : Still Figuring Out

Need to work on the titles a wee bit more. Anyways.. blog settings still not optimized.. waking up two hours post noon on a Sunday does little to help the cause. The laptop charger's not working. using a Dell charger on a Compaq laptop. Chinese made. God Bless Them. And to wind up the whining list.. three case studies completed in the last 5 hours - a) Disney in France (Strategic Management) b) Sheth Models (Consumer Behaviour) and c) Cafe Coffee Day (Marketing of services)

Which brings us to the point.. Second year of an MBA, Five months to go before placements commence and how many books has one written?  None. Life has really not progressed beyond Presentations, Case Studies, Project Reports and Group Dynamics. Sad. Even the guy/girl (surely a guy) who wrote the anonymous mail to the batch (read placement cell) had something in mind and went for it. And Thank God for that, else to have lived a life without being a recipient of an anonymous mail would have been so not hip (Enid Blyton.. we connect now!). However, On the lower end of the optimism pyramid, all those hours OF Blyton and Hitchcock and Doyle and the ad nauseum Forensic shows on telly have come a cropper. Seriously, on a personal front.. an absolute failure. To have narrowed down the list of suspects to 4 guys.. FOUR! guys is just so not happening. Even Boycott's mum could have done better. Hurts.


The fourth day at Lords ended. Final day, India require a further 378 to win with the Wall and VVS at the crease. Others to follow include Gambhir, Tendulkar (100th century in a fighting cause? .. ahaan!) , Raina and Dhoni. No or 1 wicket in the 1st session and a draw would be realistic. Tough day beckons.. the 1st test of an away tour has always been our problem.

Thirdly, in a casual conversation, a friend asked if one gets the time to apply all the marketing concepts in a real world environment.. what with the narrow field of work more often than not ensuring less flexibility in ideation and application. Will reserve my own comments for later, for life has been mix-and-match so far and with work life starting in a few months' time, this probably is not the time to change the optimistic view on the subject matter.

adios.

The First Post is a Re-Post.

Second go at Blogging. The First Account remains, with words written for and in a bygone era. People following it are no longer in touch and neither the account with which it is linked accessible. 

This being a trial blog entry, (two hours gone, still personalizing the settings, not satisfied..) .. re-posting an earlier incident. The following real incident was written as an email to a friend on the 19th of September, 2006. Both friends still in touch. Emails to friends do not always follow the rules of grammar and syntax, hence occasional lapses may be excused. 

The story starts thus ...

"Saket's papa is on bedrest for the past month and a half due to a slipped disc in his back and on the fateful day it so happened that saket and his brother were quarreling over some personal matter of which i have no information as such but which his father apparently came to know and as is usual in such cases scolded the elder brother which due to some odd twist of fate happened to be saket at that moment...  ( i assume you would be familiar with the - ' bada bhai getting the scolding in fights between the two brothers ' syndrome since i remember, i read somewhere you have an elder brother by the name Shekhar..)
   

Getting back to the story , saket felt he was wrongly charged with an offence with he had not committed and believed that his brother should have been the one to have got the punishment , quite contrary to the  muhawara  - " ek haath se taali nahi bajti " . so saket got angry and according to eye-witnesses proclaimed in a voice mightier than that of Julius Caesar that the time had come when he could not stay in the house anymore , much to the surprise of everyone who had expected at the most for him to say he was hungry , as is usual in such circumstances. what happened next is definitely not for children and requires an 'A' certificate for public knowledge ... saket threw his money , purse , and everything he had on, except for his clothes, for he said it all did not belong to him  and said he was leaving the house right then when his mother reminded him that the clothes he was wearing was also given to him by his parents and was not his ... to which saket replied that if they ( his parents ) wanted his clothes , they could file a court case and the law would take its course , and ,  saying thus he went out of his home and decided he would go towards the ' Chirayinyatand Bridge '  and would walk all the way to Ranchi .. and the journey he would have most definitely undertaken had his mother not gone to the balcony , seen saket going towards the bridge and at the top of her voice shouted to him that since he was leaving home ...he might as well bring back some medicines for his father as the shop was in that particular direction. Now anyone who's known saket for the time we've known him would definitely know that asking him to do something when he's in that sort of a mood isnt the most brilliant idea since Edison invented the electric bulb - which our  G.K. book would make us believe.   Saket , thus , forfeited his plans of going towards the bridge and instead , changing his route ,  proceeded towards " Gandhi Maidan "  where , on the way , he met one of his uncles who apparently gave him the evil-uncle-look and asked the question which everybody on this planet and beyond dreads when he or she or he-she-combined ( you know what i mean ) is running away from home ... he asked saket where he was headed to ... to which saket replied , rather cunningly , that - " bas yahin aage jaa rahein hain ...aate hain thodi der mein " and hence , having saved himself from the verbal missile of a question from his uncle - who , according to saket , appears to  pop-up only when such important and historic decisions are made in his household , saket marched on towards his immediate goal of reaching Gandhi Maidan before deciding on his next logical and sensible step.

        Now for part 2 of the story and time for a much needed paragraph change..

So , saket marched on towards gandhi maidan - the place where in the year 1946 , my maid's grandfather fought the british with his bare hands with only his will power and courage to uplift his spirit.  of course , he wasnt much successful and ended up wasing their plates - from where the legacy continues till date . Saket on reaching the maidan had stopped only for a bare minute or two when his inner voice somehow told him ( and this does not happen often unfortunately ) that were he to not return till dark - return home obviously , the first place the search and rescue team would arrive , would be this place indeed and hence while comprehending this rather scary thought ... saket decided that the best thing to do would be to leave the place at once and hence he circled the circumferece of the maidan twice  [circumference = 2 * ( 22/7 ) * r ] before setting out for the Digha route from Gandhi Maidan , where on the way lies institutions of great public interest as the "Magadh Mahila College" - where a pretty young damsel named Falak Naaz studied till a few days back and on whom our hero had a gigantic crush - the sheer magnitude of which a mere mortal cannot comprehend . the next historic monument in saket's voyage happened to be the great Gol-Ghar , where saket had a rather private and enriching moment when he relieved his body of the toxic fluids which had , due to some strange reasons , accumulated in his body - his urethral sac to be precise . Of course , the gol-ghar has seen much better days in its lifetime , of great national importance , but the fact that our idol had refused the warmth of his home , shunned all material possessions and gone out never to return , with only the Person Above to look after him , was no mean feat in itself , and which made the designs made by saket by spraying the fluid on the walls of the gol-ghar assume significant importance in the context of the situation.

Saket , having thus cleared all these minor obstacles , continued in his path to glory till he came to a place where the Boring Canal road going to Raja Bazaar meets the road going towards Digha from Gandhi Maidan ... the time when his eyes informed his brain that the hut-looking-thing in front of him resembled a holy place . saket refusing to believe the message forwarded by the brain to his soul , violently shook his body , which was when things became clear and he saw that the holy place was none other than a cigarette shop and saket cursing himself , for he had thrown all his money infront of his mother , searched his pockets in pure hope, when he discovered that somehow, a Rs. 2 coin was nestled safely in the depths of his huge pockets and thus , thanking the Lord , he proceeded to buy a cigarette and after spending 15 minutes sitting besides the shop , puffing , our hero marched on through the various lanes present in the path till he found that he had approached the institution where , unfortunately , none of his past girlfriends had taken admission - Notre dame to be precise . saket moved on from there , all the while surveying the various shops in the area and also noticed  a fair of some sorts in the area ... noting down the names of the 3 restaurants in the vicinity where he thought he'd like to come later in his life and fulfill his monstrous appetite . saket  passed the lane in front of mrinal's house and walking all the while came to Mings Chimney ... where he asked a gentleman the time at that moment and got the reply that it was 8:30 in the night . feeling his entire life in front of him - beckoning him , the lone crusader strolled away into the darkness on the Main Boring road till he came to where the lane turns for Children's Park . saket sat on a cement store's steps when he thought about visiting ' Down City ' - the place of pilgrimage for the now separated-by-distance couple X, and subsequently , frequently visited by the present in-town couple Y.  Having thus visited the place and finished thinking about the various possibilities in the place concerned , saket moved on, turned right from Boring Road chauraha and came to ' Pant Bhavan ' - when he decided the next best thing to do would be to go towards Aashiana but when he had walked for about 10 minutes or so in that direction ... he realized that it wasnt exactly the place he wanted to go - his first miscalculation since morning.  saket retracted his steps and instead walked towards High Court when, on the way, something told him ( his inner voice i presume , only he wouldnt confirm ) that his journey of a thousand miles would ultimately end at the place where , ironically , it had started - yeah , you guessed right - his home,  and having thus after being hit in the face with this, the reality , saket , as confused as a baby in a topless bar ( not my quote - Siddhu's quote ) .. about his deeds since the morning, decided to  (surprise! surprise!) head home - walking all the way to station road till he ultimately reached his place of growing up.. at 9:50 P.M. , just as his 'bade chacha' was about to file a police report - at the Gandhi Maidan police station which his chacha had searched thrice since our Sakku had gone out to see the world ....

 what happened next ... you just as well might ask him because moi fingers have become sausages, for the story isnt complete yet and without knowing the full details of the event.. there IS no closure :).  so, till saket narrates the rest, its adios from yours truly."