w bankers

In a Q and A with the Guardian, Douglas Copeland is asked what makes you depressed, and his answer is Boring people who have money.

Here is my theory about bankers and consultants (and of course all my friends are excused here as am I, having been one of these people and contemplating returning to the profession).

These people have too much money and too little time. They are by definition risk-averse, and also less motivated by social causes. They also have few interests outside of work besides purchasing larger homes and more luxurious holidays. (In fact, all that bankers do besides talk about work is to talk about their holidays in which they sleep besides the pool in some exotic location). Finally, and worst of all, their thinking is limited, box-like because that is how they are trained to think. By rejoining these professions, I would be losing everything that is unique about myself, or that forms a self-identity.

Sigh. If only choices were as simple as the above. Went to a reception last night at the Massachussetts State House (yes, the building of the golden dome for those who have watched the Departed) and it was bland and boring, so I got drunk on the free wine. Thrashed out in a drunken state the night prior, a memo on private operators of public infrastructure, which was rather a decent effort.

Am flirting briefly with the idea of doing a doctorate in English. Please someone, hammer some sense into my head before I become TOTALLY un-employable.

choices

On the whole job nightmare, I was talking with H.
" So I want to work for a nonprofit, preferably Teachers without Borders but I can't afford to pay off my loans on a salary of X, and so my plan is to write a best selling novel by May, get a massive advance and do that. After all, B and D spent their summers writing their novels. D's book is a horror story with a moral overtone, and B's book is autobiographical. How hard can it be? Then I can go to Cuba and teach salsa dancing which is what I really want to do".

Ah. Choices.

teaching

Am bleary eyed after marking 113 finance problem sets. Its 2am and of course I left it until the last possible day before it was due. It was an interesting exercise, but if I ever mention that I ever wanted to go into teaching, somebody please do me (and the world) a favour and shoot me and leave me for dead. I NEVER want to repeat this. Having said that, there were a few bright moments. Bearing in mind that this was entirely a quantitative finance problem set, here were some smart (aleck) comments that students made and handed in! (Aside: its amazing how students get excited by tangency points i.e. every time there is a curve and a tangent to the curve, the tangency point must be the answer to every question!).

I tried but I do not understand at all what this question is talking about. Please go through this in class.

I am confused. Hence the question mark instead of an answer.

and my favourite

If only I can understand the English that is being used, I could at least make sense out of it. It sounds gibberish to me and I am not sure that I can begin to make sense of that sort of English. Thanks for your time.

the divine mr. northam

So after reading Possession and recalling that the image of Ash has become inevitably intertwined with the image of a rather ravishing Jeremy Northam playing the same in the film adaptation (particularly the description in the book of a 'feral male') I embarked upon an English period film watching phase, successively blowing through the Austen adaptations of Sense and Sensibility (rather good with the very British Emma Thompson executing repressed passion rather well) and then Emma with Paltrow (insipid and boring) and the divine Mr. Northam. (I was in a terrible Northam phase years ago after the release of the incredibly romantic sci-fi thriller Cypher and even hunted down the Golden Bowl which was ghastly. But in Emma, he is simply debonair, sweet, English and rather appealing in all the best senses of the word. If there is a classic cry of why is this actor so underused, then it is for him.

time

I shall snatch this day from the gods and damned be the consequences.

possessed

I went on strike yesterday and simply turned the alarm off and refused to go to school, cancelling at the last minute classes and meetings. It was simply imperative. I unpacked my newest sage green sheets, woven thick and warm, and unravelled my bed accordingly and when it was done, it looked like fields of rice. And I scrubbed the bathroom clean, hands and knees, and washed my hair and drowned myself in lotion and then lay on the bed and finished reading Possession, the American edition (of which must has been written about, but its true, Roland now has an "amused smile" that "arouses"- the character was deemed too unsexy for American readers and subsequently revised in the American edition). The rain pounded away, it was a dark night in Massachussetts all around and perfect for reading. Went to a party, came back drunk and continued reading. I baked brownies and the tray was left in the hall to be ravaged by passing hordes of graduate students. It was glorious (I even cleaned my shoes) though now, I am irrevocably behind.

HermitIsland, Maine

We went camping, the whole crew, C, M, B, H, A and I. S couldn't make it, but we wrote in the sand on the water against a sunset, Bite Me S and sent him the photo via my blackberry. Trekked on a trail along cliffsides and saw the sea, the Atlantic, churning against black rock and silica for two hours. Boiled lobsters on our campfire, wincing as we stuck them live and wriggling in the pot. We stood along the pot and gave them an elegy though. Then took the JD out to the sand, a few metres from our tents (I pitched a tent!) and under the moonlight, talked without agenda or burden. Slept in our tents as the Maine winds howled across the dunes. In the morning we rose to the dawn and made campfire bacon and eggs and potatoes, went shell-picking and prising barnacles off the rocks and watching them wince. Read poetry standing on top of the rocks far into the sea. And everything was right with the world. Then we piled into the car and drove back to Boston with the windows down and the song from the JC Penney Sweater Commercial on high and repeat. A brief moment, snatched from the jaws of time.

unrelated things

"And ever has it been, that love knows not its own depth, until the hour of separation", -Khalil Gibran

I was talking to C today, a person who makes the darkest day glow with laughter.
"I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to apply to all these damn corporate jobs because I feel like I should, and I have loans and debt and when I finally I get my offer letter, after having gone through anal probes and coma-inducing case interviews, I'm going to look at it and then look at my wife and she'll say "Is this what you really want to do?" and I'll die a little bit inside and take the job".

youth?

What happened to our youth? What happened to lugging around dog-eared copies of Catcher in The Rye, quoting Shakespeare, spending hours in couches in Starbucks intellectualizing poverty? What happened to the urgent necessity to enter new worlds, be disruptive forces, change an order, to be giants in a field?

losing

I just wanted to say that today (roughly) marks the end of 1 year in the States. I would like to commemorate it by listing the following things I have not lost AT ALL!

a. ATM card. (Average loss of twice a year- to three times a year).
b. Mobile Phone (average loss of also twice a year)
c. Pen (Average loss of about five times a year). I have not lost this pen AT ALL. I only own one pen so it would be a disaster if I lost it.

I have also recently acquired a blackberry. Game over.

The Journey By Mary Oliver

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save

pathetic!

back stateside and OMG as a dear friend would say. The pace has consumed me already. Still haven't unpacked, everything is in a mess, and away this weekend and another dear friend is in town tomorrow for a few days and OMG. Such is the pathetic state of affairs that I am reduced to ordering underwear online. Irretrievably sad.

perhaps all true desire is illicit

back in beantown

Back in Boston and oh so blue! The only thing that redeems it is J coming to town and R potentially getting her act together to come to town too... Otherwise it looks like a long dreary fall ahead weather wise. Class wise, I am determined to learn something, against the odds this semester so am going to focus on infrastructure, trade and the Middle East as well as a Start a Biz in a Developing Country. Its 30 celsius here so at least the weather is holding up. Feeling decidedly antisocial and not going to the usual round of parties celebrating the return of school. Oh, I'm decidedly getting older... SIGH!

enthee-yah.

So. One more day left and what are the things I am going to miss about India and not miss? Here are the moments.

Missing (terribly)
a) I never thought I would say this of all things, but I will miss the heat that sticks to you like silk, that smothers and frees.

b) The autorickshaw wallahs and the conversation about life, the movies and politics (in that order).

c) The television channels full of random masala songs of half naked women and men with brains the size of their pecs all in high-gloss high-blare fashion

d) The people, hospitality, kindness, graciousness, everything that is South Asian and Indian.

e) The food. Searing curries, larger than life organically grown vegetables (a tomato that tastes like a tomato, chicken that's been reared on whatever chickens eat in the wild)

f) Last, but not least, the head wiggle. Enough said.

Things I will safely un-miss until the next time

a) The pollution. Thought Colombo was bad but India takes it to another level.

b) Idlies. I hate the damn things and will not miss them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

c) The redefinition of customer service. You know what I mean.

d) The revolution that the human body is capable of staging in India (i.e. the various things I have fallen ill with in such an impossibly short space of time). It is amazing biologically what can happen when things go wrong with the body. Emotional angst is no comparison to physical pain.

e) the total lack of privacy.

tamil cinema

Iconic moments in tamil cinema

« I’ve been thinking about number one most iconic moment for a long time. In my mind, it has to go to Nayakan, and the last scene, when he dies, shot, in a Godse-like moment, by his disciple, a child he had brought up himself. He dies, falling face forward, with his hands up, asking for forgiveness, that a court of justice has already given him, but God may deny him. And in that moment, his life is narrated in flashback, the compromises he has made, the soul he has sold in order to gain power and dispense his moral version of justice to those who are unprotected. Was it worth it? Was he right? Do the wheels of justice grind slow but exceedingly small?
« Number Two. Another Kamal Haasan moment. In Salangai Oli, when the woman he has loved has had her deserted husband come back, and his love is never spoken. And he turns to drink and his extraordinary talent is driven to waste. And on the plank of wood, above the well, he dances in the rain to one of cinema’s most evocative songs, and says, never expecting to see her again, naan vallkaiodu kovarm ellai, annal kaathal ennai kaathalikavillai. (I am not bitter with life, but love did not love me back). And she comes out in the rain, bereft and she extends her hand, and there is a flash of lightning and he sees her.
« Number Three: When Devaraj, the minor don asks Rajnikant (in the single best role in his life followed, perhaps by Baasha), why? Why did you give up your brother, your mother for me? Why? And he says, because you are my friend. And chills go down the spine. It is a very Lutheran stand: Here I stand, I can do no other. And it is both obvious and astonishing at the same time.
« (In the same film, is another moment, when Shobana tells him that her father wants to marry her off to someone else. And he asks, angry, was I the one who came and said I liked you? And he’s shouting at her, and she’s crying and she leaves him, walking through the cavern of two rocks, and she doesn’t turn back, and all his anger is a mask for how utterly bereft he is, sitting there as she walks away from him. )
« Great dramatic comic moment: In Agni Natchathiram, when Karthik is loafing, sitting smoking, one leg up on the parapet, arm lazily over an upraised knee, a leg dangling downwards, just loafing basically and Nirosha pulls up in her car, dressed in a tribute to Marilyn Monroe, and she leans over her steering wheel, with her dark skin setting off the white dress and hair cascading and mouths I love you. And he is so shocked, he nearly falls off the parapet and is like telling his friends and then she zooms off in her car and he gets on his motorbike and follows her (which is a funny twist on the typical guy going: I love you for no rhyme or reason).

Others?

seamus heaney

from his Nobel Prize lecture

One of the most harrowing moments in the whole history of the harrowing of the heart in Northern Ireland came when a minibus full of workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to line up at the side of the road. Then one of the masked executioners said to them, "Any Catholics among you, step out here". As it happened, this particular group, with one exception, were all Protestants, so the presumption must have been that the masked men were Protestant paramilitaries about to carry out a tit-for-tat sectarian killing of the Catholic as the odd man out, the one who would have been presumed to be in sympathy with the IRA and all its actions. It was a terrible moment for him, caught between dread and witness, but he did make a motion to step forward. Then, the story goes, in that split second of decision, and in the relative cover of the winter evening darkness, he felt the hand of the Protestant worker next to him take his hand and squeeze it in a signal that said no, don't move, we'll not betray you, nobody need know what faith or party you belong to. All in vain, however, for the man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple, he was thrown backward and away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably, of the Provisional IRA.
*
It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power. I remember, for example, shocking myself with a thought I had about that friend who was imprisoned in the seventies upon suspicion of having been involved with a political murder: I shocked myself by thinking that even if he were guilty, he might still perhaps be helping the future to be born, breaking the repressive forms and liberating new potential in the only way that worked, that is to say the violent way - which therefore became, by extension, the right way. It was like a moment of exposure to interstellar cold, a reminder of the scary element, both inner and outer, in which human beings must envisage and conduct their lives. But it was only a moment. The birth of the future we desire is surely in the contraction which that terrified Catholic felt on the roadside when another hand gripped his hand, not in the gunfire that followed, so absolute and so desolate, if also so much a part of the music of what happens.

lage raho munnabhai

Absolutely astounding. Sweet, sentimental, hilarious, true, inspirational, lovely and utterly Indian in all its sensibilities. Watched it last night, seamless blending between humour and poignancy, between love, devotion and of course Gandhianism. And Sanjay Dutt, truly exceptional and sweet in a comic/villain type role. Welled up at quite a few moments, for a comedy that I thought was going to be totally disastrous. Particularly touching was the sidekick, proving that old tales can be continually rejuvenated if done right. And so sad too, this man, condemned to six years in Arthur Road Jail, Mumbai, for illegal arms possession, this man who, despite his imposing build, would not hurt a fly or so it seems. Some people are just cursed, whatever they do.
Can't wait to watch the first Munnabhai M.B.B.S.

ending

"Happiness is when what you think, and what you say, and what you do, are in harmony" Mahatma Gandhi

I wish someone had told me that earlier. But I feel like the orthogonal change in my life is somewhat progressing towards this truth. I only wish I had more diligence and discipline to chart it so.

Only two more days to go in proper employment and then freed, again, to travel, to rest, to learn and to think.

I never promised you a rose garden.

hmm.

Sometimes, all the hoopla disappears, the bustle and noise recedes, and the streets are quiet, as though a bombing just happened and a curfew had been announced. But its only Independence day, and millions have left the capital, to make pilgrimages to holy sites, to sit, enjoy and be at peace. And the silence is restful almost, just as it should be after a week of travelling cross country and beyond. The summer is drawing to a close, with only 3 short weeks to be spent backwater-hopping in Kerala with the fam, and then back to school, and all that that represents. I feel as though my heart has slowed down here, even though my body has been busy, and even though I haven't had a moment to myself really for more than a day. Its been good. Filling up the silences has been good, and things have healed. Or are beginning to. I don't know what the coming year will bring, but I am sure things will come together. It always does, right? Oh 20th of August.