The Thrill

Be it a vice or a virtue, doing things one is not supposed to be doing gives the maximum thrill in life. When we go to school we are thrilled by the idea of going to college. Similarly, when we are teenagers in college it’s a thrill to work and earn your own money!

Right now I’m supposed to be pushing papers behind a desk, pleasing my boss, preventing mishaps in the office, planning for my future, preparing for mid life crisis and pondering about life in general. If I add up all these ‘P’ words they result in another ‘P’ word called Pathetic. In short, I’m not supposed to be going back to school and that’s exactly what gave me the thrill when I went back to school! Now, a friendly warning to those of you who are thinking of smart-ass questions like “I’m not supposed to punch you so shall I punch you?” or “You are not supposed to be jumping off a cliff so why don’t you?” I already have a smart-ass answer for all those kind of questions. Well, you are not supposed to be asking such questions but you do get a thrill out of asking them don’t you? Ok…I can see you smile!

So back to school it is and I thought I should start this post with a picture of mine from KG class - the first time I really went to school! This is by far my best picture to date :) and if you have not seen this before…. try to spot me and if you are right I promise to buy you coffee and cookies! A big clue would be to say I was the teachers pet. Come to think of it I have always been my teachers pet.... through out my school, college and even while I was doing my CA. However, I don’t think I can claim the same from my Spanish teacher coz I keep asking her the stupidest and silliest of questions and trouble her a lot. It's almost like de..tras de [it's Spanish but read that in Marathi and you’ll know what I mean!].

Zaraland!

From the time I first heard Baccara to the last time Julio sang my ears have always loved the sound of Spanish beats and the language. I also love the accent with which Spaniards speak English. At the back of my mind Spanish was something I always wanted to learn and my recent sabbatical gave me the perfect opportunity to do exactly that.

I started dreaming about a wonderful long holiday in Latin America and Spain where I could speak fluent Spanish. I saw myself seated in a rustic Mexican restaurant confidently rattling off my order of favorite dishes in Spanish! Suddenly there was loud honking and I opened my eyes to the traffic jam in front of Andheri station! The sights and sounds of LatAm had been cruelly replaced by the sights and sounds of auto rickshaws, bikes, cars, buses and every other conceivable noise in the world.

I was on my way to Academia de Espanol my third stop and final attempt to find a decent place to learn Spanish. For a city like Mumbai which is much touted for the endless opportunity it offers my experiences that morning were disappointing. My first stop at a place called Language Lab in front of Bandra station was a total disaster. I was sure that if I enrolled there I would also have to enroll into an anti-depression clinic within a weeks time.

The second stop was in Bandra again at a place called Instituto Hispania. It looked like a decent outfit but I found it to be too rigid. Spain/ LatAm as I know them and as compared to the rest of Europe / North America are quite laid back places. These are places with jolly good fellas wanting to have a jolly good time in life. I also got to see a few students coming out of their classes and they looked too serious to be learning Spanish. When you learn a new language you must feel like you are having fun more so with a language like Spanish. Their timings too didn't suit me. I was left with no choice but to head to distant Andheri.

I arrived at Academia de Espanol around 1 p.m. and met Mr Dinesh Govindani the man behind the institute. I had visited their website and knew that he was a native of Canary Islands before relocating to India. He welcomed me and asked me why I wanted to learn Spanish. After hearing that it was my love for the language plus my plans of travelling to that part of the world he made me feel like I had come to the right place. He briefed me about the course content and I immediately confessed that although my English was not bad my theoretical knowledge of English grammar could only be described by an unprintable adjective. I liked his positive response to this when he asked me to look at the bright side. “You get to learn Spanish and brush up your English grammar for free” he quipped. The thing that impressed me most was the total flexibility as regards timings and frequency of attendance offered at the institute. I was to travel to Bangalore that week and told him that I would most probably be starting after that trip of mine.

Circa Aug 2008, I was back from Bangalore and decided to take the Spanish plunge.

It’s Sept end and I’m almost one month into the course. It’s been an interesting time and in my next couple of posts I’ll try and give you a glimpse of my experiences, my classmates, my teacher et al. It’s Adios until then.

Wrong Term Investor

The current financial earthquake in the world cannot be measured on the Ritcher scale. The only scale to measure it would be the ‘Richer’ scale which is showing every investor poorer than he or she was a few weeks back.

The reason for this is not hard to find. Investors may call themselves short term or long term investors but in the ultimate analysis over 95% of them are just wrong term investors. Being successful in the stock markets is as easy or difficult as going to the gym to lose weight. We all know that it is easier to lose weight than maintain it. Similarly it is much easier to make money than to hold on to it. It is incredible how the question the ‘aam’ investor always asks (irrespective of a bull or a bear market) is - ‘what to buy’? Nobody ever asks ‘What to sell’?

Short term investors become long term investors when the markets go up. They cannot control their greed for making more until the market collapses and once it crashes below their cost they hold on in the hope that they will make up the losses in future! Long term investors invariably end up selling too soon for fear of price crashing. However, when they see the prices continuing to rise after they have sold they cannot resist getting in again to make a quick buck knowing well that the party has to end sooner or later. The party invariably ends sooner than they think it will.

Investors may all have the knowledge, the skills and the brains to make money in the markets but sadly only a minuscule have the discipline to withdraw at the right time. Be it life in general or the bedroom in particular the inability to withdraw at the right time is what leads to maximum pain!

The stock market like the underworld is easy to enter and almost impossible to totally get out of. The best thing to do is to learn discipline more than learning to read Balance Sheets. Discipline in the market for most part consists of having the patience to sit on cash and more importantly the wisdom to cut your losses rather than wait in the hope that someday you might get lucky!

Wife in a Metro

After the “Men in Pink” post I thought guys should get a break! So here goes…

A friend of mine cited the indiscreet comments made by Jaya Bachchan as a perfect example of how wives can put their husbands in a spot. He wondered about the kind of dressing down (pun absolutely unintended) Big B would have given her following the ruckus created by her comments. Now you know how this post was born!

Wife in a metro I hear is so very different from the girlfriend in a metro. When you are her boyfriend all she does about you is brag, brag, brag but once a wife its goes nag, nag, nag. I find this phenomenon extremely contradictory. On the one hand, by marrying you she trusts you with her entire life but on the other she doesn’t trust you to do even the smallest of tasks. When her husband embarks upon any task the first reaction of the wife in a metro will be to presume it will not be done properly. If this makes you think she is a pessimist, think again. Women are much smarter than guys give them credit for. This is no back handed compliment it’s just that she knows the secret joys of pessimism which I recently read. It said “The nice part of being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proved right or pleasantly surprised.”

The grammar change is another intriguing side to the wife in a metro. She always talks in future tense before marriage but post marriage the ‘wife speak’ suddenly changes to past tense. The husband is constantly reminded of all that transpired in the past. Helplessly grappling to deal with all of this the husband ‘bechara’ mentally gets rid of the past and the future and just gets tense!

Though there are many more things which change dramatically after marriage there is one affliction that remains with a woman all her life. These are the two biggest problems every woman has. One, no place in the cupboard and two, nothing to wear!

Despite all of this I have extreme gratitude to all the married women. If it was not for them my married male friends would have never envied the 'single' me as much as they do now ! So here’s a big 'Muchas Gracias' to all you married women out there. To show my gratitude I’ll throw in a helpful tip as well. Remember what Ching Chow says “ The faults a man finds in his wife is probably the reason why she couldn't find a better husband”!

June 9, 2008

This post is a letter I had written to some of my friends exactly three months ago. It's a short summary of a special graduation ceremony I attended on the 9th of June 2008. As many of my friends liked that mail I decided to post it on my blog today and celebrate 90 days (and counting) of glory!

Since I came here (Calgary) all the way from India to be present at her graduation ceremony...it is only proper that I dedicate this mail of 9/6 experiences to Brinda!

She thought we were all making a big deal out of it...but when the ceremony got underway and her name was called... the noise made by the cheering and clapping convinced her it was a big deal :-) She also loved it when they were all told to wave to their friends and family in the audience, as an appreciation for all the support they received in achieving their academic goals.

We kept teasing her all day yesterday that she was the hottest chick in town....the one who made it big with looks and books! My nephew (Brinda's darling hubby) could not help joining us and this would certainly be one of the happiest days of my life...yeah I’m beginning to get a bit sentimental.. well...that's me I suppose.

We got up that morning brimming with anticipation. Gautam was the first coz he had to go to work and could only take the afternoon off for his wife's convocation. The rest of us got up later and were discussing what time to leave and who is to iron their clothes next! The special girl got preference and her new dress was crisp and ready in minutes. We left the house at 12.30 and reached the University grounds by 1 p.m. The ceremony was to start at 2 p.m. and we could see that students were busy getting their gowns and parents/friends busy clicking some warm up photographs. We found decent seats and settled down. There was this big book ....Class of 2008...which had the names of all the students who were getting their degrees that day. We browsed through it and bang on time the ceremony started. It was a grand parade of the faculty coming up the stage and then the students who looked awesome in their gowns taking their appointed seats. Such orderly conduct could have been matched only by a military parade! A band was playing at the back and the whole atmosphere was one of joy and achievement. One could see the unmistakable pride in everyone present there. THE MOMENT had arrived. Parents, Friends, Grandparents (some in wheel chairs), mentors et al waiting for their loved one to come on stage and receive their degree(s).

Our gorgeous young lady was sitting right in the front coz Doctorates were the first to be awarded followed by the Masters and then the Under Grads....[ and yes in that outfit she did look like one of the Harry Potter characters:-) ]

This was my first convocation outside India and it was a pleasure to see the efforts taken by the University to make it a very special occasion. Everyone there had someone who was an achiever and as the ceremony started people cheered each and every student who came to get his or her degree. Some had even managed 2 degrees and a few medals to go with it! Our darling came on stage with her signature springy walk and when she was presented with her doctorate ...at 28 she was probably one of the youngest to achieve that distinction in the University of Calgary. We were busy cheering and clicking photographs and it was a moment dreams are made of...it was a moment I wouldn't have missed for the world...

My message to everyone is..... if you ever get a chance to visit the graduation ceremony of a loved one don't miss it....these are moments that remain with us forever....these are the moments which make life worth living...

It is sad that back home we are so consumed by the academic rat race that we fail to take a few moments and savor the achievements of those who have worked so hard for it...I hope some day we will celebrate academic achievements as much as we celebrate weddings. Personally I consider a convocation one of the most important and joyous moments...even weddings come a very distant second...after all marriages may break or fail but your education stays and enriches you forever...

On that note this is me signing off from Calgary and getting ready to fly back to Mumbai coming Sunday!

Men in Pink

Lately the Chauhans seems to be grabbing my attention. A few days back it was Sonal from the movie Jannat and this time its Anuja Chauhan. Anuja has just released a chick lit book called The Zoya Factor. (“Chick Lit” is a term used to denote genre fiction written for and marketed to young women). While launching the book she specifically mentioned that though it is a chick lit book she would welcome men as well to read it!

Her statement set me thinking. Do men really need an invitation to read stuff meant for women? When I look around me I see them more interested in reading that kind of stuff than they would like to admit!

Although the term convergence is primarily used to refer to technological advances in television, telephony and the internet there is another kind of convergence which is silently taking place. It’s the gender convergence in our society. It’s more seen than spoken about. Men are beginning to sport long hair, wear jewelry, visit parlors, get makeovers…some even love to cross-dress but let that be! Women too love riding bikes, getting wild tattoos and basically do stuff which used to be in the domain of men.

Human behavior in places like lounges, lobbies and waiting rooms are worth noticing. Such places usually have a small collection of newspapers / magazines and turn out to be wonderful places to observe people, especially men! I am often amused how most men would reach for a women magazine say a Femina, Women’s Era etc. If there are people around then it is attempted as discretely as stealing documents from the CIA. If the lounge is crowded then men already reading these magazines will try and swap it for a business or current affairs magazine as soon as possible. I don’t know why men fall shy of accepting these facts of life. One of reasons could be that such indulgence in chick lit materials is often observed as a passing phase in a guy’s life. The end of this phase results either from the satiation of the curiosity element or those attempting to understand women by reading or listening to what women read or listen to just giving up! With the advent of FM radio and the Internet more boys/men seem to be tuning into the just-for-women radio stations or logging into Sunsilk gangofgirls.com which is supposed to be ‘for girls only’!

Gender convergence cannot be classified as good or bad it’s just a part of the evolution of social behavior. What stands out though is the fact that men often seem to be more apologetic about doing things only girls are “supposed” to do whereas girls take pride in doing the “guy thing”. Men would love to spend hours watching Victoria’s Secret or La Perla on Fashion TV but ask them to go and buy some lingerie for their partner and almost all of them will chicken out. Only a fundamental shift in the male psyche can bring about any meaningful gender convergence and as long as you hear even one person say “don’t cry like a girl” instead of “don’t cry like a baby” be sure it hasn't happened.