Intolerable

Such a strange phenomenon this is, that we live in a society to be surrounded, hoping to be at the center of everything and we simply fail to do so. After a certain point of time, it becomes simply impossible to adjust and even the best of the people become intolerable. After all you are just bored of them paying attention to you and they are bored of you paying attention to them. After a point of time it is just, you can say, listen to me because I am smart and I don’t want to listen to you, you boring brat. 

That is an error when people call in for a social structure. There is no social structure, it is a bunch of attention seeking losers, who come together and amongst them they intend to prove their stardom and if there is someone who can raise that spirit of human nature, then it turns out to be the bond of friendship. There is no bond of friendship that exists as such. It is the selfish gain and, sort of, proof of existence for which people look out for. Or else, precisely speaking, there is specifically no need for anyone else to be there.

And that is beginning of the inheritance of loss. After a point of time, one realizes, that people around cannot pay attention to him, and hence it is useless to be with him or her. He is hurt, and hence, in order to achieve pleasure and that is a sad thing to do, he hurts others. Thus the society begins to fall, everyone intends to irritate others, and take pleasure in doing so, and because someone’s gain made him the center of attraction it becomes difficult for others to digest the fact that someone else is more successful, or rather happy.

In that jealous filled subconscious lies the poison that kills the humanity and that’s where I tend to come in and see the disaster unfold itself. It is quiet easily observable that every space, whether it is work or personal, people tend to progress because of this, delaying work and throwing responsibilities on someone else's shoulders and ultimately blaming each other for irresponsibility.
Or is it the outcome of the sum total of the sadness in our lives, because most of us do not know what we have to do really? Or is it because we grew up seeing such huge amount of sadness that we simply tend to accept it as a part of our own proud heredity? In any of the cases, we have a laughable thought process, overtly violent, excruciatingly sad and overwhelmingly silly. How clueless we are that we just don’t intend to, improve anything. Not even our sensibility.

All our needs and desires have come about on the mentality of showing off. Irrespective of how preachy someone can be, it is an ultimate reality that every action is executed in such a manner that people notice and doers do not die unnoticed.

For whatever reason, we must understand that most of us have grown up into monsters who simply take pleasure in eating up the people around, not realizing that there will be no one to pay attention to them for which they have grown up to such massive scales in such an ugly fashion. For the rest, perhaps we all would continue to be intolerable.

Kavita

 कविता

एक छंद में रोक था
दुसरे में हंसी
तीसरे में तकलीफ
चौथे में मुस्कान
पांचवे में उदासी
छंठे में समझदारी
सातवे में नासमझी
बस यूँ ही एक से दुसरे में
बहते गए हम
कही खोते गए हम
उन छंदों में
इन्ही छंदों से बनी
कविता की पंक्तियों में
सांस लेते है हम
और उतने ही सौम्य
एहसास से बनी है
हमारे हयात की कविता ||

Defining incompetency

Almost 10 months, I have been here (in HCL), and I see people coming to the office, working and leaving. They have been disappointed, happy, angry, satisfied sentimental etc. What I never understand is, how come people so easily put a label whether someone can work in a particular project or not.

When I was in class 10^th in 2005 I had a teacher who told me the question paper pattern, there were 2 markers, 4 markers and 6 markers in my mathematics exam. While 2 markers summed up to 20 marks, 6 markers totaled to 30 marks while the rest 40 marks could be obtained by 4 markers. Needless to say marking of a question was done on the basis of difficulty levels and hence maximum part of the question paper was consumed by the 4 markers. Or, the question paper was designed to attain an average difficulty level. Simply speaking, it targeted an average student.

That chunk of average students went on to become employees in different places and they grow up into mighty professionals, as all of us call it. How does an average student become competent or is defined competent is an issue and I am concerned. Because being jobbed is stepping inside a chaos, cluelessness an utter mess of ideas where people speak just to show that they are working but at the core level all those plans are just hogwash, and ultimately tasks are executed on a hit and trial level, not that I am complaining, ideas are outputs of mistakes.

A bunch of kids, step out of their schools enter the market with boards saying, engineers, graduates, mathematicians, scientists needed. While very few are very sure of what they want, and they have always been a creamy layer wherever they go, an average student is one who sees those 60 marks in that examination where he can just avoid a fail grade and if possible, distinction. He doesn’t care whether he is growing or learning that subject because he, as an average student, is plain clueless and is studying and learning for the heck of it.

Once a kid finds a job and is unable to relocate the direction where he can work sincerely, he is accepted on his qualification which is as misleading as his cluelessness. But he accepts it, for the sheer thought of having an opportunity that promises something, sometimes the whole experience of being a professional. But there the biggest problem begins, in that frenzy offers are not accepted, but instructed. Instructions are followed, deadlines are met. But what cannot be achieved is dedicated participation. A normal guy, in his cluelessness, would simply say yes as he has always done, first in front of parents, then teachers, then bosses. In such a fascist system, the whole point of choice is lost. All that remains is finding a way out. How far, is a different problem altogether.

If passing an aptitude test, and joining and clearing an engineering course is sufficient to satisfy a criteria for doing a job then how one can say that person ‘x’ is incapable of doing something? In case he is capable, and he is reluctant in doing it, then how does the organization drive his/her interest in doing it? If the organization feels, that it has checked and all the formalities have been done, still someone is not productive, and then is it always wrong on the employees end? Is everything perfect there?
So all we have is people, a whole lot of them who are clueless, capable, uninterested, imperfect, desiring, lazy, angst ridden, ambitious etc, etc and etc. Now you put them inside an office, and they are capable, you mould them or force them, either they do it anyway, irrespective of it being right/wrong/poorly/brilliantly, or, they don’t, at all. But does that mean they are incapable? Do they deserve de-motivation? Can someone put a label on someone that this guy cannot do a job and throw him out? Because that label of so called incompetency he/she carries, affects a lifetime. Because someone is not interested in doing what you offer doesn’t make him/her incompetent and the one who issues such an instruction, and that is done after events of humiliation, is, in my book, one with lack of regard and empathy and such an action is perhaps least humanistic measure taken. Perhaps, the one doing wrong should be motivated enough to discover what is right for him/her and inspired appropriately and fueled with sufficient confidence that he/she steps out on his/her own and that will be right, both for the organization and the employee. Perhaps then evolution shall begin or else it is possible that running inside a mess, objectives are, resources are, productivity is and, what fears me most, hope is lost.

Because that would be a catastrophe of the highest sort, an unbearable one, one that cannot be corrected. And anyone who can see, hear, breathe or most importantly feel is not incompetent, because someone is not interested in doing what one has to offer, but is doing because of several uncountable constraints and is forced to do so, and is then blamed for incompetence doesn’t make him/her one and no one can call someone inside a meeting room and de-motivate, because that, I can guarantee, will only and exclusively reduce productivity and garner losses.

Mobile Internet-ed!

Inside an auditorium, before a standup comedy act, that was scheduled on Friday evening, a guy was shouting, without intervals “Check the stage, we have red curtains ready? Sound equipment has to be sound or no sound will be clear, can you hear what sound that equalizer circuit is making, and is it a sparking sound?” “Oh ho, the only sound that I can hear is yours”, the technician who was working on the equipment replied to shut the coordinator up. The preparations were all right, 65-70% tickets were sold, and that meant success. 

By 7:15PM seats were occupied, the show was scheduled to begin at 7:30. It was a weekly show, at an auditorium, near Churchgate in Mumbai. Every week people would come and enjoy. The good thing about the show was, only organizers earned money, performers did it for their own personal satisfaction and charged nothing. They had their day jobs; it was their hobby, basically. So, it wasn’t unusual that every time someone new used to perform, but organizers were careful enough to choose the good ones.

Today’s first performer was primarily working as a manager for a risk analysis team for a multinational bank. He came on stage and started, as the red curtains pulled up, and the mike was visible a man in black suit with a grey neck tie and a white shirt wearing a pair of glasses came and smiled and greeted the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to TryHardToLaugh.com, yes, you can access this website through your mobile phones, but after my performance is over. Thanks. My name is Ramesh Krishnamoorty, no need to google it, as the first result you will find is Kavita Krishnamoorty with a link saying she married Musician L. Subramanian in November 1999. Of course it will be a wiki page. So I advise you to turn off your GPRS connection, or 3G whatever you are using to access data over the internet, because it will keep you distracted from my performance.” 

“The guy in the 3^rd row 5^th seat from the right hand corner is looking at me and giving me a weird expression, I think he is thinking, dude, I bought the tickets to your show through that. Well sir, I agree and I am thankful for that, but I sincerely don’t want you to steal my lines of this performance and put them up as your status update and get loads of likes and retweets”. 

“I personally hate mobile internet, you know, it takes away a lot from your life, for example…….. Girlfriend”

“Unfortunately I faced it. She found her college sweetheart, from Sweden, and she dumped me, because that guy turned out to be an engineer and I was a risk analyzer. So, that guy located her through her sort of Blackberry Pin and convinced her that I might be looking for and avoiding risks in our relationship.”

“Don’t look at me people, I am not sure how does living in a relationship poses some sort of a risk, and I am still wondering how engineers can do anything. So yes coming back to my point, mobile internet, and I want you to disconnect it. Not a problem if you receive a phone call, that won’t distract me, but in case you have not done what I am saying, you will be distracted for the rest of my performance because I agree there could be funny people in your life and ping you on your whatsapp or iMessage or BBM and take you away from my act and someone’s life.”

“But I found someone too, because of it. I found my new girlfriend because of my phone. And no, I don’t have an app that finds and downloads me a girlfriend. I found her at a discotheque. But I went to the discotheque because my snapdeal app notified me of a free unlimited drinks coupon at this discotheque so I went there and found her. So you can say that I found my new girl friend because I have a phone with internet.”

“So ladies and gentlemen irrespective of how important internet is in your life, and you have the world connected to you inside a tiny device in your pocket, I once again request you to disconnect your GPRS or 3G because I am here in front of you and you do not need to see the live streaming of my performace on TryHardToLaugh.com’s youtube channel”

“Perhaps this is something unavoidable isn’t it. Way too important to put down, after all guilty pleasures can be experienced too. For example saving the extra buck for a text message or avoiding a phone call when you can whatsapp or skype, especially when you have wi-fi somewhere nearby, isn’t it? And that spoils us to an extent that we are forced to have data access one way or the other and perhaps it becomes an integral part of our lives and I can say that I am mobile.”

“Therefore ladies and gentlemen, for the first time tonight I am allowing you to use internet on your phones, because this marks the end of my performance as the next guy would come and take over, but before that I want you to do 2 things, first, if you liked my performance, then please show it on TryHardToLaugh.com facebook page by actually liking it so that other people in your friend list know about us, we need publicity and second, please delete the status updates in case you found any of my lines to be sufficiently amusing and put them up on your timelines, good evening and thanks.”

The red curtain falls as people clap and Ramesh bows.

This blogpost is submitted for Internet is Fun! competition organized by Vodafone and Indiblogger