And that flirty feeling called Happyness…

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

- Abraham Linclon

Few Weeks Ago

Q: What will you do if you set up your own business and run into a loss?

Ans: Sir, I am hard-working, I have never ever seen money, a loss is okay…I will work harder, save some more money and restart my business…

….

Q: Do you also do agriculture? How much land do you have?

Ans: *looks down…blinks for a moment..* looks away towards the wall and says in a low voice… “Around 1 acre... we are tribals... we don’t own any land, I cultivate illegally by clearing some forest land, if there is water…sometimes we lose our entire crop as this is prohibited and forest officers drive us away…”

…

Sukhlaal demonstrating his creations to Marcella
D'souza, Executive Director, WOTR

Q: Why do you want to learn welding and fabrication work?

Sir, there is a person in my village doing welding work and earns decent money, I want to learn to support my family…

Q: Why welding? Why not anything else?

Ans: Sir, Teach me any skills…I don’t mind.. I just want to do a good job out of it and sustain myself and my family. I want to become successful…

The soft spoken Sukhlal had cracked the interview…I somehow liked the guy’s no frills and honest responses. I had done a bit of background check on him prior to the interview, from few of our staffs members (Sukhlal worked as a daily labor in Watershed Development projects)…and was surprised to hear positive feedback about his work commitment. I was however hesitant about his lack of confidence while speaking… he rarely ever looked up: looking down, being soft spoken, giving you an obscene amount of respect- these are some of the characteristics which I always seemed to find amongst the poorest of the poor section of the village communities… 

Sukhlal was desperately struggling under the burden of poverty… needed some kind of a livelihood to survive, to maintain a family of an ailing mother, a young wife and a younger sister…

Once I had completed my interview session with all the applicants, I called the four selected candidates inside the cabin to announce the good news... That they will get an opportunity to train and work with us for a while… that we aim to add skills and provide them designs, technology etc of newer agricultural tools for the village markets…

While I was speaking to the group I realized, Sukhlaal was trying desperately to hold back tears… and then it dawned on me that those bloodshot eyes, and locked jaws were actually a level of determination and desperation which I have never experienced before… I felt a bit ashamed of myself for some unknown reason… 

Post the session, I softly put my arms around his shoulder, and pressed it lightly, as if to assure that all is well…. How was I to know, what would be the impact of this gesture?  Sukhlal for some inexplicable reason broke down into tears…

I am bad with all these tear business; I don’t quite like to see people cry...Especially an adult older than me…. With tears rolling down his eyes, he explained that he has traveled for 8 hrs and 300 odd kms to attend this interview, that he had borrowed money for the bus ticket and did not have enough money to go back home. He mentioned he had no idea how he would pay the highly subsidized course fee for the training, as it was still higher than his 2 months wages…but he kept on assuring me that given the chance, he will do good… 

I am sure these incidences are common to all of us involved in the social sector , but for me it was the first time I was experiencing this… I assured him that we will work something out, that he just needs to report for the training program and made a mental note to check whether some funding was available to provide a scholarship for him…fortunately, I had already arranged for the fares to be reimbursed…. 

I looked at the watch, it was 5:55pm, i packed, put on my jacket and decided to leave the office… all of a sudden the thought occurred to me, that of the 9 candidates I had interviewed, only one had a jacket… 3 of them had come bare foot and they all stayed 5-8 hrs away from Aurangabad…. With limited bus service, I had no clue how they would return home that night and what plans they had to tackle the wintery chill… I breathed a sigh and walked out of the room… head held down….

                                                                                                                                                           

Today:

I visited the training center with my organization lead to check the progress of these guys. I had been away to Mumbai for few days and was going to the training center with low expectation. I was taken by surprise when I reached there… these 11 guys have not only made incredible progress in the last few days, but also looked as happy as a gang of school kids playing football… they proudly displayed to us their creations- stools, farm tools, weeding machines, cutting machines etc…they were making them all and this progress  had taken only in 8 days…

I looked out for Sukhlal and found that he was enthusiastically displaying his shoe rack to my mentor… his posture was erect, voice strong and unwavering… It was an incredible feeling to see these guys hooked onto a dream which I had envisioned 5 months back… to inch towards rural enterprises, to create more job opportunities, to spread more smile…

'Happy'ness is a small word…but it seems to take an incredible effort….

The utter nonsense movie review: Players

For the lack of a better option and blind faith in one of my friends who recommended me this movie, given the fact that I was sick and hence stuck in my office guest house with a pirated copy of this movie…I just managed to play the movie “players” on my laptop today afternoon….

Sunday afternoons should be spent sleeping, but in my case i wasn’t able to manage it, thanks to the incessant bout of coughing and terrible headache… so I sat down to watch a movie which I was told breaks paradigms in terms of style quotient… I am yet to understand which paradigms my friend was referring to…. But I can definitely say  “aab uski kissmat achchi hain ki mein dil kaa achchha hoon” (sorry for being corny) aur else I could have given Mahesh Bhatt his Murder 3 script as well…..

Getting back to the movie review (sic), it starts with an exceptionally lame “grand theft” in a jewelry store; which seems to have absolutely no security features for a store of such grandiose scale, the windows are left open for the convenient entry of a thief and all that. The police for obvious reasons fail to check Bipasha’s bra during interrogation (assuming the cops in whichever country it was, interrogates) for the necklace…  the thieves seem to be a "perfectly in louv" couple who have a pact -not to contact each other 6 months before or after a theft… shucks for their love life…

The scene moves onto 6 months later, where someone is murdered by the Russian mafia in a car accident, that someone had been trying to steal a huge pile of gold from Russia all alone (!), but had realized he can’t do it, hence had shot a video instructing his best friend to complete the task. The video tells Charlie (Junior B) the entire plan of robbery but then Aftab leaves it hidden inside a book which he leaves with his wife, to be delivered post death. Thankfully, once Aftab was hit by the car, he had enough sense to call his sensuous wife and instruct her to deliver the book to Charlie. And the wife of a gangster obviously dosent suspect anything wrong in this “book delivery post death business” and hands it over to Charlie….

After a gobbledygook attempt by the director-duo at some comic relief and humor (!), the scene moves to Victor Dada, who is possibly the most respected criminal ever on cinema…. Not getting into details, Junior B convinces him about his last great robbery as the “non-playing captain” of the team, who will recruit all the best brains/crooks required in pulling off this heist…and yes the Hindustani dil of Victor Dada is on display as he agrees to pull this one off to build that dream school for orphans…WOW! Cool way to convert black money into white… typically, the others members in this “greatest team ever” also have quite a few senti stories which get revealed later…

The plan is not much complicated, the illusionist, the makeup artist, the hacker, the locomotive expert (and part time seductress) and the master of voice modulation and some unknown talent forms the team which can do no wrong. The entire robbery needs to be done in 10 mins. Naturally the Russians hire the most notoriously promiscuous and bar hopping army chief as the man to carry on the job of transporting the gold bullions (for the Govt) from Russia to Romania. Surprisingly the security features in this entire operation is so high that the Govt has advertised its entire security plan on newspapers- openly saying to its Mafia- try me bitch….

But our team of Desis- (remember: the best crooks in the world always come from India) come up with an invincible plan of stealing all that gold. They do their stunts, their illusions and the maverick train rides etc and are then finally required to transport the gold from one train to the other manually. I cant imagine how so much gold can be transported in less than 4 mins?? And I cant imagine how someone can be strong enough to transport so many gold bars at a time…. Hercules- you may be a demi-god.. but Junnior B can beat you any day… anyways gold successfully stolen you feel good and wanna thank gwad the movie has ended…. But then comes that surprise betrayal (sic) another hindi film  classic…

So betrayal, double betrayal, attempt-to-kill, and coming-back-to-life-after-being-shot-to-fire-that-last-2-rounds later you get that much needed intermission. But then it also comes as a shocker- the other half of the movie (read torture) is still there for you to watch…

The least I would like to say about the second half is apparently there are plots, sub-plots and betrayals, repeated all over once again. Sonam Kapoor all of a sudden decides she is her papa’s daughter after all and ends up being a crook wanting to hack almost anything…She even tries to play the seductress unsuccessfully in a sloppy song which I was forced to fast forward… I prefer to look at her pretty face and curly hair in Sawariya (hick) rather than those attempted seduction moves… and all of a sudden before you realized it, the story changes from that of a robbery to one of revenge… shoddy dialogues, Jhonny Lever's buffoonery and 2 firang kids attempting to speak suddh Hindi and display Bharatiya sanskriti doesn’t do enough to sweeten the already sour mood. The movie keeps heading in no particular direction and you start realizing that 2^nd half is a carbon copy rip off of the English movie The Italian Job with a dash of our desi tadka. Bipasha looks like a million bucks, but is evidently a girl who is uncertain about her loyalties (sounds familiar? anyone?)…she even manages to kill herself for a guy she doesn’t louv and considers a looser… yeah-makes sense…*scratches head*…

The movie has innumerable loopholes- more than the number of tears in a Salmaan Khan jeans… no idea how they managed to steal so many bullions in less dan 3.5 mins, no idea how someone manages to buy the most expensive house in d world with ill gotten money without raising any eyebrows, no idea how you manage to create a whole car body out of gold in  a matter of a few hours, no idea why you always need to have chors with a solid 24carat heart, no idea how you can beat an air tight security with just a tanker kinda car in a matter of minutes, no idea why the world best illusionist wanted to use stolen money to create a house where everything is automated- he could have just done so in his illusions or with earnings from magic show  money…. The list is endless… Abbas Mastan actually begs you to believe that you are an idiot for watching this movie… apparently it picks up exactly where SRK left in RA.One and Salmaan in Bodyguard…. 

However, to conclude, I am a bit concerned with this attitude of the Indian filmmakers these days… they are blatantly telling you “I know you are an idiot” and laughing their way to the bank because we agree to them… the only  good part about all this is I end up liking some people just because I get to know I ain’t the only idiot in this world…there are plenty more….

My Verdit: Skip the movie… or skip your sanity while watching it.

PS: you may find the post a bit long and boring...honestly i got bored writing it as well...but trust me, thats wat such movies can do to you...

The DDS post

Jab bhi mein garibon aur bebaso ko dekhta hoon, to mere dil mein eek Aah ki lahar uthti hain…jab bhi unke saath Chai peeta hoon, to aisa lagta hain, ki jaise puri duniya ki mithas isi chai ki cup mai aa kar jama ho gaye hain ;kintu inlogo ko kabhi iska ahsas kyon nahi hone diya gaya ? Ye garib itne rahamdil aur dayalu kyon/kaise hote hain ? 

Fir ye bhi khayal aata hain -

Kya karein ?…. Kaise karein? Saala… kabhi kabhi toh lagta hain ki zindegi bekar hain… itni garibi …hum kaise mitaye aur fir ye bhi dhayan mai aata hain ki… Zindegi naa milegi doobara… mein aur mera Pulsaar aksar ye baten karte hain…

“Ye garibi kaise mitaye? Ye garibi kaise hataye ?”

“Sikhane-sikhane ki khawish lekar inke pas aaye the; par yaha aakar ye ahsas ho gaya yeh to hum logen ke man ka bharnti tha , yeh log to hum logo se kafi upar hain, in garibo ke pas dene ke liye itna kuch hai par hum logo ke pas lene ki shakti hi nahi hai !! Duniyiwalon urf saharwalo Keedo apne char-diwari se bahar niklo, dekho ye log kaise ji rahein hai aur jine ki Mishal ban rahein hain .Unpar haso mat , unpar tarsho mat , yahein woh log hain jo is desh ko chala rahe hain .Tumhare muh mai jane wala ann ka ek-ek dana inke mehnat aur pasino se sinch-sinch kar aata hain. “Tum jise carbohydrate aur protein samajhte ho asliyat mai en garibo ka khun aur pasina hain !! “

Inko leke jo Rajneeti ke roti senke jaa rahein hain… bhrastachar ka achaar banaya jaa rahan hain… yeh kaab taak chalega? Indira Gandi ne “Garibi Hatao” chillate chillate swarg sidhar gayi… abhi Rahul Gandhi  garibo kaa messiah ban gayee hain… lekin pata nahin, yeh garibi ko mitane mein Gandhi parivaar ki kitni peediyaa gujar jayenge… kabhi kabhi toh mein aasamanjaash ki sthiti mein pahuch jata hoon ki yeh log garibi mita rahein hain? yaa badha rahein hain?

Hum toh inhe jeena sikhane aaye the… kintu parantu bandu, abhi lagta haain, ki mere aapne aatma ki suddhi, aur apne jivan ka punarjnaam kar ke wapas jaa rahan hoon…

Note of Gratitude: Thanks to Prabhat Kumar for his enormous assistance and DDS insights in helping me write this, especially in Hindi… this post is not a reflection on people’s poverty and our romanticism surrounding it , it’s just a reflection on our required change in mentality going through this rural immersion phase….

5 reasons why you should join the ICICI Fellows Program-things which no one tells you…

The Applications are open… and we are hiring for the batch three of the ICICI Fellows programme… so if you are a wannabe  Change Maker… an aspiring leader and a socially conscious and mentally stable lost soul in search of that one big dream of yours… its time you apply to the ICICI Fellows programme and TAKE THE BIGGER STEP.. Here are a few reasons, which I feel it good enough for you to leave your dream job or college and hop onto the bandwagon of social change:

1)      Grooming the wannabe Grooms: Yes, you got it right…this program is just a perfect set up for all you wanna be grooms. While the program does talk about Leadership development, management training, experiential learning (all of which is true!), this is possibly one of the most ignored aspects of the fellowship which has never been marketed … incase you are one of those lazy bums, or stinking rich beta who has never washed his clothes, cleaned his room or cooked his own meal….your rural stints will teach you all that and more…most importantly it comes with an overdose on patience and tolerance… and think about it? Which girl wouldn’t want that multitasking guy who can not only lead the family and society, but also do his own cleaning up and washing and cooking and all that. The added USP is that you end up with your patience level touching bizarre highs… as you are mostly gonna be spending days alone in the village with limited exposure to people sharing your thought process, you are by default getting an experience in patience and tolerance at a high degree… 

2)      For those Heavyweights/wannabe lightweights: Wanna lose weight? Have tried gymming, aerobics and all the other mantras with little success? Join our program….. we have a fool proof weight loss mechanism built into the program which you cannot escape… those long walks in your villages everyday in terrains which make all your muscles ache has been customized based on your fat content…in addition, village diet mostly consists of leaf and vegetables and less of those fatty carbohydrates and starch… you are assured that this weight loss program will keep you healthy and fit….

For the fit, ajile and slim (Hritik like) ones… you wouldn’t need to pay your regular gym membership fees to maintain that great physique… it comes inbuilt and free in the program… 

3)      Escape route from that irritating girlfriend: Stuck with that control freak girlfriend? Want an escape route? Want to avoid her till you get your priorities sorted? Sounds tempting?

While the training and classroom sessions are hectic enough to ensure you neglect your social life… the rural placement stints will ensure that you forget it totally… limited cellphone and internet network connectivity will ensure that you can avoid those irritating “I love u bolo naa” calls at ease…and you always have that infallible excuse of “poor network connectivity” to justify yourself… sounds like heaven? Join in and experience it firsthand…. 

4)      Hate managing money? Wanna avoid those high credit card bills? Are you always broke by the 7^th of every month? Are you always getting credit card bills longer than Mamata Banerjee’s political speeches?

For those financial disasters you have so nonchalantly committed it’s time to make amends… your stipend makes sure that it will discipline you of your spending vices and  honestly, you rural settings will catalyze your savings spree…so what are  you waiting for? Forget those long bills and non-sense shopping for the next 15 months…

5)      Nature lovers unite: Are you a nature lover? Do you find pleasure in watching birds shitting from tree tops and smelling gobar in the fields? If yes, you should DEFINITELY join in… infact an incredibly lucky few might even get to answer nature’s calls while in perfect harmony with nature, the  birds, the animals and oh…maybe a few snakes here and there… sounds like bliss? Your kinda game? Do join in and spend the next 15 months in the laps of nature which heals your soul and touches your heart…

If the above reasons aren’t enough for you to think about joining the program… feel free to drop me a note/tweet me/mail me/ fb message me.... lets talk about a career which you never dreamt aspiring for, but will wanna flirt with once you are part of this program…

So what are you waiting for? Take that BIGGER STEP… LEAP… JUMP……. WHATEVER…Just apply here

PS: the above tips are exclusively for male applicants...as i never really understood the female gender... so the only compliment i can provide you is: thanks for making the world so unreasonable and yet so much more beautiful :)

Disclaimer: the above post is only a reflection of the lighter side of the ICICI Fellows program, and does not intend to showcase the program in a negative manner. I believe that all the above experiences have been invaluable to me and is helping in shaping me to be a better person and leader in the days ahead. While applying for the program, getting selected and then joining in have itself been a great journey, I believe that the exposure and experience I have got in the last 5 months will be treasured by me throughout the rest of my life… and ah! yes yes… as we often say… I AM PROUD TO BE AN ICICI FELLOW DESIGNATE…

Incoherent Notes....

I am writing this blog post sitting in the middle of nowhere, in a god forsaken place called Sakur Phata which is right in the middle of Chandnapuri Ghats… while the scenic beauty of the place makes you feel bliss, staring at the naked rocky mountains, soaking in my aloneness, all of a sudden I come to a realization how my life has changed in the last 5 months…

While this post does not want to reflect on any of the heavy dose of Dil-Dimag-Shit which I have been exposed to these last few months, I do want to emphasize on the fact that the fellowship is a life changing experience, much more that what an MTV Roadies could have possibly done for me (hope those 2 baldies with goatee don’t start abusing me in their next episode). Yeah sure, it doesn’t come with the TRPs and the hot babes and the shocking arguments and cheap publicity stunts… however, it does come with dose of reality much superior to what an MTV show can ever cook up. If you think Big Boss house is fun (debarring Sunny Leone ofcourse!) then think again!

Looking back, I would have perhaps never imagined that life is possible with a single bucket of water lasting me 2-3 days. I would never have thought it possible that villagers in Maharastra or anywhere for that fact, still live life with an earning less than Rs1000 per month even today (move over our BPL figures guys)… that wearing Khadi is the best thing you can do (without even intending to be an activist ) and that alcohol is not necessarily good when its expensive…. And that an entire region of villages ranging into tens of 1000s of people have never eaten fish in their life- not because they are vegetarians, but because there are simply no water bodies for an aquatic habitat to exist.

Okay the background sound of the Marathi item songs (seems like all the Marathi songs are item songs) in this Dhaba (!) where I am sitting is pretty irritating. No offence meant to the Marathi item songs- some of them rock… you would wanna dance to their tunes even when you aren’t necessarily drunk…. But the one currently playing is nauseating :(

Getting back to what I was saying… while doing a bit of field work for a Gunny Bag project (which I am trying to set up here), I was visiting some of the Jute Mills in Bengal. Most of them are located pretty far away from the city and hence travelling in local trains was the only option. The landscape there was so vastly different… you would see water bodies and green vegetation (thank God… its Chammak Challu playing on radio now!!!) on both sides of the rail track… the ponds and lakes were separated by hardly 100 mts of land at any given point of time… Banana and Wheat and I donno what other crops were growing all over the place….  I was actually wondering what kind of an idiot Government and people (no offence meant to people of Bengal, but seems something somewhere went terribly wrong) must have ruined a state with such abundance in the last few decades…

And here in Maharastra, while a single pond is difficult to find travelling for hours in these unpardonable villages, wasting due to natures miserly rainfall, you remain shocked that the farmers here still manage to grow crops like Sugarcane, Pomegranate and make more money in a harvest season than I made in a whole year of slavery in my “high flying” corporate job….

*believe me-the track on Radio has changed  to Kolaveri and there is a crowd off around 10 school boys who are now crowding around the radio and some are humming it like a life saving anthem… even the waiter who is stealthily glancing at my laptop each time he passes by, expecting some porn videos to show up, find the song hummable…  Dhanush- hats off to you for creating such an amazingly crappy song which have taken the fancy of an entire nation reeling under serious constraints of quality….

Heck…Now I have truly lost track of what I started saying when I started this blog post…all this crazzzzzzzzy noise around, the murderous intonations on the radio blasting in full volume and a Dhaba which is well past is glory days( if it has ever seen glory days that is) trying to sell me tea which looks like gobar mixed water, but honestly tastes awesome (!) is driving me a bit nuts…

...Just got a call from my driver… they have come to pick me and take me to the middle of the middle earth I guess- our training centre in Dharewadi, the drive to which is through roads which can make you shake worse than malaria fever….even Katrina Kaif be ashamed of her pelvic thrusts if she ever travelled these roads….ywaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnn…signing off now… will post this whenever I get access to my Internet network….