For The Ennobling Cause Of Cleaner Humankind

I was discussing work with Rajeshwaran the other night… let’s just talk about marketing here, because I know still less about Fin and other crap… how can we give our lives to the pursuit of selling toothpaste, soaps, t-shirts… yet some of these are the most coveted jobs. Being good at something doesn’t mean you should do it. Often, we mercilessly smother the part of us which rebels against such mindlessness. I didn’t have the guts to take Physics over Engineering, or a gap year over MBA.

(Pardon the generalization)

We don’t value our time, or freedom… we treat our time as a (compulsorily) expendable asset… we give up our efforts and time to corporations engaged in senseless pursuits… when I’m 70, and look back at all the soaps that I’ve helped sell over the years, I’m confident of death-by-hyper-excitation.

Encouraged by society and having pledged our lives to mindless pursuits, we look down upon prostitution.

Hypocrisy.

Oh, and all those ‘focused’ people… that goes right over my head. This is probably my confused cynical mind spewing the crap out, but listen me out anyway… I don’t understand how people know that they want to sell soaps. Sorry for being judgemental, but are these people really passionate about human cleanliness?

Selling soaps.

How romantic.

The Cubicle

I wonder how man was moved to invent the air-conditioner… whoever felt that we should cut out the breeze and the smell of earth. I guess they just reacted to the madness outside, like all the traffic in Bombay. It’s like cutting your arm off because one finger is rotting (after you chewed on it too much).

I don’t like the idea of sitting in a cubicle. I don’t like physical confinement of any sort. When these corps go out on a 17-day Thomas Cook tour of 20 countries in Europe, spending most of their time in air-conditioned hotel rooms or buses, they are fashionably said to have caught the ‘travel bug’. It’s like a cool thing to do, right… to know exactly at which table you’ll be eating what for breakfast at 9 AM on the 5th day of the trip (thanks to Mr. Cook’s itinerary)… because any form of lack of control over your life is so unthinkably absurd.

Control. Certainty. Security.

They say I need a wife and kids to understand The Truth. I shall wait.

The Pursuit Of Happyness

“Somethings are fun the first time you do ‘em, and not so much the next”

“Like the bus?”

“Yeah, like the bus”
.

.

.

The next day, after work, we just went to the beach… far away from anything… everything… just Christopher and me… far away from buses and noise and… a constant disappointment in my ten-gallon head… in myself…
.

.

.

“Because when I was young and I'd get an A on a History test, or whatever… I’d get this good feeling about all the things that I could be… and then I never became any of them.”

You know...

"I'm a fun-loving person." announced the self-intro, pushing the limits of redundancy. Like the rest of the world is infested with masochists.

Then there are these filler-lines:

"That's... you know... the kinda thing we're talking about.. as such."

Why... why are these things said?

All The Emptiness

We never did change the world... the sleepless nights, adrenalin rushes... the world just went elsewhere, and took us along - along and apart at the same time.

Randomness will always hold sway over our efforts. All the little things which make you believe in destiny.

I'm reminded of Ladakh... how all the emptiness made me feel like an insignificant speck on the barren expanse... who ever let us choose what we're good at... just so happened that society likes say, MBA over Machine Design and English over Hindi.

It's all random. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I'm trashed... pride and disappointment are funny things. Stupid ego.

Blah

The wind blows the sand off my feet. I'm back in Elliot's beach, Madras. Things and people have changed. I don't quite know how. So much change that it's scary. I can't relate to it no more.

It's strange how familiarity is slowly eaten away. People come and go, and every day, a bit of the past is washed off. I miss the mountains. Those mighty Himalayas don't change as quickly as these beaches. I want to go back, to where I belong. I've had enough of the jargon crap. It's not funny anymore.

I'm a little drunk on JD. It's been a strange day. A day when the past has come back to haunt me. Sometimes, I wish my memory wasn't so good. It deserts me when I need it, like the Fin exam. Things evade you when you need them the most. It's The Law.

Cheers.

E-My Ass

Uninspiring lectures (unlike engineering, there are exceptions), mindless exams… they’re almost done for the year… Dilbert is so true… here’s a sample from a ppt for tomorrow’s Operations exam:

“Many companies are implementing ERP packages as a means or strategic objectives to reengineering its existing processes, performing supply chain management, requiring for e-Commerce, integrating ERP with other business information systems, reducing inventory costs, changing existing legacy system, requiring for multinational enterprise competitiveness, enhancing enterprise images, and enabling e-business”

Somewhere between e-commerce and e-business (recycling the same shit, like those demonic Hindi exams), inventory costs mysteriously get reduced. Oh, and somewhere amidst the shit, supply chain is thrown in for good measure… of course, this is operations management… so we can’t take a pee without a mention of inventory and supply chain.

Another one of my favorite is the impact of goddamn internet on managerial jargon… e-this, e-that… e-my ass!

That’s enough negative energy for one day. Goodnight.