Manas Garg Speaks

Here is a list of things that change as you move out of college (a residential campus) to a full fledged job :

1. Money : Suddenly your financial condition changes. Your previous total monthly expenditure becomes you typical weekend expenditure. You can buy many things you want to without thinking too much. You get a credit card. You realize that you are not making enough money.

2. Phone : Your phone changes from a 1100 to N series. The prepaid connection is the thing of the past, and you get a post-paid corporate connection.

3. Phone Bills : Don’t ask.

4. Room : Finally a bathroom all for yourself! (Yes!). Though not very furnished initially, there are NO course books to be seen, the flooring is marble, and the walls don’t speak the history for who all have lived in the room for the last 17 years. Oh yes! There are cupboards where you can actually hang clothes AND lock them too!

5. Transport : From a Hercules Thriller, you upgrade to a Bajaj Pulsar. Or  the company cab, as the case may be.

6. Washing : No more washing clothes yourself! You get a washing machine. You actually wear clean clothes everyday.

7. Trips to home : Become exceedingly rare. Once in 6 months is the average.

8. Holidays : Become the most precious thing. People would give blood to get a holiday. You get about 12 every year excluding weekends. Add 20 Casual leaves to that. Thats it. No more.

9. Travel : No more Sleeper class, Air Deccan and Indigo become your best friends. Even when you want to travel by train and save some money, you cant coz you cant afford to take that extra day off. 

10. Bunks : If your office has swiping system, forget it. If it doesn’t, you feel so guilty if you bunk that you don’t.

11. Cleaning : A ‘bai’ comes to clean up your room and kitchen. But! She won’t clean the bathrooms! So the bathrooms and toilets (that you’re supposed to clean yourself now) resemble the hostel bathrooms.

12. Food : One pain in the ass! Breakfast and lunch @ office usually. Dinner outside. You get bored with outside food (and hate to pay so much for food, everyday!). Weekends are terrible, when you’re left to scavenge for your own 3 meals. You miss the comfort of the mess at times.

13. Treatment : For a change, people treat you nicely. The guards and support staff instead of telling you to ‘Poda’ call you ‘Sir’. Sweet sounding females call you everyday and offer you miscellaneous financial accessories ranging from credit cards, personal loans to health insurance. You tell them that you’re not interested and bang the phone. In their disappointed faces.

14. Internet : You download a 1 GB movie in an hour in office. You use office laptop to watch movies at home. You get Airtel broadband and a netgear wifi router at home.

15. Tax : You start worrying about tax. As March comes closer, you get well aquanted with the provisions of section 80c, 80cc and 80ccc of the Indian constitution. You buy insurance policies and pray to God to call you soon so that at least you won’t have to pay tax.

16. Immunity : Your immunity goes down suddenly. A glass of water outside, if  not branded Kinley or Aquafina, gives you throat infection. So does any chicken curry priced below Rs 135.

I’m sure I’ve missed many, help me increase this list :)

I’m going to share a few of my childhood memories. Some of them pleasant, some of them unpleasant. I’ve hardly shared some of them with anyone else - because I’ve been so embarrassed about them. But here I am making them public.

Here goes the first one - and I think the one which affected me the most.

—

 This happened (or started rather) when I was in III standard.  I was pretty bright and other kids and teachers held me in good regard. There was this guy in my class, named Musharib. A typical naughty and trouble making fellow. Fine with me. However, our class-teacher was quite concerned about him (Her name was Tanvi S Khan, if I remember correctly) and as you’d expect, changed his seat in class and made him sit next to me - hoping that he’d pick up a good quality or two from me. Fine with me.

This guy, happened to have a friend in class - her name was Diana, and both were good friends. Like kids in III standard are. Then I made that mistake.

One fine morning, I still vividly remember - it was the first period, Musharib had a chalk piece, and told me that he wanted to write ‘Musharib and Diana are friends’ on the desk. Of course, he said that to me in Hindi, as kids generally did not have great command over English. And that is why he wanted my help to write that in English.

Too mature for my age, my brain came up with a mischief - instead of writing ‘Diana and Musharib are friends’, I wrote ‘Diana weds Musharib’. I don’t know why.

Kids around asked me what it meant. So I told them. I just remember Musharib going ‘Hawwww’ and erasing what was written on the desk. And so began the most painful time of my childhood life.

Musharib was smart. Smarter then I could have imagined him to be. He did not go and complain to the teacher immediately, however, he asked me if he should go and complain. I could not believe it - he was blackmailing me!

He did tell the maths teacher and I was punished - made to stand in front of the class with my hands held straight up. However, I was scared that my parents would be very disappointed to know what a hideous crime their only child had committed.

Meanwhile, Musharib kept me in constant fear of telling my parents - I don’t remember him making me do or get anything for him, but he kept me in constant fear - that he would go ahead tell my parents.

Little did I know that the ‘crime’ I had committed was not really a crime - and that maybe my parents would just have laughed it off  - for me, it was the worst kind of crime that I had committed, and was too scared to even imagine what would my parents do if they found out.

Musharib scared me for a few months, and then the thing was old. But I had still not told my parents, and whenever Musharib asked me - “Manas, should I…”, my heart would skip a beat.

It ended when my dad got transferred and we moved to a new city. I was so relieved. I still havent told my parents.. It doesn’t matter now.

However, the thing to notice is, that a child’s mind is so innocent, that he can easily be scared, and even when my parents were the most understanding parents in the world, the fear of disappointing them made me hide something, which did not really mean anything.

I wish Musharib had gone ahead and told my parents on the first day itself - at least I would not have spent those months in constant fear.

I have hated him ever since - but now I realize - even if he was enjoying having the brightest kid in the class in constant fear, the real fault was mine - I wanted to hide my mistake. Since then, I make it a point to accept my faults out in the open - it makes you feel very light.

If you’re reading this, I’m sorry Musharib, for what I did. (Diana did not speak with him for a long long time after what I had said about the two).

Peace. 

The boyzone song Words starts like this:

“Smile, an everlasting smile,
a smile can bring you near to me…”

How do you break ice?

There are so many times in our adult lives when we are in a group where no one knows anyone, and you can feel discomfort standing in the air like mild fog. Few people are masters of this situation - they can find friends just anywhere. There always are a few universal topics - however clichéd, they seem to work - Weather, politics, Sachin’s performance in the recent one dayer,  the stock market boom, the USA - its a reasonably long list. A wedding dinner or a journey in the train is a great example where you can observe this happening.

Still more difficult is to break ice with people whom you don’t know at all, and in a formal setup. I found myself in this situation a few days back. I was at this formal buffet, with all places at the table already taken; except the one opposite to where I was sitting. A man, with a plate in hand, stood close by contemplating whether he should take it or not. I knew I was supposed to ask him to sit - by etiquette. I did not know how to address him - ‘Sir’ - nay, he wasn’t that old, ‘Hey’ - nay, he wasn’t that young, then what?

I did this - I just smiled. And he smiled back - instinctively. And without a word being uttered, the ice had already broken.

This is a poem by Emily Dickinson. It was in my course book in class XI / XII and left a mark on me: 

“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!”

Dickinson tells us that it is not the winner who knows what success is, but it is the one who has failed and has been defeated who really understands how sweet success is. It is only when we fail that we think about how great it would have been to get admission to that college or to get that job. When we succeed, it is hard to actually value your accomplishment.

 I’ve had my fair share of being on both sides of the line. And I’m happy about it. It would be much less fun to always be on one side of this game.  

For a change, let me write about my favourite book - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

I have in general disliked books with stories of immigrants written by authors from the Indian subcontinent. They tend to portray India and the neighbouring countries as primitive lands, which people want to flee.

However, The Kite Runner changed my view. It is about friendship between two little boys, of different stature in the society, during happier times in Afghanistan. The author describes this beautiful land so vividly that you can actually form the pictures in your mind. Every incident is narrated in a manner such that it comes alive in front of you.

The pain that people of this nation have experienced had been portrayed in such a touching manner that for the first time in my life I actually sat down and tried putting myself in place of a person living in constant fear. The misery of the people of war-ridden countries is nothing more than tea-table gossip for most of us. It is easy to give out suggestions about what policy should USA adopt and that terrorism is haunting people who fed it before. I think only someone who has experienced pain that so many Afghans, Kashmiris and Iraqis have experienced can understand the depth of the whole problem. The author brings us as close as I’ve ever been to understand their struggle.

The latter part of the book is about how the main character of the story, Amir, tries to overcome his guilt for past mistakes. It presents before us the way immigrants from war ridden lands suffer and still find joy in small things in foreign lands. Such a touching account of human nature, will and courage.

“For you - a thousand times over” encapsulates the whole spirit of love, dedication and the joy we get from doing things for someone else - the spirit of this beautiful book. To understand this, you need to read the book.

If you decide to read just one book, let it be this one. I promise you - you will thank me for it.

Note: Any  similarity with real life events is highly hypothetical 

One of my best hypothetical friends, whom I call chutkoo, has lately been doing everything to make life difficult for himself.  He forgot to submit his CV on time for his placement, and then when the D-Day was three days away, his marksheet was no where to be found. I have been telling him, hypothetically of course, to stay more in the real world, to prioritize, not to postpone things. But, even in this hypotherical world, his attempts to be better can only be termed hypothetical.

To add to my hypothetical frustration, every time something like this happens hypothetically, I get the same hypothetical assurance - I’ll take care from now on.

I can only wish - hypothetically. 

Such a simple sentence. However, it has a meaning so deep, only when you mean it you realize its deapth.

 I did today.

The ad goes like this: “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else … ”

Wait a minute! Those some-things-money-cant-buy are the only things I crave for!

“when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true”
-The Alchemist

Sometimes you get this itch to complete things that have been pending for a very long time. Like for the last couple of days, I’ve had this killing thirst to finish reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy. I started reading this a couple of years back (well, yeah) but had to abandon for some reason I don’t remember.

So there I was sitting in my office on a Friday evening. What better way to mark the end of the weekdays than to get H2G2 from a bookstore and make the best of a weekend?!

I went to Walden book store - pretty nice. Sadly, They were out of stock.

I din’t lose heart - No Sir! I went straight to the City Center mall where they have the best book store in town - Crosswords. I made a dash to the fiction section and was amazed to find myself amidst huge racks of sci-fi. It did not take even a minute - I found the Douglas Adams shelf right in front of me. My heart leapt. I could already hear the drumming in my ears. I could easily see The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life the Universe and Everything, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and even Mostly Harmless!!

Later, the man at the counter told me that the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy is not expected to be in stock for the next 10 days.

Alchemist! Are You listening?

I am finally an engineer. Four years of hard (read : hardly any) work have finally got me my degree. I’m not excited.

What I am excited about is my first job. My workplace is awesome, the people are great and you see good work happening around you.

All this put aside, there is something I’ve always felt. When I was in class X, everyone told me - Manas, do well in your boards and life will be a cakewalk.

I did well in my class X boards.

When I was in classes XI and XII, I was told that getting through a great Engineering Institute would secure my future.

I did.

In college, I was told that be in the first 5 in your class, and everything will be fine.

I did.

In my senior year, I was told that getting a great job would really settle my life.

I did.

Now I’m being told to make sure I perform well at the job as that will make sure that I have a successful career. Another set of people tells me to plan for my higher studies to ensure a great life.

Then I guess it will be about getting a good wife and then being happy in my marriage and then ensuring everything goes well for my kids.

When does it stop?