Death of a salesman

Yesterday I watched this American classic play written by Arthur Miller. A play worth watching and made us think about the life which we are living and its meaning. The play was scheduled to start at 6:30 PM in Brigade Millennium (JP Nagar, 7th Phase) and even if play hadnt been so good the place itself is worth a visit.. Nice ambience.. Calm surroundings.. I started from my office at 5:15 pm.. Hoping to make it by 6:15 as that was the time printed on tickets after which doors to auditorium will be closed... By 5:45 I managed to reach Silkboard.. But that was not good as I still had to go around 10 KM in 30 mins in the Bangalore traffic..People familar with Bangalore, understand that that is imposs.. A feeling of that I wont reach on time started sinking into my heart and this all effort will go in vain..I was going by BMTC bus and driver was in mood to cross 40 kmph even if road ahead was totally empty... When all this was going into my mind.. wht to do etc, I got a call Pocha telling me that Aditya is also on the way and we two can sync up at some place...( as he was coming on bike and I saw light at the end of the tunnel).. I called him instantly and we decided to sync up at Jaydeva flyover.. He told me that he will reach the place in another 10 mins.. So from Silkboard to Jaydeva flyover in 10 mins... I got down from bus and caught an auto...I made it to Jaydeva flyover in 15mins with Aditya waiting from me there since last 5 mins..It was 6:10 pm then.. so we had only 5 mins and some 5 KM to go.. In the meatime, Pocha had called both of us so many times telling that only 15 mins , 10 mins, only 5 mins left everytime :) .. and made both of us panic striken.. We zoomed through the bangalore traffic in the JP nagar area and reached the place at 6:20 pm.. We parked the bike and went running to the entrance of the auditorium... The play started at 6:30 with doors still open till that time.. The Brigade Millennium is a nice palce..Myself and Pocha had a small discussion that one should either live in such apartments with these amenities or to some near by place atleast.. The play was good and nicely acted with showing dreams of an American salesman (Willy loman), who wants to make it big in life by earning money etc... He worked hard throughout his life but without knowing whether that is really what he wants to do etc .. The play was presented by Aavega productions....During the intermission (after Act1), we all (Pocha, Jitesh, Aditya, Prema, Poonam n myself) had snacks and a mouth savoring tea ( I had two cups :) ) .. After the play with the lesson : follow your heart in life and dont go by the usual rat race thing, we all decided to go for dinner at Inchara but place was running full and we decided to go to Nandini instead and I want to tell u all that North indian food sucks there and it is grossly overpriced.. It is always better to take south indian food in such south indian speciality restaurants.. After dinner, we all went to L&T south city to drop Jitesh/Pocha and then Prema dropped me back to my home while coming back ... It was a lovely evening with play, drive, food and a wonderful time with all of them..

Utter Confusion ...

Why I am so confused about every damn thing ... I feel like probably I am the most confused person on this earth.. I feel like I am in a maze and I have no idea what to do, which way to go, whats the way out of this.. Be it my professional or personal life, I find myself equally confused.. Professional life has so many options .. shall I go for MBA Finance as I am really passionate about Equities.. but i dont hate my techie job either.. life is going on comfortably.. shall I do MBA as I am only a B.Tech ? .. Or that wont matter if I choose to be in this techie line for rest of my life.. Shall I go for my own start up... and what not ... The same goes for personal life too.... Since the thing is hindsight is always 20/20, so I always try to think how will I see these things say 2 yrs down the line.. Whatever I am doing today, my actions today, how will I see them some years down the line. Thats the way I try to think... The reason being as today I laugh at myself for the way I thought about the things in the past and things whcih I did. I also firmly believe that I am solely responsible for whatever I did in the past, whatever I thought about things as it was me who decided to do that thing as I felt that as the best thing to do in that situation. I think hindsight is 20/20 because in hindsight we remember only rational things, things which actually mattered at that point.. We forget about the "noise" which was present at that time and which made us to act in a particular manner at that time. So today I strive hard to think about the things after filtering that noise... Seems really hard and it is indeed so, but thats what I try to do... It takes quite an effort and I feel like a person starved of energy no matter in the end I am actually able to do so or not..

Also couple of things which I have learnt from the past are : words can help you express what u feel but sometimes silence or a pause is what you really need.. there is no substitue for a well timed pause.. So not saying something is what is really needed sometimes... The other on similar lines is that sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing... We all have this perennial desire to make things better and do something.. we dont know how to sit tight.. forget about not acting, we dont even consider not doing anything as an option ... but sometimes the best thing is to leave the things the way they are... learn to give up... Sometimes giving it time is what is really needed..

Coming back to the confusion thing, I wonder the way our life is affected by the people around us is upto us to choose or if something happens then it was always destined to happen that way.. Questions likes this comes to mind so often.. Can I really control the outcome of the events happening around me or it is just that nature conspires for them and all I can do is to act in the manner I am supposed to .. Also I feel like this is the most turbulent stage of my life... this late 20's .. I feel like after getting married, things will be so much better as one of the biggest event of life would have played out the way it was meant to be.. Being so passionate about markets, I can correlate this with the way markets behave to uncertainity... Markets tell us a great deal about how humans behave to uncertaininty .. feeling jittery.. factoring future into the present..doomsday predictions when things go a lil wrong..

Sometimes I feel like whether it is really good to achieve control of things as basically that is controlling emotions and becoming a stoic.. for sure i wont be taking pain, I wont be going through agony but i will also forget abt what is joy, ecstacy.. so emotions are like addectives... they give u a kick when u feel happy...but u feel like u r dieing when they work d opposite way.. so, is life worth living with keeping your emotions under control.. just living a plain life without any ups and down ? Then what comes to my mind is : is there some element in each one of us which wants life to be in constant state of flux and sometimes we desire to feel sad... sometimes we really want to be intentionally sad .. we want to hurt ourself ..we want to purge ourselves as we feel relieved and happy after being sad for sometime.. we want to go through the pain (emotional but I think some people may like physical pain too) and we desire for those emotions.. so sometimes do we all behave like masochists ?


The one thing which is very clear to me even in this state of utter confusion is that I will get the answer of all these things couple of years down the line .. As for the rear view mirror "Objects in the mirror are closer than what they appear" thing, I think rear view in life is not only close but clear too ...

We all change for the one we love

Kudos to Canara bank who has captured this idea so well and it so appropriate for their brand image change campaign .. I am so impressed with their campaign that I am thinking of opening a account with them.. Not only the slogan is so good but also their ads ... The one in which a south indian old lady is shown that she is trying to learn punjabi as their bride is a punjabi kudi.. the other one in which the wife tries to learn about cricket as her husband loves cricket etc..

I Loved Taare Zameen Par and equally so Saare Zameen Par ...

Apart from giving Aamir Khan the due respect for making TZP ( this is one movie which everyone should watch)... I think Saare Zameen Par will be an apt line to remember Jan 2008 Stock Market Crash for the years to come .. Stocks came to mouth watering levels and my patience paid off .. I Loved Taare Zameen Par and equally so Saare Zameen Par ..

Jaspreet's Bachelor Party ..

Yesterday we (myself n my team memebers at Cisco) celebrated Jaspreet's bachelor party at my home.. It was a great party and we all had so much of fun and the patry mahol was similar to the one shown in the Mcdowell's latest 8 ke thaad commercial.. People cracked all sorts of jokes about marriage... Basically as bachelor parties always provide this one too provided a vent to the "supressed" feelings of all the married n unmarried guys present there... Music,drinks,food,dance and fattebaaji rocked the celebrations... Jaspreet cracked a a couple of jokes : people say marriage is a place where the Guy loses his Bachelor's and Gal gets the Master's. One more : marriage party pe music is not needed as daaru pe ke baraati to generator ki aawaz pe he dance kar lenge.. LOL :).. Much needed fundaes (or Gyaan) was given by experienced n married ppl about married life like what to do,when to do,what not to do etc.... The evening started with light music and general discussion about marriage n life after that .. Then we talked about Jaspreet's past experiences with gals...After that the party was in full swing and we had an almost 1 hr session of dance to numbers like "Dard e disco" .. "Hare rama Hare krishna".. "Koi kahe"... "Kya mujhe pyar hai".."Pyar karke Pachtaya"... list n the party went on .. None of us would have ever expected that this party would be so much fun..Everybody was in full mood and just savoring every moment of the party.. Well i dont have any photos of the party to put here as when all this was going on everbody agreed that there will not be any record of the deeds done during the party... Manoj, Kishor, Raka, Sangeeth, Jaspreet and Myself had a memorable time..In the end there was a talk on insomnia and its probable benefits after marriage.. The party,for sure,bought each one of us closer to each other (literally as well as we had 2 mattress's opposite to each other in our hall with 3 ppl sitting on each)..

A party which I will never forget for rest of my life ..

Wish you a Happy Married Life Jaspreet !