Of Ironies, Cooking Alone and Christmas

There is a scene in Last Samurai where Tom Cruise says - "I am beset by the ironies of my life"
Today I remembered that and smiled. For the first time in 28 years (almost 29), I have my own room, my own cupboard, my own desk, my own drawer, my own bed and yet the privacy that I always wanted when I didn't have a room of my own is what I am hating today. Perhaps solitude isn't always welcome. Perhaps you don't want to marry melancholy. Today I crave that intrusion. Today I crave the sharing of beds. Today I crave always having to walk into another room everyday to take clothes because my cupboards were also shared. It's funny isn't it? No wonder people say - sometimes you might not like what you have been wanting all along.

I cooked today because it suddenly felt overwhelmingly quiet and empty. I wanted to keep myself engaged. I am standing with my dinner plate staring outside my tiny window. There is nothing to stare at. It overlooks the fire-escape of another house a few meters away from my window. I see Christmas lights. No one's home. Even my building is virtually empty. Except the security person who smiles tirelessly every time I walk in and out of the building.

But wait - why am I inside my room on Christmas eve? I don't really know. Merry Christmas New York. It's raining outside. But all of you are still beautiful. So is the city. So shall be tomorrow. Good night! 

Have you slept with anyone?

Someone casually asked me this question once. I replied, "No, I haven't".
"So does that mean you have never had sex?" he asked, slightly perturbed, in fact quite astonished to be honest. I smiled back and told him, "Sleeping with someone is different from having sex with them. I don't know when and how, but at some point in time, 'sleeping with someone' became a casual indifferent phrase. It was trivialized. For me, sleeping with someone means letting them sleep on your arm while it goes numb and watching them sleep in peace. Watch their body fall and rise in rhythmic, almost poetic form as they breathe. Smiling all by yourself even when they are asleep and just observing them. Sleeping with someone is finding beauty in the nothingness of silent whispers or just that invisible chord that connects you to the person you are holding and lying down. For some it's sacred.. even profound.. Sleeping is more intimate than people make it out to be. So yes, I am yet to sleep with someone"

"The city that never sleeps: The diary of a hopeless romantic, Entry 43"

The Heartbreak Quote

Sometimes I think I have felt everything I'm ever gonna feel. And from here on out, I'm not gonna feel anything new. Just lesser versions of what I've already felt. - (Her, 2013)

Well to be honest, considering how inexperienced I am, I should be the last person quoting this. But it did catch my attention when I was watching the movie. Heartbreaks do terrible things to us. However, what I feel is, what we generally perceive as a full-stop during the lowest point in our life might just be a parenthesis. There are many more sentences remaining in unfinished stories. 

1 ICU BED, SEVERAL LIVES and SURVIVAL OF THE WELL CONNECTED

*** This post is slightly old. Should have been posted a few months back. But still - here goes ***

The evolutionary theory has an important aspect missing from it - "survival of the well-connected". In a system where your connections can get you something as trivial as a private darshan at some famous temple to something as important as a job, I just learnt the hard way that connections are required to survive.

A recent medical emergency where we had to rush my father to the hospital as a result of acute drug (medicinal) reaction taught me vital lessons in life. I might want to take the word 'rush' out of the previous statement for thanks to the botched up drainage system in Delhi, just 2.5 hours of rain ensured that it took me the 2.5 hours to reach the hospital which is hardly 6 kms from my place. Apparently 20 crores are spent each year on de-silting the drains, really? So much for being the ‘well-connected’ Capital of our Country!

When we reached the hospital, his vital parameters had gone haywire - heart rate of 190, temperature hitting the 105 F mark and a choked wind-pipe. The doctors in the emergency ward stabilized things a little and then said - "You should have brought him here earlier. We have stabilized things a little but he has to be taken to the ICU". And this was followed by "Sorry, but we don't have beds available in the ICU". You don't need a PhD in logical theory to realize that these two statements in succession spell trouble. What followed was some frantic pleading and a series of phone calls which led to nothing and we had to shift him to another hospital in a private ambulance. The flooded streets ensured that it took another 1 hour to reach the next hospital which was just 3 kms away. While twitterati and our favorite Facebook was abuzz with status messages of pakodas, the romance of rains and people wanting to swim in flooded Delhi roads, my family and perhaps others like us, sitting in an Ambulance crawling at 10 kms/hour were facing what was one of the most difficult and stressful time of our life. The second hospital had the same story of “no beds in the ICU” until we made a few calls and found some connections to the director. What this did was, it miraculously increased the ICU size by a couple of feet and magically make a bed appear inside. I know that hospitals are actually over-flowing but not everyone can easily stake claim to the facilities that are available.

So what does it take to get your father a bed in the ICU? His visiting card with the gold embossed Ashoka Chakra? Money? Calling up your friend’s dad who heads a particular department at a prestigious hospital in south Delhi? Or some connections to the founder of another hospital? Well whatever it takes, you have to be a part of a well-connected network. All of us have our network trees and it’s in times like these that we find out which of the branches in our trees are sturdy and reliable and which ones are shaky. And if you aren’t as well-connected and haven’t moved beyond the sapling stage, I suggest you make sure that your tree grows fast enough.

Being well-connected was not the only lesson that I learnt. What I also learnt was that renowned pathological labs and private hospitals were exhibiting some sort of a negative attitude towards CGHS beneficiaries and for a lot of them – it’s indeed ‘business of human lives’; unfortunately not in the emphatic way. I need do some research from my own end before I can deliberate more on that. However- I must put in a word of praise for the nurses and attendants who do a fabulous job of taking care of patients. Some other important reflections were – it’s during times like these that you find out who are the people in your circle who are genuinely concerned about the well-being of you and your family and the ones who should apply to NSD next year for a degree in Theatrics.

Yesterday my father was making his post retirement career plans, so I know he has recovered and is back to his daily routine. But what about the less fortunate ones who are not as well connected? I am happy to see my father feeling healthy but I can hear and visualize several others asking the same question – “ek ICU bed milega please?” (Can we get a bed in the ICU?). Well as they say, it’s the bitter sweet symphony of life and every now and then you have to pull a few strings to set the music right.

  

The Mountainous Cesspool of Despair

You. Yes, You. I am talking to you. Do you often think that life dumps a lot of things on you? I will show you what it means in the true sense of the word.

Look at me. There is filth all over me and around me.. I stink... I reek of dismay and despair hangs thick. The valkyric eagles fly all over me. But they don't have to choose the slain, for what can you choose from a place that is a living graveyard? There is smoke, there are fumes, there is dust and there is dejection.

Everyday, tiny, bare hands search me through and through. Tiny uncovered, unprotected feet which should have been scampering through the school playground now walk a-midst this filth. To eke out a living, in search of subsistence.. to sustain. But all that sustains is an endless wicked vicious circle. Me and throngs of unlucky humans entwined in our combined destiny of despair and filth.  Tell me - do we deserve this?

And you contribute generously to this drudgery.Yes you do. And I take it all... From the rich and the poor. From Gucci to Gutka packets. I take it all - like an inexhaustible sink... Your revelry is my rabid rot




Who am I?

I am the Ghazipur land-fill. I exhausted my capacity many years ago and yet the dumping continues. 2000 tons of waste is what I have to handle everyday. I am bursting at my seams yet the layers of silent ignominious suffering keep growing.. day after day.. week after week.. year after year..Dumped with more despair. Despair piling on.
And now your ingenious mind has made you come up with the idea of a waste to recycle plant to treat all of this. From one problem to another... that's your discursive ingenuity. With no proof of how environmentally sound the technology is, with no alternative solution for waste-pickers, you have still gone ahead. I could have applauded out of sheer despair - but as you can see, I have been pinned down by all this waste.

Sometimes I wonder if hope is an illusion which was invented to help us sustain..With all its audacity, it persists..

You still think life is dumping it's waste on you? Think again.

Strangers Again...

The shadows of your fingers dance upon my soul as you trace invisible lines 
I sway and ponder over the beautiful contradictions of your boundless mind 
You were seeking something you lost in the melting shadows amongst the flickering lights
Only to realize that I was among the countless cinders that would be lost in the fading night
And now I am the fallen leaf that autumn shall blow away, a fleeting moment, a passing day
Time devouring timeless whispers and the faint echo of countless words that I had to say
And as moments dissolve in the cruel conundrum of this unrelenting grey rain
We dance in the musical oblivion of denial, miles away as strangers again.... 

THE ECONOMICS OF RELATIONSHIPS: ISHQ KA ANALYSIS

• This graph is not generic. It’s an aggregate representation of the complexities.
• The initial part might not apply to starving and non-inclusive economic institutions like Engineering Colleges
• If you were born into a relationship, just stick to the X axis 

(DISCLAIMER: Romantics who think that rationalizing love through the use of calculative & dissenting methodologies such as these is a shameless act of profound coldness can stop reading this article here and launch a protest against me. You can refer to this website for the Dharna (Protest) Calendar, www.seeyouatjantarmantar.com)

For others, well if you suck at mathematical analysis and haven’t gotten any better with the passing years, I have bad news for you. 'Love & Relationship' has ceased to be the simple equation that it was and is now a raging polynomial of the highest degree possible. So any attempts at coolly taming it into submission through casual addition and subtraction would prove to be futile at best.

Equation from the era of ‘eternal love’:

X_(Romeo) + Y_(Juliet) - Z_{(the unfair world/circumstances)} = 100 + W_{(Bonus!! the world/circumstances are in your favor)}

Unfortunately today’s equation has far too many variables to count and the basic premise of Economics – limited resources, unlimited wants and judiciously striking a balance between the two dictates how you deal with this equation. It comprises making the right investments, the right trade-offs, suitable risks, understanding market forces and much like everything else – a good solid dose of luck.

Clearly, fitting in the variables in the equation is no mean task. Fit in the wrong values and the result is the last bad mathematics paper that you had with that dreaded grade/score that sends shivers down the spine.

While poets till date, tirelessly pour-out lavish praises about the un-restricted beauty of love and how it transcends boundaries and is devoid of constraints, I would take a more prosaic stand here and show you why this equation is quite flatteringly complex and difficult.  

Relationships: The Investment 

It’s not that relationships in the past have been devoid of complications, but since liberalization of the market space, the number of relationships has boomed and so have the complexities. Now you don't even have to bear the burden of the License Raj (marriage) to explore new opportunities; the market is much more free and open. And in this liberalized market space, it’s the dynamic interaction between various forces which eventually shapes our equation of relationship and love. 

From the Indian perspective, till about a few years back, forces like caste-issues, religion issues and economic differentiators led to the death of many promising young relationship ventures (although some rebellious entrepreneurs still went ahead with their investments and businesses with great results). Now, add to the equation - career, locations, opportunities, choices, family, and the endless list of personal whims like – well-read, witty, considerate, affectionate, looks, ‘sweep me off my feet’, traveler, sharp, caring etc. etc.  and woah - that's complex now! (more on this bit in my next piece on marriages in India) 

Clearly with so many factors at play, it’s an investment that would require a fair amount of wisdom. So yes, in all probability, you are not marrying some ‘Raj’ who FYI is the only guy to have failed in the history of some prestigious University and whose only good deed in your fathers books is applying ‘desh ki mitti’ on an injured pigeon’s body (after conveniently breaking the statue of the goddess for a crate of beer!). Expecting that to work out would be expecting a business like a water cum entertainment park bang in the middle of the Thar Desert to work successfully! 

The factors are multiple - National and International Trading of calls during Long Distance Relationships, frequent shifting of base of operations and striking a balance between populist(family and partner's) and growth(personal) related measures. Phew! 

I haven't even scratched the surface here! But still - Good luck with the investment and economics!

Failed Investment: The post Break-up analysis

My heart goes out to ladies who have kissed many ugly frogs in the hope that Mr. Prince would pop up, and gentlemen, whose entrepreneurial streaks have at best come a cropper but still move around in the hope of an Angelic Investor who shall invest more than just faith in them.

So your investment failed and now you rush to your close circle of advisers (your best buddies) and consult them. Post break-up, most close friends turn into Economists with specialization in Sunken Costs (irrecoverable costs) and poor investments. And much like traditional economists, they propose that we should not let sunken costs influence our future investments.

 You will also be warned (if you fail to find that wisdom yourself) that investing more into this failed product would further ruin your current situation. So you should shun any Mallyasque attempts at saving your Kingfisher Airline of Love.  

A bad break-up, much like recession, makes you an ailing economy– you can limp ahead on SOPs and subsidies (flings, casual dates, new work assignments, distractions, friends) but it’s only a structural change in the set-up (personal growth, self-confidence) and/or fresh investment (new relationships) which can boost  the over-all scenario.

But cheer-up! The slump is always followed by a rise! 

Real Life Quotes and Economic/Investment Related Interpretations

Some quotes on relationships & love and their direct and in-direct economic interpretations (full credit to friends who quoted some of these - sometimes with the Economic Interpretation in tow!) 

“Not everyone can afford the luxury of being in love”

Interpretation

Purchasing Power Parity – Everyone around you is dating or marrying but your situation and constraints just make it very difficult for you. Yes- that feeling of deprivation. 

Risk of default – Even if you take that risk and plunge into one, there is always the risk of default

"People start getting tired of each other. Eventually love wanes off. Everyone is replaceable; it’s a lesson I have learnt the hard way."

Interpretation

Law of Diminishing Utility – In Shakespeare’s finer words – ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. The more you access something, the less favorable it becomes. 

 “How do you end up with guys like him? Suddenly someone just pops up in your life and then it all crashes? We told you – just be careful and find a nice stable guy to settle down with. Your parents are looking out for a guy for you”

Interpretation 

Risk-prone investment, investing in-spite of the market turbulence and risks.

Your parents are looking out for a guy for you – Govt. Bonds, low risk of default

“Warned you! Such a deep level of emotional attachment in one go?? Plus you are not settled yet. Long term thoughts?” 

Interpretation

Warned you! Such a deep level of emotional attachment in one go?? – Concentrated risk, investing everything in one go

Plus you are not settled yet – Potential Default Risk

Long term thoughts - Future Returns 

"Relationships have to be nurtured like a good business. They evolve and grow slowly and yield rich dividends gradually. You have to grow along with it and ensure neither of you stagnates" 

"Relationship and Dating is like the stock market. You can play smart but you can never be 100% sure. But that doesn't stop you from buying stock"

 Interpretation

Pretty straight forward ;) 

"Some say Love runs the world, I believe Economics does" - Well that sums it up then J