Kasam tumko watan waalon, kabhi mayoos mat hona;
Manana jashn-e-aazadi, na mere vaaste rona.

While there have been many great patriotic songs, many of them much more popular than this one, the lyrics here capture the selfless nature of the freedom fighter unlike anything else that I remember to have heard – Not only is he willing (in fact, very motivated) to sacrifice his life for his country, but he’s also insistent that at the time of freedom, his countrymen rejoice and not feel sad at his death… Living in a time and place where such revolutionary patriotism is quite uncommon (at least in the parts of the world that I have touched) and where the craving for individual success supersedes most other emotions, I feel almost dwarfed when I think of how huge the vision of freedom fighters of that time must have been.

I’m not saying that such sentiment is needed today or otherwise / is good or bad – that’s a different debate altogether. I’m just amazed that such powerful sentiment once existed (and likely still does in parts of the world that are still at war).

Is it just me or these lyrics are actually as powerful as I think they are??

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.

…the real purpose of running isn’t to win a race. It is to test the limits of the human heart.

I saw this movie, ‘Without Limits’, on Steve Prefontaine, the famous American Olympic runner, a few years ago and somehow haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since. For the unaware, Pre (as he was popularly called) was a long distance runner who at one point held the American record in every running event from the 2,000 meters to the 10,000 meters. The movie is a treat to watch not because it depicts the life of Pre, the sportsperson, but because it depicts the philosophical view that Pre took to running. Pre said ‘the only way I know how to win a race is to run out front, flat out until I have nothing left. Winning any other way is chicken-shit.’ The movie has some outstanding dialogues between his legendary coach, Bill Bowerman, who later on founded Nike, that capture the essence of the way Pre wanted to run a race – flat out, while Bowerman tried convincing him to pace himself through the race and save his best for the last.

Below are some of Pre’s quotes that I particularly liked from the movie:

• To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
• A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself.
• A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.
• I’m going to work so that it’s a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.
• Someone may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.
• The only good race pace is suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die.
• What I want is to be number one.
• Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, ‘I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.’ It’s more than just a race, it’s a style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.
• How does a kid from Coos Bay, with one leg longer than the other win races? All my life people have been telling me, ‘You’re too small Pre’, ‘You’re not fast enough Pre.’ ‘Give up your foolish dream Steve.’ But they forgot something. I HAVE to win.

Pre died at the age of 24 in a car accident and below is what Bowerman had to say at his funeral:

All my life, man and boy, I’ve operated under the assumption that the main idea in running was to win the race. Naturally, when I became a coach I tried to teach people how to do that. Tried to teach Pre how to do that. Tried like hell to teach Pre to do that. And Pre taught me. Taught me I was wrong. Pre, you see, was troubled by knowing that a mediocre effort can win a race and a magnificent effort can lose one. Winning a race wouldn’t necessarily demand that he give it everything he had from start to finish. He never ran any other way. I couldn’t get him to, and God knows I tried… but… Pre was stubborn on holding himself to a higher standard than victory. ‘A race is a work of art’ is what he said and what he believed and he was out to make it one every step of the way.

Of course he wanted to win. Those who saw Pre compete or who competed against him were never in doubt how much he wanted to win. But how he won mattered to him more. Pre thought I was a hard case. But he finally got it through my head that the real purpose of running isn’t to win a race. It is to test the limits of the human heart. That he did… No one did it more often. No one did it better.

How I wonder what you are

The endless night
Gazes into my eyes.
My tears will make
A million stars.

Thus writes Kamini Banga in her delicately penned set of poems titled ‘I promise to be a good girl, God’. Kamini Banga wrote these poems over the ten year period when she was battling with breast cancer and its aftermath. In her foreword, she mentions ‘I found writing helped me grieve – something that we are not allowed by our loved ones… I believe grieving is a big healer; it helped me realize what must stay and what I could leave behind.’

Each of the poems has a pain unmistakable in its depth and almost unbearable. The harsh truth expressed in the simplest of phrases, the futile but unavoidable sadness that is an intrinsic nature of such situations hit you and hit you bad. I don’t know who to recommend this book to – not because it’s not good (it’s exceptional) but because it’s so depressing… but still, I’ll say: Read it. It’ll make you feel fortunate for what you have. In any case, poems are meant to be sad and these capture sadness like never before.

Courage is doing what you believe in.

‘Sammy!’ attempts to depict the transformation of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from an ordinary man to a Mahatma, and in the process delves into the confusion, dilemmas and internal conflicts that this man, often looked upon as the one who lent a moral force to the nation’s freedom struggle, would have faced during his momentous journey.

The first half showing Gandhi in South Africa disappoints though – the disappointment being the attempt to portray him as a simple and humourous man in a barrister suit resulting in the character showing Charlie-Chaplinish mannerisms, cracking jokes and breaking into a freakish smile after every second line that he utters. And it can be quite irritating; after all, one expects to watch something thoughtful and meaningful when it comes to Gandhi, definitely not something comical as it seems during the first half.

For a play to redeem itself from the situation above to the point where one feels ‘Okay, that was good’ is something. ‘Sammy!’ manages to do that with its second half. As the play unfolds, we witness the various exchanges Gandhi has with his own conscience debating the internal dilemmas he has at different stages of his life – the right versus the wrong, the moral versus the immoral. Even as he gets more and more involved in politics, Gandhi never loses sight of his basic principles and morals and throughout draws courage from his convictions and his righteousness. The dialogues Gandhi has with his conscience, his guiding light, are quite interesting and thought provoking. The play also does well in showing a human angle to Gandhi’s otherwise larger than life personality. There is a slight hint towards his guilt and regret as a father. His sadness and the fear of loneliness on his wife’s death makes for an insightful moment – the Mahatma, the father of the masses fearing loneliness.

All the actors, other than probably the lead, Joy Sengupta (with his overacting in the first half), do more than justice to their characters. Neha Dubey, essaying the role of Kasturba Gandhi, is exceptionally good.

In their last conversation, Gandhi’s conscience (with a sense of premonition of his death) asks of him to show courage and Gandhi replies back saying ‘Courage is doing what you believe in’ and smilingly walks away for his evening prayers, only to be assassinated by Nathuram Godse. But by then, he has already done his job and made himself redundant to the Indian political scene. For a shy barrister who was too nervous to be able to speak a word in his first case, Gandhi came far doing what he believed in.

My stint with DB has been short but I think I’ve learnt more in the last 8-9 months than what I learnt in the two years of my MBA programme. For one, I learnt a lot from my boss. Driven, ambitious, demanding and yet, considerate towards his subordinates’ desires to fulfill their own ambitions, Manoj has been the perfect boss and I am glad that he was my first boss. Although I was just a young trainee trying to find my place in the bank, he gave me the feeling that he trusted my intelligence and valued my opinion, which is probably as much you can ask from a boss (apart from a hefty year-end bonus, of course !) as a trainee. Manoj also managed to strike a rare balance so that I feared his temper and at the same time considered him my mentor and career counselor within the company. I learnt from him how one can always manage to remain down to earth and approachable no matter how senior one becomes. My other learnings in DB were mostly organizational in nature – partly observational and partly experiential – the key one being trying to undertsand how work, responsibilities and recognition flows between people in a workplace setup. DB also introduced me to the good life – living out of hotels and serviced apartments for months, training in London, workshops in Singapore, corporate dinners and the works – Ah, the advantages of working in a huge MNC are no longer mine.

Joining Blue River brings along with it a kind of nervous excitement associated with new places and new experiences… there is the excitement of being a part of the growth story of a startup firm and there is the nervousness arising out of questions such as ‘Will I really be able to do well in the unstructured work environment of a startup? Will I be able to live up to the challenging world of Private Equity?’ But this nervousness is motivating in nature; it has an element of eagerness to it; it pushes me to put in my best and all in all, I feel good about myself at this point; I feel hopeful and on track towards my goals. At this very moment, life is beautiful .

• A life lived later by Anurag Mathur: Yet another collection of poems by an Indian writer. Yet again masterful. Here is a set of intensely written poems straight from the mournful poet’s heart.

• Youth by J.M. Coetzee: For the uninitiated, J.M. Coetzee was the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice. He has also been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. ‘Youth’, perhaps (am not sure), is his only book which didn’t win any award and yet, it is one of the most insightful investigations into the youth’s mind that I’ve ever come across. I just wonder what his other award winning novels are like. Next one on my reading list is ‘Disgrace’ by the same author.

• The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: Jhumpa Lahiri’s first book, a collection of short stories, won her the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. But ‘The Interpreter of maladies’ is more than just an award winning book. It is a collection of your own experiences, your trials and tribulations and triumphs, your observation of other people’s sorrows, how they affect you and your feelings of awe and amazement at the phenomenon that is life. ‘The Interpreter of maladies’ is about you. Simply brilliant.

• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri: Absolutely wonderful. Unexpectedly, Jhumpa Lahiri’s second lived up to the extremely high standards set in the minds of her readers after her first book. ‘The Namesake’ is about a Bengali family settling in the US, the identity crisis of the family, the loneliness of a young Indian bride in a strange land, the mothers discomfort at seeing how comfortable her children are in this foreign land, the coming to terms of a young man with his roots. Just go ahead and read it. It starts slowly but once you’re past the first 100 pages, you don’t want the book to end. The themes that Lahiri captures in her writings are very very real; no exaggerations, no unnecessary drama, just life as it is.
  Having read the last two books of hers, I’d really love to read a collection of poems by Jhumpa Lahiri.

• The Bootstrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin: I’ve had the e-book version of this book for a long time. The three month break after IIML gave me the opportunity to delve into the wisdom of this short booklet that gives off tips on how to start and successfully run one’s own small company. Inspiring. Easy reading too.

• Ruskin Bond’s Biography: This is what I wrote about this one earlier on this blog:
  Came across Ruskin Bond’s biography in a bookshop and being the diehard Ruskin Bond fan that I am, I instantly bought it. It turned out to be quite a good read. Short, simple and bittersweet, it was like one of his own short stories. Ruskin’s parents divorced when he was eight; his father under whose custody he was after the divorce, passed away when he was ten. At the age of seventeen, he left Dehra for London to fulfill his dream of becoming a writer. In a way, he had a sad and hard childhood and it probably set up the themes of his writing: Living in the past – remembrance of love, nostalgia, lament over loss. And yet, there is no bitterness in his answers when he talks about his life in the
  biography. As he puts it:

  Most of my life I have given of myself, and in return I have received love in abundance. Life hasn’t been a bed of roses. And yet, quite often, I’ve had roses
  out of season.

• Steve Waugh’s Autobiography: Steve Waugh has been admired all over the Cricket playing world, not just for his cricketing talents and acumen, but also for the way he conducted himself on and off the field. His autobiography is about the ups and downs of a life that has observed greater talents than its own and yet has been able to command respect from them too. His thoughts on captaincy, leadership, retirement and life beyond cricket are those of a deep thinker and very insightful. The only disappointment that I have from this book is that it does not do justice to so many of the brilliant innings that Lara has played against Australia. Waugh is all praise for Warne and McGrath and his other illustrious team mates but when it comes to praising Lara, Tendulkar or that brilliant partnership of Laxman and Dravid, Waugh has been stingy with only a few words here and there. Other than that, it’s a good read.

• We weren’t lovers like that by Navtej Sarna: This is Navtej Sarna’s first novel. Though the theme of the novel is quite good, I felt the writing style lets the promise of the theme down. I wouldn’t recommend this one to others.

• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts: Highly Overrated. Have already written about it before.

That’s my list. I’ll tag Diwaker, Jaya and Abhijit (let me try and push him into regular blogging).

Of loveless affairs
And heartless flings,
Of remorseless apologies,
And unattached strings.

Of untrue lines,
And mindless talks,
Of late realizations,
And retrospective walks.

Of unleashed potential,
And an unachieved dream,
A gushing river ending up
As a lifeless stream.

Of…

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Chila, the nice but not so beautiful girl, the one who would always keep her husband happy, finds love and marital bliss in the form of Deepak. Or so it seems, for she soon finds out that he’s been having an extra marital affair with her friend, Tania, while she’s pregnant.

Sunita (played by Meera Syal herself), the often seen and always overlooked plumpish Indian housewife in her mid thirties, too absorbed in her family life and getting some additional income back home to look after herself, has a husband who’s forgotten that she’s his wife and needs his love. As she drifts away from her husband, he comes around to realizing what she means to him and finds himself wanting her back.

All three women stumble upon love, lose it and in the end, realize that the forever-kinda-love is only a disillusionment meant for mushy movies and novels.

If we knew where our journeys would take us, we’d never leave, never try, never fall in love.

With some really mature direction and good acting, the movie definitely impressed me as a good portrayal of the female point of view on the subject matter but I was disappointed to see that towards the end, all that the movie did was show most men as selfish, unfeeling bastards who don’t give a shit about anyone else’s needs and wants. And I’m sure, this is just one such movie. If you’re a regular on the blog world, you would have come across zillions of blogs that express the same sentiment – ‘Ah men, they’re all the same – bastards’.Being a guy, I know men can be self-centred at times, obsessed with their own goals; and living in their own worlds, they can also be a touch unattached to the people around them sometimes. And yeah, they’re hardly ever the better half of relationships. But that’s just part of the picture, isn’t it? I mean, for one, if you come down to it, not all women are all that goody-goody, innocent, victimized beauties that these movies and blogs would have you believe. Secondly, it’s not that all men are totally characterless, immoral, and always-looking-for-a-f**k-kinda amorous individuals. There certainly do exist men who are nice, intelligent and treat women with the respect and dignity that they deserve. And there certainly do exist men who, behind a tough demeanour, hide a caring heart. And again, they are greater in number than what these movies and blogs would have you believe.

With all the empathy that I feel for those who have suffered at the hands of some heartless guy, I still have to say this – Goodness is not a function of gender. There are good experiences and bad experiences and to judge the entire male species on a few bad ones would be an injustice to all the nice men out there and also be denying yourself the chance of finding happiness again.

Nevertheless, good movie – ‘Life isn’t all ha ha hee hee’ is. Watch it all this month on Star Movies (and Star isn’t paying me for this ).