m a n u s c r y p t s

A few days back, I came across a line we had used some time back for a brand campaign, as part of some ambient advertising – “Let’s cut climbing stairs, but not climbing ladders”. That ended up prompting quite a surreal thought.

Of starting to climb a ladder from the time we’re kids. The first few rungs seem easy, there’s someone helping you, and you know that the same someone is there to catch you when you fall. There are others who are climbing ladders too, your friends, some of whom keep up with you while others choose a faster or slower pace. There are those who will leap, knowing all about high risks and huge rewards. There are those who know exactly how much of effort is required to reach where they want to be, and there are those who are unsure, but still know they’ve to climb.

At some point, when you have climbed quite a bit, you pause to look.  You might realise that the support you had in the beginning is gone, and perhaps replaced with another one. You would look up, perhaps you now know where you have to go, and the steps and pace required to get there. Or you would look down, and see how far you’ve come up. Or you would look sideways, at friends, family, peers who have been climbing too, you might be tempted to compare and consider your efforts and results against what theirs.

And then perhaps you would just close your eyes, take a deep breath and look within – at what you have, and what you want to have. Maybe you’ll find yourself dissatisfied and might want to climb a bit more. Or you’ll decide that you quite like the place you’re at, and this is as good a final destination as there can be, you’ll choose to enjoy the view from where you are and perhaps help those who haven’t been able to climb as much as you have, or those who want to climb higher than you have. Maybe you would decide to climb a bit more and then decide.

The choice would be yours. After all, its your ladder, and your climb, and the top rung is where you decide it will be. The only thing you really don’t know is the journey time.

until next time, an alarm rung….

Sometimes you look back and realise that the future you had envisioned is where you are right now. I’d written about this a few weeks back.

But when you look back, it’s difficult to ensure that only the positive memories get thrown up. Its a bit like Google Search, my memory- even if there’s some remote link to the search query, the result will be shown. And when it’s my own life I’m searching in and about, it’s difficult to stop at Page 1, though I may have got the result.

Besides, its only natural (when looking for the future I’d envisioned in the past) that I tend to look at a particular time in my life, when the first professional dreams were getting made – around the time that I finished my PG. The summer of 2002, a scenario, quite similar to what the world is facing now. This was the placement season right after the dotcom bust.

I read a few reports recently on how many companies are refusing to honor the offer letters made to students, or delaying the joining date till everything stabilises. I feel very bad for these kids, there are very few things that could’ve prepared them for this. Everything happened in quite a bit of a hurry. And suddenly the dreams of a secure future, the list of purchases to be made from the first salary, all seem like a sick joke that fate played on them. Its difficult to put into words the frustration, the anger and the sorrow that they’d feel. When their confirmed employer suddenly keeps them waiting, then gives them very mixed signals, when they wake up every day and realise that they have finished their education but are yet to start the next step – employment, when relatives see a prey and sweep in to casually ask what their plans are now, when they have to push an entire day knowing that tomorrow would not be any better, when they agonise at home/college wondering why all this is happening to them, when they see their classmates join organisations whose offer they’d rejected, when they start looking for other options only to realise that in such choppy weather, no one is willing to give them even a straw to clutch at, it can shatter their confidence, and more importantly their faith in the force that holds it all together.

But yes, as the old saying goes, whatever doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. I should know, since I was one of them for a nerve wracking 2 months. This post is a thank you  note to the higher  power , and loved ones for pulling me through. This post is also a prayer for those poor souls who will hopefully look back at all this, and will still be able to smile.

until next time, dream

..and few weeks back, it happened… at last. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar became the highest run getter in the history of test cricket, and the only man to cross the 12000 run mark. As Alfred Victor Vigny has said, “Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age” I remember writing this about 3 years back, and sparking off a Gavaskar-Tendulkar debate then. And inspite of that, I still consider Sachin a greater player than Gavaskar. But thats just my perspective, and this post is not intended to start off that debate all over again.

As always, it is the standards that the man sets off the field (Adam Gilchrist can take his stories down under) – including the locker room and press conference chats, that amaze me. His teammates talk about his indefatigable spirit and his joy in playing the game. While his fans were cheering him, and his critics were throwing stones at him, was he looking forward to this milestone, if not playing only for it? At 16 years, in Pakistan, when he played his first test in Pakistan and fell to Waqar for a mere 15, did the boy Sachin know that he would make the 11000 plus runs that would make him a unique persona in world cricket. When Merv Hughes told Border that ‘This little prick’s going to get more runs than you, AB’, how did he know? When a person is doing exactly what he is meant to do, does the clarity reveal itself to himself and others?

At a far lower plane, many of us have achieved those little milestones, the ones which we looked up to with awe, and wondered whether it was achievable at all. I remember, about 7 years back, hearing about my project guide’s salary and saying that if I got that kind of money, I wouldn’t mind stagnating after that. And now i look back and smile at myself, because i realise how time changes everything. I also realise that I can keep setting higher figures up, and god willing, perhaps knock them down. But most importantly, I realise that when life brings us to that point of our imagined future, there will be happiness, but perhaps not joy. Like ticking off a box in a things to do list, as opposed to a whoop of sheer delight. Unless, I am doing what makes me happy, so that the inevitable reaction to achieving a milestone is joy, and there is simply no reason to contemplate such things as destiny and my reason for existence, except for saying a thank you.

Is that cynicism brought on by the loss of innocence ? Or are the likes of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, ironically named after Sachin Dev Burman, a legendary music composer, blessed by the cosmos to tread only on the exact path destined for them, while I continue the search, hoping I haven’t “missed the starting gun”

until next time, “the post is over, I’ve nothing more to say”