Random Musings

Write. Write a novel—not a series, not even a big one, just one story you want to share. Invest everything you have, everything you are, and create a masterpiece you would be proud of. And in between, find time to have some chocolates.

Dream. Dream big, and never stop dreaming. Open a book café, a place where you’d love to go to have a cup of Joe, and talk about books with people who are there for the same reason.

Find. Find yourself again and again. Don’t look at others to serve you happiness on a plate, seek your own. Smile big and smile with all your heart. Find reasons to be happy, even when the situation is dire.

Travel. Explore the world, but start with your own country. See what the hype is about. Learn about different cultures and lifestyles but don’t judge.  

Do. Do as your heart desires. Do as your mind demands. Be good, but not a saint. Be nice, but not to everyone. Think about yourself, but don’t hurt others. Be just, be fair, be honest, be assertive.

Think. Think before you speak. Don’t think too much and let yourself go. Make mistakes, learn from them, and forgive yourself.

Believe. Believe in yourself. Believe in people, but not too much. Don’t give your trust for free. Believe in something bigger than all of us. Find a cause and do something, however little, to support it. Don’t lose hope.

Respect. Respect yourself. Respect those who are worthy of it.

Celebrate. Celebrate live. All the crappy moments shall pass. All the happy moments will remind you that there is no better time to be alive.

What The Future Holds

Only half an hour to go and I have made my list of resolutions. It’s fairly simple: stop complaining; chase your dreams no matter what; be more assertive and decisive; stop depending on others; write, write and write; do whatever the hell you want and just be happy.

I don’t remember what I wanted last year, so I am not sure if 2013 panned out like I wanted it to but what I can say with 100 per cent certainty is that at this moment, I am quite happy. It’s not because of the pizza I ordered or the fact that Romedy Now is playing my all-time favourite movie (still thankful to God that Airtel finally listened to my pleas and started the channel) or that I have found another show to be obsessed about. Cosy on my bed, I’m sipping my coke and watching television without any care in the world and I’m positively content.

Before I bid adieu to this year, I want to record one memory from the year gone by, lest I forget it. My first article got published this year and that feeling that I’m on the top of the world; that rush of seeing my name in a magazine for the first time was indescribable. Will I get this emotional every time my by-line appears? I know not, but for those few minutes (hours and days), I was incredibly proud of the work I had done. While I was basking in its glory, I realised it was just mine. No one had any inclination how that one article steered the course of my life and in all honesty, I couldn’t tell anyone. For as long as I could remember, I had wanted this, more than anything in the world. My triumph, my success, my moment of glory. Mine, all mine. I don’t want to share it with anyone for the fear that they won’t get it and it just might take something away from me. Besides, it’s just one pearl in my string of accomplishments.

This year was definitely different. Different than every other year and that’s how it’s supposed to be. I’ve spent an eternity looking back at days gone back – things that happened, things that didn’t happen, things that I wish had happened. Moving on, I will keep my eyes ahead. History does matter, but not as much as the present and the future. I look forward to turning over a new leaf. So good riddance 2013, and cheers to a fresh new beginning! Bring it on, 2014!

Hope and Hopelessness

I was 13 when I read the article about Jessica Lal in The Times of India. What caught my eye were the words “No One Killed Jessica”. My mum explained to me briefly what happened but an online search left me appalled. 300 witnesses and no one came forward. 20 people turned hostile. It was bizarre, outright stupid that the accused were still at large. That was the first time I realized that our Indian judiciary system was inept; justice a mere two syllable word in our dictionaries.

Cutting clips of the articles that were published in TOI after that, I kept a close eye on unending case trials and soon, I lost faith. Years later when the accused were actually convicted, I felt nothing. It didn’t matter now - it was too little, too late. One of them had actually murdered another man while the case dragged on. 

I was 20 when Keenan and Reuben died. Arnab Goswami demanded justice. People protested and supporters organized candle marches. I fervently hoped that their sacrifice would be inspirational to others, that their lives and death would mean something to the apathetic spectators, that justice will prevail this time. It still hasn’t. Reading the account of the girl they saved that night, I was reminded of Jessica Lal and the feelings it had stirred inside me. I won’t be surprised if this case would go on for years and finally the perpetrators would be freed due to “lack of evidence” or given life sentence because it wasn’t “rarest of rare” enough for death penalty. 10 years down the line, Keenan and Reuben would be two young men who lost their lives because of “some women” and should have known better than to go out at night for dinner. The girls would be called shameless for hanging out with boys and life as we know it will go on. But what will never change is the hope Keenan and Reuben gave me. No, it doesn’t mean that I go on the street expecting someone will save me from prospective rapists but I know for sure that someone somewhere is fighting for what’s right, that not everyone in this world is a coward. And no, not all men are cut from the same cloth.

Keenan and Reuben

We need more Keenan and Reuben to save the likes of Keenan and Reuben. Had those 50 spectators jumped in to help, the headlines would have been different: “52 against 17, aam aadmi saves the day!” “Men protect honour of women” “More saviours than rapists”. But they were immovable and unmoved as onlookers always are.

Jessica Lal deserved more; Keenan and Reuben deserved more and in a better world, they would have survived, heroes that they were. They didn’t and we have to live with it. We did this.

Funny thing is that nothing has changed. A year after Keenan and Reuben’s tragic ending, a guy harassed a woman at that exact same spot where the duo were attacked as two policemen gawked mutely. Keenan’s father intervened and the cops threatened him instead. Not really funny, is it? I didn’t think so either. 

Read their stories here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jessica_Lal

http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/keenan-s-girlfriend-describes-how-he-was-killed-146488

http://www.punemirror.in/article/3/2013021120130211171521938a18f0719/Cops-abuse-Keenan-Santos%E2%80%99s-father-for-confronting-pervert.html

What I’ve learnt about PR so far

In my first year of college, I had a class on Public Relations where my teacher announced PR is Pyaar (love). A few months later, we studied what PR actually was and I never truly understood it until I was neck in deep in the industry. Now I know PR is not remotely related to love. It isn’t, it isn’t. So here’s a list of what I have learnt so far about the industry in the past one year.

Pros

1.      It’s good money. I wouldn’t get paid as much in a newspaper or a magazine.  

2.      You get a chance to learn, a lot! That’s the thing about reading newspapers every day and meeting journalists and clients. As my boss tells me, you should know something about everything so you can have conversations with intellectuals, be at par with them, which brings me to my third point.

3.      You get to meet really interesting, intelligent and brilliant people. These include businessmen, journalists, artists and innovators. Some could really inspire you.

4.      Then there are those occasional parties, celebrity events and the fun part. You won’t find any BFFs in celebrities but there’s glamour in PR too. Not really a party hopper but who doesn’t want to meet SRK?  

5.       You have to be a jack of all trades whether it is designing invites, managing digital media, making strategies or marketing plans, among other things.

Cons

1.      Journalists hate you, they will never respect you. They will dodge your calls, refuse to come out of their offices to meet you and pretend you don’t exist. Why? Because they can.

2.      There’s no ‘I’ in PR. You will never get credit for anything you do. Deal with it!

3.      Your client will never be happy because they have unrealistic expectations and don’t understand how media works. Get his quotes on the front page and he will still complain that his photo didn’t appear.

4.      Try as you may, you can’t explain to your family what you do.

5.      Submissive. Subservient.  You are expected to bow every time, regardless to who it is on the other side – journalist, client or your boss.

PR is not something you can learn in a class, I know now. There’s only so much a teacher can teach. Of course, writing and communication skills are important but when you have to think on your feet, that’s something you grasp when you sink your teeth into it.

Is PR for me? Well, I’m still trying to figure it out sitting by the fences. 

My Blank Paper

There’s nothing to lose and there’s nothing to prove, I’ll be dancing with myself!

I am in a very Glee mood. I was staring at the blank paper (MS Word) and it suddenly hit me – Mera Jeewan Kora Kaagaz, Kora Hi Reh Gaya. One thing led to another and I here I was typing ‘Dancing With Myself’ on Youtube and scrolling the mouse over the first few results that appeared. Then I found it – GLEE!  

It’s like an itch, you just have to scratch it or you won’t be able to sleep at night. Well, I have been sleepless for quite a few nights but no more. Tonight, I will dance with myself.

For all there is wrong with my writing, one thing is right – it gives me peace; it makes me happy. I have been tiring myself out thinking what I can do to fix my technique and in the process, I stopped. I stopped doing what I love the most; I kept my mind occupied with things that are secondary and my blank paper stayed as is. Until tonight. Tonight I did the first sensible thing all week – I strayed in search of an inspiration and before I knew it, I was humming Mera Jeewan Kora Kagaaz.

Watching Jaya Bachchan pretending to read a book called, ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ with a sad song playing in the background may have been the highlight of my day. Now, I don’t know why she is so sad and the context of the song but what I do realize is that my paper will be inked after all. I am writing, am I not?

Call it an epiphany - the lightning struck in my head and it all makes sense now. I need to write for myself. My theory is that you are a confident dancer in your bedroom, strangely melodious in your bathroom so why can’t I be a creative writer on my blank page, a page I’m sure no one would read? I’m complicating things again. Here it goes in simple words – stop thinking about who will read it and how they will react to it. Amish Tripathi (yes, I know him – interviewed him for a magazine and can’t stop bragging about it even though it was just over the phone) said the same thing to me – don’t dwell upon what your readers will think, you will never be able to write if you do. He was right because it happened to me. I haven’t been able to write a single word since someone called my writing flat. I was too hung up on the fact that whatever I write next will be flat too, I embedded it in my mind that my prose has no curves, no twists and turns, no life. Then Glee gave me the answer. 

Well if it’s flat, I’ll try to improve it. That can’t happen if I drop the pen and surrender.

My newly found common sense: “No hands up! Get back to your laptop and type away. If it sucks (which it doesn’t), you can only improve by writing. Let people critique your work. Take it personally and do better next time.”

I love writing. Always have, always will. I will just have to deal with the criticism that comes with the territory. I should think of it this way – it’s highly unlikely that my bestselling novel (and I will write one) will be loved by all. I will get frequent hate mails when I kill my characters in my books. And what about the critics who would hate the adaptation of my novel? There is always, always going to be “Oh, I don’t like it” and “It isn’t really good” but my paper can’t stay blank.

And it won’t.

P.S. Cory, you are a star :)

Why I Hate Airtel

I am one of those people who can’t live without internet. It’s not just social media websites or WhatsApp; my work, my life depends on it and Airtel has been driving me crazy with their antics. I have loved Airtel for years – whenever I had a problem, they would show up in a few hours and fix it. But this was ages ago when they were still sensible. Now they are all bunch of blood sucking vampires who can’t tell me what is wrong and fix it.

About a year ago, I started experiencing frequent disconnection problem with my internet. It happened once in a blue moon so I felt no need to lodge a complaint. Six months ago, it escalated to a point that every 5 second, my internet gets disconnected and I get the message “No Internet Access”. Initially, Airtel was responsive and sent teams to rectify the issue. It would work for two days and again go bad.

The engineers asked me to get a new modem – I did (spent 2K but what the hell). The engineer asked to get the wires fixed – Airtel did. The engineers also asked me to get the DP (?) changed and Airtel did that too. Result? I’m still crying foul because even after replacing every freaking thing, I’m still complaining, infuriated that Airtel isn’t even righteous enough to tell me it can’t be done. The connection is a lost cause.

Every time I ask them to discontinue my connection, they plead me to give them 24 hours, 48 hours, a week to diagnose the problem and treat it. May be it’s not treatable; maybe there is no cure. Just let me get rid of it and we will all be peaceful. No, they really want me as a customer because I look so cute when I’m angry? I don’t see any other reason why they just can’t cut it once and for all and tell me, “We are sorry but we don’t know what the problem is. You should get another connection because that is what is best for you and our company.”

I’m so tired of making calls, writing mails and tweeting #AirtelSucks. Where does this end?

Lingering Effect of the Mussorie Trip

It’s hard not to look back. Even after two days, I’m still in the reminiscence mode; scrolling through the pictures; listening to the songs we played in the car; trying to soak it all in, lest I forget. I’m stuck in the time warp and I don’t want to get out of it.

For different reasons, the trip to Dehradun and Mussorie will be a cherished memory. Apart from the fact that it was the first time I went somewhere, it was a dream come true to meet Ruskin Bond. Last month when I interviewed Amish Tripathi, I thought it couldn’t get any better but it did. This time I met an author I admire, talked to him and got him to sign my book. And to think I was about to cancel the trip! It would have been the biggest mistake of my life.

Oh, the hills! It’s one thing to see a place in movies or pictures, even dreams but up, close and personal, it is something unexplainable. I was at a loss of word then and I’m at a loss of words now. I was awestruck, jumping with joy and bewildered that no one else was as excited as I was (they all had been there, done that). They were all slightly amused to see me act like I kid who just got a bag full of candies.

Initially, I was apprehensive of the whole trip, the 6 hour journey (which took more time than we imagined), the change in weather, altitude and everything from food to hotels to trolley and waterfall. For someone who has never been anywhere, the fear of the unknown was gripping but better sense prevailed and here I am, writing about how I could never forget this trip. May be it was because my friends were too thoughtful or because I had watched Ranbir Kapoor do much more in YJHD just a night prior to the trip or because I really did want it. Now I know that I will always want it. Sure I got sick, sure it was too taxing, but it was all worth it. Those two minutes with Ruskin Bond, that view from the Gunhill Point, climbing the rocks at Kempty Falls and everything in between.

It may seem silly that a small trip could affect someone this much. It’s not a big deal, obviously. It’s a matter of few hours, not like I have been to space. But for me, it’s so much more and the funny thing is that I can’t explain it, not even to myself. I just remembered one thing while I was climbing rocks at Kempty Falls: Main chalna chahta hoon, Naina. Udna chahta hoon. Bas rukna nahi chahta. This is something I have been telling myself for a few months now.