Philosopher's Notes II

This has taken quite some time to come, the second ‘philosopher's’ notes. Evaluating relationships and cherishing each one of those that I have has enabled me to put this together.

Advantages of having only a select few friends.

A friend in need is a friend indeed, is an age old adage but our understanding of the same has been lost in our inability to go beyond perceptions.

This adage has always had two qualifiers, the first is about a friend in need who are essentially what we call good friends and the second implies a select few friends. Therefore if you have too many friends, you essentially have no friend in deed.

The first advantage of having a limited number of good friends is that they are indeed friends in deed. With select few you are not spreading yourself too thin, and have a far greater bond. This short list has been basis a good degree of vetting and has been tested by time and hence is more durable and reliable. The best part of it all is that much of the trash around don’t bother you. They stay away, don’t waste your time and but for calling you names like snooty.

It’s worth it, quality friends command a premium. Your friends will feel lucky to have you as a good friend.


Why love at first sight doesn’t last?

You can be mesmerized, left speechless by someone’s beauty. But is that love. If it is something basis the first sight, will it last, for the premise, in this case - beauty, doesn’t last forever.

All such cases, methinks are mere infatuations. When you come to mother earth from the rarefied air of the infatuation, friction develops only to break it down soon thereafter. Relationships are built with the test of time and with the understanding of each other.

Look around, how many of such speed commitments have lasted the test of time.

Does your wife share a lot with your mother?

Sophocles' protagonist, a Greek mythical character Oedipus unwittingly murders his father and marries his mother and Freud with his sexually enriched psychoanalytical theory calls it the Oedipal Complex.

The Oedipal complex in simpler words is the attraction between a son and his mother or for that matter a woman in his immediate family who forms an important part of his life, possibly a sister. This attraction, outside Freud's world - which it mostly is, is not necessarily sexual. This connect is so inherent and hence natural that the man is easily attracted to women in whom he can see characteristics, habits, temperament etc of his mother/sister. Men often have a wife who reflects this attraction between a man and his mother/sister and by logical extension are sexually attracted to such women.

There is a female equivalent, known as the Electra complex

Then isn't Freud right after all?

Randomly Speaking

A couple of months ago, while over loaded with work I developed the following scale to measure the progress of tasks at hand.......

1. Zilch
2. Scratch
3. Intermediate
4. Nigh
5. Virtually
6. Eureka

Till then....

It has been such a long time, almost 3 months, that I wrote here.
Am happy that I don't come back to this to write, to keep myself busy.

Will resume writing regularly once there is a sense of fulfillment and completeness.


Till then......

Undying love....

I had been away from home for good one week, traveling to places which are supposed to be home – place of birth, home town, land of my forefathers etc.

I travel to Patna at least once a year, but rarely for whole seven days. Traveling to Patna is rather easy with an overnight express train without any stops along the entire 1004km.

Patna can be a frustrating experience. The sorry state of roads has been worsened with the excessive rain washing away the top black layer. The slow moving traffic and the constant honking can be maddening. However I believe local travel in the city can improve dramatically by two simple changes – a) build roads that last & b) remove the slow moving cycle rickshaws off the main thoroughfares, at least from Bailey Road, Fraser Road, Exhibition Road, Boring Road and Ashok Rajpath and around Gandhi Maidan.

A friend’s father lent me his car for use during the stay in Patna. It was rather very thoughtful of him. With the car I was able to finish the tasks in hand quite comfortably. But driving around in Patna was a test of patience. I was jostling for space with cycle rickshaws and pedestrians, even in the central business district of the city. When did I knock off both the front indicators, I just don’t know.

Patna seemed to have an optimistic buzz which I hadn’t seen in the last few years. The city is gripped with a whole lot of activity with a brand new IIT at last, a new national law university, and a much hyped business school and a couple of new engineering colleges. Patna had not seen such an effort at institutional building for a very long time. Property prices have gone up, the city has various flyovers under construction, and people seem to be generally making more money. Things at last are changing for the better.

Being away from home for such a long time, brought about certain new realizations - A simple call asking ‘what’s happening’ twice - thrice a day meant quite a lot to my mother; I was missing someone much more than I thought I should have; I could talk like an equal and sometimes more than that amongst my relatives; & most importantly that I still love Patna.

Asking her out…..

This is about my close friend; - dude my chance to publicly laugh at you. He is rather a sweet friend, naive to tell me about how he made an ass of himself during this evening out with this pretty girl he knows.

Dude, I promise not to give away your name.


Let me tell you all, what happened.

There is this sweet girl he has got to know, let us call her Akanksha, over the last couple of months. He tells me, Akanksha is beautiful (this I will vouch for, he had had me introduced) and has been rather nice to him. He tells me, he is fond of her and when I ask him if there is more to it, he dismisses it by saying 'more' doesn’t seem logical and plus it can’t be one sided. A proud gentleman that he is.

Okay, let’s forget the girl and how nice this friend is (but don’t forget the equation that they share). Let me tell you about his weekend.

He asked Akanksha out, for a play. She agreed, but actually went out after postponing it for 2 weekends. So obviously my friend was actually looking forward to it this time when they froze the time etc.

On the D-day a few minutes before the appointed hour our friend was at Akanksha’s building. Just as he was trying to call to ask her to step out, Akanksha called to complain that he had made her wait. (Guess Akanksha was looking forward to this outing too).

Nothing after that went right for my friend.

They couldn’t find the venue, he was supposed to know his way around.

Akanksha didn’t quite like the play, for that matter our friend didn’t like it too. Akanksha wanted to step out mid way, fortunately he managed to make her stay put.

Soon it was time for dinner. Our friend thought, he had it all worked out but fate had decided to make an ass of this normally intelligent friend of mine.

So they drove to Connaught Place. Dinner, it was decided would be at his clubby joint called DV8.

Now listen carefully…….DV8, had closed some months ago, and Akanksha of course did not like the place that had opened in its stead.

So the next port of call it was decided was going to be Agni at the Park. Cover charges of 2k didn’t quite make sense for a dinner that would last not more than 45 minutes given Akanksha’s deadline to reach home.

When you can’t take a girl to a decent place and you her make her walk when she is so delicately dressed, my friend you don’t quite deserve to ask a girl out.

Let me not be harsh, and tell you what happened next.

Walking back, still deciding where dinner could be, Akanksha noticed Kwality. The famous Kwality of the 70s-80s now frequented only by fat Punjabi aunties and over the hill Uncle-jis.

So dinner at Kwality, it was.

Imagine, the upper end boarding school upbringing, the sophistication and the gentleman in my friend were all in vain. He couldn’t find a proper restaurant for dinner, when he was out with this girl for the first time.

When I heard this first I could not help guffawing, but then my advice to my friend was – Dude, if you are clueless, leave it to her. She will any way enjoy being the boss.

Guys join me in saying a little prayer, that may Akanksha give my friend another chance to go out with her.

He really wants to go out with her again.

Becoming Musical

This is not about Rock Hudson, but only about music.

At an interview I was once asked, “Do you like music?”

“Sir, movies and music, I do not understand.”

“What barbaric tastes you have, you do not like movies or music but are interested in politics.” Earlier in the conversation, I had proudly told the interview panel that I find politics very exciting.

Barbaric, it is, not to be able to appreciate music. You are not a gentleman if you do not enjoy music, ideally you should be able to play a musical instrument.

I can bet on it that there is some genetic musical switch in ones DNA construct. You are lucky if you were born with the switch ‘on’ for I have made numerous attempts to get that going.

Interestingly I was part of the school choir till may be grade IV or V, but then as I grew up I probably stayed away from music for in a boarding school ( that too all boys) only sissies participated in music.

Efforts at appreciating the santoor, tabla or the sitar at the SPIC MACAY programs at school didn’t yield much. Probably the only achievement was some ability to discern when a completely extraordinary note was being played.

School obviously had its own brand of music. We Will Rock You, Another Brick in Wall and the likes topped the popularity charts, wouldn’t be surprised if they still do. Songs like Ice Ice Baby, Queen’s I Want To Break Free or Roxette’s The Look were also very popular.

How can I forget the ever popular, without copyrights, compilation called ‘Sexology’. With its racy title it was a must have for every individual at school. Sexology dished out songs, tamer than its name, like Lets Talk About Sex etc.

I have come a long way since then. In the last 6 months I have seen music really grow on me.

Bob Dylan was the trigger, Living Next Door To Alice reminded me of yester years. Don McLean’s American Pie and Vincent got me hooked to soft rock. And John Denver is another of the favorites.

And oft heart broken Micheal Learns to Rock’s I Wanna Dance tugs at my heart.

One of the coolest songs I have ever heard is Jesus He Knows Me by Genesis.

However I still get a feeling of incompleteness for I still can’t hum any of these songs. The day I can, hum even one song, I will be convinced that the musical switch has at last been activated.

If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it.

Late Evenings at Work

I have many a times sat late at work.

While I was in Bombay, it was so many times to merely avoid the traffic on the way back home. The latest I have done is being in office upto almost 0130 hours, trying to give the final okay to a film created for the annual conference.

Fortunately my previous supervisor couldn't work late without a drink, so if something had to be urgently discussed it was at a pub or a restaurant. And not without his reiterating that he would have not hired me if he knew I was a teetotaller.

Working at odd hours and odd days, I believe normally don't yield much. One such meeting was at the restaurant right outside the Bombay airport. The boss was coming back from Delhi on a Saturday after an extremely successful meeting with a key business partner on the previous day. It was time to get into execution immediately, hence the meeting at the airport. (Fortunately we weren't meeting at the office in downtown Bombay, which would have been more than an hours drive from my home in the suburbs.)

Another such meeting, this time on a non working day in the middle of the week was at the Cricket Club of India in south Bombay. We, rather the boss, decided that the best place to discuss the matter at hand was by the poolside at CCI. With a beer in his hand we 'analyzed' women in pool besides the work at hand. The boss did much of the analyzing, after all I was facing him with my back to the pool. Lunch after the analyses was rather sumptuous at the restaurant at CCI. Don't remember if we achieved much that day.

These late evenings, normally low on productivity, are some times quite fulfilling. You are ready for the important meeting/presentation the next day or have merely covered a great deal of pending work. On such a day you drive back home with a sense of contentment, and generally feeling nice about yourself inspite of the physical and mental tiredness.

The other side of the story are numerous irritants that plague you in these late evening sessions. Especially if you are not enjoying what you are doing, hunger becomes unbearable, numerous people suddenly start remembering you and you are busy promising to call back. And not to forget home, they will obviously start calling every 10 -15 minutes wanting to know how much longer before you leave for home.

Today promised to be another evening like that, when I decided it would be more productive to write this post. The pleasant drive back home did compensate.