The Madras Mail

I donated blood for the first time today, and I feel GOOD about that.

The past week consisted of me doing a lot of almost all nighters and a lot of quizzes. The next week will consist of me doing a lot of definitive all nighters and a lot of quizzes. I have to start getting stuff ready for my summer internship.

Mr.Vignesh, what kind of job do you want?

Umm … Blow?

I’m never gonna get a job.

I got an email from my uncle with this beautiful poem by Nizar Qabbani.

In a country where thinkers are assassinated, and writers are considered infidels and books are burnt, in societies that refuse the other, and force silence on mouths and thoughts forbidden, and to question is a sin, I must beg your pardon, would you permit me?

Would you permit me to bring up my children as I want, and not to dictate on me your whims and orders?

Would you permit me to teach my children that the religion is first to God, and not for religious leaders or scholars or people?

Would you permit me to teach my little one that religion is about good manners, good behavior, good conduct, honesty and truthfulness, before I teach her with which foot to enter the bathroom or with which hand she should eat?

Would you permit me to teach my daughter that God is about love, and she can dialog with Him and ask Him anything she wants, far away from the teachings of anyone?

Would you permit me not to mention the torture of the grave to my children, who do not know about death yet?

Would you permit me to teach my daughter the tenets of the religion and its culture and manners, before I force on her the “Hijab” (the veil)?

Would you permit me to tell my young son that hurting people and degrading them because of their nationality, color or religion, is considered a big sin by God?

Would you permit me to tell my daughter to revising her homework and paying attention to her learning is considered by God as more useful and important than learning by heart Ayahs from the Quran without knowing their meaning?

Would you permit me to teach my son that following the footsteps of the Honorable Prophet begins with his honesty, loyalty and truthfulness, before his beard or how short his “thobe” (long shirt/dress) is?

Would you permit me to tell my daughter that her Christian friend is not an infidel, and ask her not to cry fearing her friend will go to Hell?

Would you permit me to argue, that God did not authorize anyone on earth after the Prophet to speak in his name nor did he vest any powers in anyone to issue “deeds of forgiveness” to people?

Would you permit me to say, that God has forbidden killing the human spirit, and who kills wrongly a human being is as if he killed all human kind, and no Muslim has the right to frighten another Muslim?

Would you permit me to teach my children that God is greater, more just, and more merciful than all the (religious) scholars on earth combined And that his standards are different from the standards of those trading the religion, and that his accountability is kinder and more merciful?

Would you permit me?

I’m sitting in the library now, that’s a first. Why? I had a look at everything I had to study by Monday for a myriad of quizzes, I freaked out, and I came here. I also have a headache now.

I think it’s now past the time where I can write about the firsts at XLRI. I’ve gotten used to waking up to the Departed Theme by Dropkick Murphys (which I truly and whole-heartedly hate now), run to Dadu’s to get that coffee and drink it so bloody fast that I scald my tongue, somehow try to stay awake during class, run back after class and manage to grab a few winks before the next lecture after lunch, manage to get a tie (which was knotted by someone else, I still can’t get the damned thing) on while looking like a complete idiot, get into a random discussion on theology with Hameed which just ends in both of us swearing a lot, discuss with the bL whether or not to have a party that night (that particular discussion mostly ends in ‘yea, what the hell’), and spend the rest of the night drinking and/or dancing, or just eating a lot of eggs at Bishu’s and sleeping it off.

I have to study.

No more parties till I get the academics sorted out. This should be interesting.

This post is already up on VG’s and Koshal’s pages, but it’s too good to pass by, so I will put it up on mine too. The original article is here.

“The Travails of Single South Indian men of conservative upbringing” or “Why we don’t get any…”

Yet another action packed weekend in Mumbai, full of fun, frolic and introspection. I have learnt many things. For example having money when none of your friends have any is as good as not having any. And after spending much time in movie theatres, cafes and restaurants I have gathered many insights into the endless monotony that is the love life of south Indian men. What I have unearthed is most disheartening. Disheartening because comprehension of these truths will not change our status anytime soon. However there is also cause for joy. We never stood a chance anyway. What loads the dice against virile, gallant, well educated, good looking, sincere mallus and tams? (Kandus were once among us, but Bangalore has changed all that.)

Our futures are shot to hell as soon as our parents bestow upon us names that are anything but alluring. I cannot imagine a more foolproof way of making sure the child remains single till classified advertisements or that maternal uncle in San Francisco thinks otherwise. Name him “Parthasarathy Venkatachalapthy” and his inherent capability to combat celibacy is obliterated before he could even talk. He will grow to be known as Partha. Before he knows, his smart, seductively named northy classmates start calling him Paratha. No woman in their right minds will go anyway near poor Parthasarathy. His investment banking job doesn’t help either. His employer loves him though. He has no personal life you see. By this time the Sanjay Singhs and Bobby Khans from his class have small businesses of their own and spend 60% of their lives in discos and pubs. The remaining 40% is spent coochicooing with leather and denim clad muses in their penthouse flats on Nepean Sea Road. Business is safely in the hands of the Mallu manager. After all with a name like Blossom Babykutty he cant use his 30000 salary anywhere. Blossom gave up on society when in school they automatically enrolled him for Cookery Classes. Along with all the girls.

Yes my dear reader, nomenclature is the first nail in a coffin of neglect and hormonal pandemonium. In a kinder world they would just name the poor southern male child and throw him off the balcony. “Yes appa we have named him Goundamani…” THUD. Life would have been less kinder to him anyway.

If all the women the Upadhyays, Kumars, Pintos and, god forbid, the Sens and Roys in the world have met were distributed amongst the Arunkumars, Vadukuts and Chandramogans we would all be merry casanovas with 3 to 4 pretty things at each arm. But alas it is not to be. Of course the south Indian women have no such issues. They have names which are like sweet poetry to the ravenous northie hormone tanks. Picture this: “Welcome, and this is my family. This is my daughter Poorni (what a sweet name!!) and my son Ponnalagusamy (er.. hello..)..” Cyanide would not be fast enough for poor Samy. Nothing Samy does will help him. He can pump iron, drive fast cars and wear snazzy clothes, but against a braindead dude called Arjun Singhania he has as much chance of getting any as a Benedictine Monk in a Saharan Seminary.

Couple this with the other failures that have plagued our existence. Any attempt at spiking hair with gel fails miserably. In an hour I have a crown of greasy, smelly fibrous mush. My night ends there. However the northy just has to scream “Wakaw!!!” and you have to peel the women off him to let him breathe. In a disco while we can manage the medium hip shake with neck curls, once the Bhangra starts pumping we are as fluid as cement and gravel in a mixer. Karan Kapoor or Jatin Thapar in the low cut jeans with chaddi strap showing and see through shirt throws his elbows perfectly, the cynosure of all attention. The women love a man who digs pasta and fondue. But why do they not see the simple pleasures of curd rice and coconut chutney? When poor Senthilnathan opens his tiffin box in the office lunch room his female coworkers just dissappear when they see the tamarind rice and poppadums. The have all rematerialised around Bobby Singh who has ordered in Pizza and Garlic bread. (And they have the gall to talk of foreign origin.)

How can a man like me brought up in roomy lungis and oversized polyester shirts ever walk the walk in painted on jeans (that makes a big impression) and neon yellow rib hugging t shirts? All I can do is don my worn “comfort fit” jeans and floral shirt. Which is pretty low on the “Look at me lady” scale, just above fig leaf skirt and feather headgear a la caveman, and a mite below Khakhi Shirt over a red t shirt and baggy khakhi pants and white trainers a la Rajni in “Badsha”.

Sociologically too the tam or mallu man is severely sidelined. An average tam stud stays in a house with, on average, three grandparents, three sets of uncles and aunts, and over 10 children. Not the ideal atmosphere for some intimacy and some full throated “WHOSE YOUR DADDY!!!” at the 3 in the morning. The mallu guy of course is almost always in the gulf working alone on some onshore oil rig in the desert. Rheumatic elbows me thinks.

Alas dear friends we are not just meant to set the nights on fire. We are just not built to be “The Ladies Man”. The black man has hip hop, the white man has rock, the southie guy only has idlis and tomato rasam or an NRI account in South Indian Bank Ernakulam Branch. Alas as our destiny was determined in one fell swoop by our nomenclature, so will our future be. A nice arranged little love story. But the agony of course does not end there. On the first night, as the stud sits on his bed finally within touching distance and whispers his sweet desires into her delectable ear, she blushes, turns around and whispers back “But amma has said only on second saturdays…”

In one last effort here we attractive young men have taken on alter egos which may interest some of you women:

1. Gautam Kumar Raja, will now be known as Joshua Perreira

2. Sidin Sunny Vadukut, henceforth will be known as Dev Chopra

3. Ashwath Venkataraman is now Vijay Desai

4. Sudarshan Ramakrishnan no more, from now he is Barath Sharma

5. Gautam Chandrasekharan will now respond to Alyque Shah

Do mail me any time for a meeting with one of the above. One week notice if Italian or Chinese food is involved, or if the individual is expected to dance.

I will as a rule no longer clean up after Hameed.

I can say this with conviction, now that the puking days are behind me, as VG said, ‘the boy has become a man’. My study table now resembles a Russian Vodka Convention, Piotr Smirnov would have been proud; my alcohol-stream has a small, and steadily decreasing blood content; I can hear my liver crying out, ‘Dude…!’; I have 5 quizzes this week, a mid-term review tomorrow, and have 3 term papers to write; and to top it all, I have the mother of all colds, and am feeling all drippy.

I’m speaking the occasional Hindi nowadays.

Chalo, daaru peethen hai.

I’m not a special person, I don’t speak 71 languages, I can’t play the guitar with my feet, I can’t quote abstract business terminology and get away with it, nor can bring myself to truthfully answer the question, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ But then, that’s not what is required to get into a business school.

To be a part of an entity that has, for all practical purposes, always been, is truly wonderful. People come up to me and tell me that XLRI was the best thing that’s happened to me. That part I wholly agree with. But why, most people won’t know and will never be able to understand. Tradition cannot be talked about; in fact it would be demeaning to tradition to explain it in mere words, it is to be experienced. And at XL, we believe in doing things right, and by God we mean it. To spend two years in the company of friends, surprise quizzes, a non-existent sleep cycle, the bottle, the parties and such, is a feeling that cannot be explained.

I’ve never been at such a loss for words before.

When I came to XLRI for the first time on the 13th of June, ’08, it still hadn’t hit me that I was going to be a part of India’s most respected business schools. As a thumb rule, most of what people tell you will be wrong. People are so clouded by their opinions and prejudices that they for the most part fail to look beyond. I came here with a constant fear gnawing at my stomach that I had to do assignments all day, and turn into a report-writing machine. I do agree that the workload is gruelling, but that isn’t all to life at XL. Life at XL is about doing things that you wouldn’t normally do, it’s about being what you are rather than being what others want you to be; it’s about adventure and fun more than term papers and presentations. And by fun I don’t mean the hello-hello-ha-ha types, it’s about fun that is completely unbridled, utterly awesome and mind-numbingly amazing.

As someone said, ‘But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?’

(I published this in XL Meri Jaan too)

People who know me know that I can get crazy drunk and do some very crazy things, it’s not out of the normal, but the point is each person’s take on a wasted night is very different. People are judged by what they do when they’re drunk and rarely by what they do when sober. This is quite funny actually, a completely self motivated pursuit of loss of sanity contributes more to a friendship than a meaningful, intellectual discussion.

I’ve been here at XLRI for about 3 weeks now. These three weeks have been so frigging awesome that I can hardly bring myself to write it all down. The people, the endless bottles of booze, the suttas, the Hindi, El top, the wet nite, the legendary XL bonding, and so much more. The scene here is so vibrant that is so unlike anything I’ve seen before.

My whole objective, or rather my parents’ objective of making me come here was to give me a management education, and that is somehow supposed to help me make me a more ’successful’ person. I’m totally lost on this part of the argument. My life has never been planned. Everything I do in my life has been the product of someone’s advice. The point here is most people fall under this category but are too scared to accept it. I’m not, so it really doesn’t matter. The whole objective of life is to be happy, so for me happiness comes in all the small things. The beer with friends, the drive along a beach, a good book, travel, good food, and so forth. I really have no idea what I’ll do if I get a huge salary after I pass out, will probably spend most of it on travelling, and give the rest away as charity. I’m just trying to think here, that how many people are pretending that grades, personal image, and other equally unimportant things define them. Life is so much more. Laughing a lot, spending time with the people you like, are the most important things, others are just a face we put up to society, something that we pretend we are, but truly are unhappy about. I’ll be happy if people come and tell me if I’ve made a difference to their lives rather than a plaque with a ‘Best Employee’ embossed on it.

All this is just rants I’m making at 4 in the morning, but somehow feel important to write down.

Life is just so fucking amazing. Lol.