Its been several years since I have had pets, I had them when I was born and the few years that I did not have one - were long and I would say extremely uneventful. I must clarify that I love animals - really even rats if I could just blind myself from looking at their tails! But mostly I have had dogs and the small variety - what many may consider show pieces, may I please dispel such blatant maligning of such species who are brave and extraordinary in their own little ways.

Of the last two pets that I have had, they have been so to say more of the impish kinds. They are small, furry, essentially snub nosed so very hard to muzzle kinds.

Now what I am unable to deal with or atleast fail each time to deal with is when upon seeing the photos of my pet, I am told how similar I look. Now I love my babies, they are my world, I take them out for walks, I feed them and then ofcourse I even talk with them.

But must I look like them.....? One of my colleagues suggested that often dogs look like their masters and masters often reflect the same - really- Now I thought that happened with couples who've grown old together.

But in many ways I do grow old with my dogs - I love them more everyday, I deal with their pranks everyday and I feel they make me happier everyday - so I guess then I am fine if I am associated to my source of happiness!

The last few days have gone by, as if hurried by. There were ever so slight peaks into understanding human nature, the ways of the world, my darling sister left for Mumbai, my boss took credit for my groundwork without even flapping an eyelid, my boyfriend left for his hometown for the exams he is to sit for, one of my girlfriends is proverbially in the wrong place at the wrong time and my mind has been in a zone of subtle restlessness.

So I dug deep into the recesses of my mind, in an attempt to recollect a particularly hard time when taking a decision seemed all but impossible. I did find something to give me solace- the I-Ching.

What it is? How it works? Is not mine to answer. Infact I do not wish to divulge more into this -

So as a consequence of much activity I have been unable to achieve much in terms of my preparation. I dont wish to worry, so I will push myself not to.

the question therefore in this stage is what can I do to sustain my perparations? Especially when I feel things slipping towards the worst?

I have a faint answer in doing my Job properly. I have been stuck with a video editing software for the last 2 days, but this is frustrating me. What gets to me even more is one such colleagues tall claim of knowing all the ropes of editing and her absolute inability to help me out on this. Really??/

So many ineffectual people working ineffectually for longest periods of time! And we wonder why the work is not good enough.

Note: Very recently one of my directors wrote an email to me which began like this "You inspired me to play with the design... much more interesting than what I was doing :)

I tried to combine your two designs," I was happy that I was able to do that!

Hope India, Hope!

I must confess this, its quite appropriate because I hardly have readers/followers and well it'll be out of my system atleast.

So very recently I attended a motivational seminar as it were. Its been 2 weeks and I thought I'd die with this but I think it must be told atleast for the sake of kindred spirits.

When a reasonably good looking young (early 30's) kind of a guy makes tall claims to 'changing your life if you attend his seminar' I think you should find out exactly what he has to offer.

So I trudged several kilometers, got lost on my way and parked my car in blistering heat to hear this man speak. I tend to observe things around me, the venue of the event was the ISKON temple, now I have heard stories and stories about what goes on there, mind you I am a narrow minded person with exceptionally limited view of things around me, inspite of such handicaps, I decided I would leave my biases outside this. There were two longest of long queues...one for men and one for women...the one for the latter was short and was a delight to be a part of...however it did not really matter because once inside, men women alike were ravenous...guess for what...hope, life change, seizing the day and everything that life is made up of...the one thing that stuck out was there appeared to be more men  in desperate need of this doze, and so many of them were young (in their 20's)...naturally the skewed sex ratio of our country might as well have been the reason.

With due respect to the said man...his intentions are great, and to add to it all...its actually free...there are no after talk offers/packages.

It should suffice to say that at the end of a 2 hour session I felt rather exhausted. His analogies examples did not work to motivate me, strangely he used a term "AASAN HAIN"(its easy) very frequently and this kept ringing in my head for several days to come. I feared some form of subliminal attack on my numerous states of conciousness' had occurred!

Attending this seminar did however quite a few things for me...I realized I dont need anybody to tell me about hope and motivation and things like that. Prehaps something about the fact that life beats you down but you get up and move ahead anyway...or something!

There were sadly a whole bunch of youngsters, people who had exams the next day, had taken off from work to be there...what baffled me was 'why'???

Its a qualitative question, I dont think there could be a fixed answer to this one, it will vary from individual to age groups, to communities as well as sex.

I am certain of the 600 odd who attended his talk, 400 would like to return, go back...please for all those who care to listen...attending and listening to someone else talk of how they overcame their hardships is so passive in its very nature. Your 'problems' will never be the same.

Life like relationships are the same...no two people will have the same story to tell

Go forth, fuck things up and find ways to deal with it. You dont need any motivational talker to do that!

Since I am only subtely speaking against his agenda, perhaps you'd like to still hear him out

http://www.sandeepmaheshwari.com/

NOTE: Any unintended harm or malice is never meant towards the mentioned subject.

The untold joys of a Clandestine Bitch!

The month of April ended wonderfully for me. As usual I went a-travelling to Purnea, Bihar. This time the purpose was to document and undertake a qualitative research of an ongoing Mother's Literacy project.

Naturally how the program is running, what do mother's have to say about it etc are going to be part of the report that I hope I would be able to come up with.

Now during the course of my stay in Purnea, I got into a bit of a squabble, it was rather mature because I was really unable to 'carpe diem' as it were and therefore was left mostly frustrated with my sheer inability already. Since I more often than not find a way to vent my anger, this time around, my beloved took the beating. I was deeply saddened at such a peculiar disposition, however, I feel perhaps, that my love for this man concerned is bigger, larger than day to day work squabbles and so we kiss and make up...

 My next best bet was to pray to the Indian scriptures that maybe, that Karma may get back at this person concerned and what many would consider to be the ideal case is if I were to witness such benevolence played out infront of my eyes.

As providence would have it, the above mentioned person was going to pay and pay oh so dearly for the much unwonted remarks of just a few hours before. She along with another were to undertake a train trip homeward bound to Delhi from Purnea. Their tickets were wait-listed-but most believed it would be confirmed by the hour of their travel. Arriving on the platform, with the train poised to leave, She checked the lists frantically to ensure the tickets were confirmed and they had proper seats...Karma be praised...there were no such confirmed seats and neither did their names show up on this list.

Return they must, it was now much more than merely an insult meted out by fate if they were to return to the hotel room in Purnea, so they paid for a sleeper class ticket and shared a single seat.

For the uninitiated, train rides of such kinds are particularly tedious- they last for more than 24 hours where you feel like you could set up shop right there. Over and above that if you did not get a place to sleep it is just painful...I was gleeful, joyous most definitely when I heard the occurence of this.

Its been 3 days to the event and I do not regret one bit of my feeling happy when I saw Karma play itself out right infront of me. I am quite certain that the bitches and bastards of this little limited world of mine would have gleed sometime in such fate that befell me. I am certain I am not immune to it in the future...but why not be atleast a clandestine bitch when I can...! 

So normally whenever a few trusted and close friends of mine suggest somethings or offer some advice, I take it...as snobbish as I may appear, there are very few people in my life whose opinion matters to me and more suitably when it matches mine.

So I took one such advice of giving myself a week to come up with a timetable that will work for me. I dont plan to quit my job because I'll go mad if I did. the requirement from this examination is not all that much, as I understand from the way my sister is studying for her semester exams in D'school.

I have had a wonderfully relaxing life in comparison, During my masters I was travelling the world, meeting new people, making journal entries, and learning maps. I necessarily believe however that every country has its own rules, if you dont rough it out on this soil, this soil aint gonna give you back much.

So here I am, back on this soil, learning more everyday of the issues that touch millions of people in this country, and trying to make some small difference- i cant but help thinking that it is so driven of the self, that ultimately I am just thinking of my goals, and ambitions and I give it the illusion of being the 'bigger picture'.

My job makes me travel across the villages of this country, I get to see children studying in schools and make shift arrangements, receiving education, dreams of becoming doctors from the remotest parts and that inspires me.

My relatives ofcourse cant help praising me when they hear what I do...They feel that I actually go and teach these kids...this perception of theirs and the inability to comprehend even the surface problems like how could I possibly teach kids in places where the languages are so different, where dialects make all the difference, and how could I be doing anything substantial by just visiting some villages for just a few days...are questions that never cross their mind...perhaps they have seen much of this world, and lived long in this country.

Not many of them listen to what I have to say, its hardly about credibility, its just that it does not matter, because it does not touch their lives. I am not a crusader, neither a saint.

So the point is that I was told by a very dear friend that it is the darkest before dawn and if there is only failure and no light, the only way out of this is to work hard, to give your mind no space to wallow or think of things past.

Plus when nothing works, when the love of my life is exhausted after numerous trials of encouraging and motivating me on this long empty road, I turn to the words of Rabindranath Tagore - "jodi tor daak shune keyu Na aasshe tobe ekla cholo re."

BE WARNED

I usually listen to music when I am at work, because it blocks the outside noise for me.

However, after listening to this particular song I was overcome with a feeling of doom, utter and complete, out of which there is no exit. I became breathless and to my mind crossed the following thought- while its correct that our life we have choices to make it great or just ruin it and never get our things together, what if there was actually no choice and it was all destined? And what if my destiny was as dark as I just felt?

Now a single piece of music could do that to me, I doubt, there are perhaps many sub-conscious factors...but this song was a trigger.

The funny bit is that the picturization and the wordings of the song are really contrary to the feeling it evoked in me-its a romantic song:

So I tried to think what about this piece could do that to me- I feel its the music, I mean just take the words out for a second, the beautiful scenery and all and what if you heard it in a place where you were all alone, there is a quietness to the song and the beats which seem waiting to culminate to place from where there is no return.

I was positively disturbed!

I was actually on the pot and going through my daily ritual of reading the Delhi Times: I feel this particular segment must and must be read only during this hour and no other hour.

So I happened to chance upon this half page advert on some motivational Speaker called Sandeep Maheshwari-the big story is that apparently he is now lecturing in Delhi and its a 2 hour thing every sat and Sunday and one needs to book one's seat immediately if one wishes to sit through one such sessions....

It caught my eye, I entered office and checked out his website...he is a young guy who claims that once after his classes your life will change or atleast the way you look at it...naturally it is implied that you must have a certain mental disposition, being too critical or cynical being neither of the requirements.

I have enrolled myself for one such momentous lesson in the coming month of April and before that the registration process required me to define success in 200 words: I wrote: "Success is being happy and secure about yourself. There is a fire within that pushes you to achieve your goals, success is the pursuit of such a fire."

Now in the meanwhile I downloaded a free e-book from his website- I am hoping his lecture will be different because otherwise I would be forced to leave-however there is a point that I found almost incomplete...

Among the numerous things that one can do to become successful, the biggest thing is to be able to think like a child- ofcourse there are these other one word triggers like 'love', 'live', 'learn', hope', and interestingly Help'...and along side this it read "its a wonderful way to move up together by making the journey a pleasure."

I think to this its very necessary to add 'Forget'...I think its necessary that when we help we do not do so with the aim to get something in return...one must learn to help however one can and move on. Expectations often kill the cat and makes one unhappy- it arises directly from so many interconnected triggers like having faith, and believing that what goes around will sooner than later, come around.!

Now this month of March 2012 is a cruel one. It is playing tricks on my mind and I am often caught in a chaotic haze of rather diabolical choices-for instance go back to crossing the Rubicon or staying put in this job and working it slowly and steadily-the problem with the latter option is I do not know If I'll ever have the time...what if during the course I find a better job, naturally I will leave to join that but then I would not have the kind of time I do here.

On the other hand if i decide this year then I am not sure if it would be a wasted shot? I mean I may have the time but relying solely on previous years knowledge gathered with out any brush ups not sure.

The again I wonder how much time is actually needed...I mean there is only so much that you can study. But I could prepare my Psychology and Sociology notes chapter wise.

Plus I feel that perhaps this year I should just let things lie-my boyfriend is giving it, and it should only be him and not the both of us.

By the way I think much of my confusion has to do with my day to day interaction-I always meet people who always say diametrically opposed things- yesterday happened to be one such day when I met GURU-he had his interview yesterday and it went off well as far as I can see...he did not remember Oedipal Complex nor Penis Envy-when he narrated the tale of his interview I wished there was a way to directly step into the interview...but I must be mature and I understand its always cumulative...so his hard work and efforts have paid off...hopefully.

He told me of a guy who studied for 2 months before the prelims and managed to get a rank. the rider was he was from IIT and I am from DU-a pure humanities student with a tasteful aversion to numbers and anything that claims to be a quantitative test of aptitude...

I think post this post I will stick to my original decision of aiming for it in 2013.

I am just caught because it feels so near and yet its starngely elusive.

But I do have a plan on how to ensure that the next time round I must clear the Prelims-I need to sit down with previous year question papers in a simulated environment and attempt atleast 6 previous year papers and do an objective analysis of my weak areas and strong areas. Once I have this, the next step is to go about strengthening the weak areas and practicing the strong ones as well.

Finally for the prelims of 2013-out of a 100 attempting 75 with a buffer of 10 guess based questions for Paper 1 and out 80 questions 75 minimum for CSAT with maximum scope of 1-2 guesses must be worked towards.

So as of now I work towards preparing my notes for the optionals and practicing Quants.

The key is :::....stay tuned!

So now its been a week since I have been resolving every evening that tomorrow is going to be a new day and suddenly I will be filled with a certain insurmountable energy to chalk out every single hour of my day-that tomorrow is just never arriving.

My suspicion tells me that the onus is on me' i  need to make that move where I say I am taking charge. But it all appears so impossible when I look at it right now. I mean imagine I have no idea by how much I did not make through the first round. Then there are evolved souls who say all that does not matter, stop thinking of your past, just give it all you have...then I wonder is 'all that I have' good enough this time?

Sometimes I feel I have too much on my plate, one is my job which may I please inform, I really enjoy. Second is my agenda for this examination and thirdly my squash lessons which I also enjoy. Naturally these are peppered from time to time with concerns on whether or not I should sit for the exam? Will my boyfriend crack it? Will I be with him? Would I marry him? and a strange series of the following realizations:

My parents are some of the coolest ones around.

This time that I have where I practically have no concerns will never come back to me

My parents are becoming old.

My sister is still a bit young.

I want to decorate my house and host some dinner parties

I want to be known for some meaningful work even in a small way.

So as of now till I touch 30, I must make all efforts to do what I believe will make me happier.  If I haven't

done it by then , well then I wont do it for some time to come! or Not maybe....!!









done it by then 

Today my boss took the credit for all the hard work that I had done and you know what I could not even care less-to the powers that may be I did not feel it important enough to even worry much about it. All that struck me was what I had been suspecting for some time now had been confirmed. My boss is an asshole and may god make his existence only slightly more respectful.

I finally got the book- "India's struggle for Independence-Bipan Chandra" I realized that as per the UPSC syllabus this is perhaps more relevant from the exams point of view than "India Since Independence" so I have started on this.

Now I told myself that only if I am able to finish a single chapter in this voluminous text will I sit and watch a film later-I have been unable to stick to this promise. I am watching the film and finished only half of the introduction.

Must improve accountability to myself.

I have now decided to take some responsibility and write this down. It is not going to be a regular blog, I have tried it before and have met with failure. Neither am I promising it to be weekly, but perhaps monthly. I am going to write this as a run up to my third attempt at the UPSC - what one such Professor at JNU said about: the Unpredictable Public Service Commission.

For the uninitiated, this is one of the harder nuts to crack as and when anybody in their 20's decides to take it up. I say it out of experience, and mainly because this examination refuses to exhibit any semblance of a pattern. If you tried plotting a graph of the qualifiers in every round of this exam (there are 3 rounds to this..yes) , you would at best come up with a scatter diagram that could hardly give a trend as it were.

I have spent 2 glorious years of my 20's preparing for this examination and have not succeeded. Although at that point it made me sad because my hard work seemed to have been futile, I must say after having joined work I was very quickly able to see the existential aspect of this examination-the truth be told...there is never any exit. If you have gone into this once, and done it purely and entirely for your self (not for your parents, peer pressure or anything extraneous like that) in all likelihood, you are going to want to do it again, until you reach that point of no return.

Many of us when we are young dont spend much time on thinking of more philosophical questions which infact are answered in our Gita - we often find those reading such texts as boring and lost for better food for thought-but the truth is that sometimes these texts have a wisdom that many dont have the patience to unravel. As I read the Gita, Arjun's dilemmas are similar to mine, his concentration often wavering like mine and advice from Krishna is infact a solution.

My 2 years spent solely on this preparation in many ways left me uncertain. Today I work in the development sector and I feel more confident that I will be able to perhaps take up this preparation and perhaps even clear some rounds...but if I dont, I am not the loser, because my job is there and I will just move on.

The mantra as I believe to have learnt out of my experience is to not read a single extra text. One has to re read the same thing again and again until every bone in your body screams it out almost like a parrot. Think strategically, but never read too many books. Just the few standard text books.

I do not know at this stage if this is going to work for me. Probably it will, perhaps it wont, but only time can tell. In the meanwhile the Civil services is just a means for me and not the end. I sincerely wish to work for the people, and I have met and heard people in the villages who know no better, speaking to me of their problems, hoping that I would be able to get them electricity, perhaps a small healthcare centre or a bus to take their women to the clinics, or just write of them, about them and let the world know they exist...the trust that they repose so easily is one that must be respected.

I wish and hope that someday I am able to make that difference.

The target is the blessed year of 2013 and in the meanwhile trying to finish as much in the form of collated  notes every month.

I have already started reading Bipin Chandra's India After Independence and am enjoying it very much. I will do this and some portions from Vajirams' Yellow Books for chronology. This should suffice for my mains as well as Prelims.


My reasons for writing things down this time round are many but one for certain as you may have guessed is to keep me on track. Fingers forever crossed!