delusionsofpetrification

The Bihari Paradox!!!

This is no story. No poetry. No rhetoric. No literature. What follows is a thought...an aftermath of what's happening with the so called Biharis (okkay generically speaking the "uttar bharatiyas") leading to a retrospect of my own self. Just that. Think about it. Well I did a lot!!

I am a non-believer of nationality or for that matter sub-nationalism. Patriotism for me seems to be a vague term invented to validate the lines drawn on this piece of planet we dwell in.A work of art of a very narrow minded person who failed to see the bigger picture!! But thats another philosophy of mine. Let's leave that apart!

Okkay so lets bring in some patriotism inside...jus' for the sake of writing this post...Yes I feel it now...I am an Indian...first and foremost ( though I would rather prefer a sense of belonging to this universe as a whole).

Well that wudn't make an interesting post...So lets start it with the tag..I am a BIHARI!!!....Well I was born one...that is one of the cornerstones of my existence. Though I really flip the bird and moon at it!

So where could this Bihari could have headed 6 years ago, given the current scenario....I was simply thinking!

---stayed on in Bihar...shot dead by one of the extremist groups on caste basis??

---Migrated to Gujarat as a Poor Muslim..Butchered??

---Killed in Assam insurgency??

---Kashmir..now cumm'on...that can't even support its native folks!!!

---or an illiterate immigrant labour trying to meet his ends in Maharashtra....thrashed within inches of his life for doing that!!

Luckily I am here..shut down emotinally and mentally in a cubicle...after a descent technical education and a job to suffice my current needs.I agree....an engineer has no such sub-nationalism...an IT engineer..even more so...after all we all are slaves of Uncle SAM n company and he doesn't differentiate a Bihari from a Marathi Manoos a But the question still remains..what iff!!

A common misconception about Bihari students has been that: He is good for only two things. He can be a good student, religiously toiling away, burning midnight oil and whatnot, score high and ultimately steal white collar jobs from the local population of the city he decides to settle in OR He can be a bloody gunda, eve-teasing, politicizing, intimidating and bullying, rambunctious as hell, the root of all evil.

But there is also a third kind, like Me...decent law abiding, harmless creatures...who do not spit, do not study ; do not eve-tease, do not pray at the drop of a hat; do not create ruckus, do not fade away in silence!!

The munificent compliments that I receive on account of my being fairly fluent in the English language (*With excerpts from mine as well as my friends' experiences that has also been blogged before) , or due to the absence of the accent which every Bihari is supposedly born with, or (and this is the best of all) my uncanny un-bihari looks ( what the hell is a bihari supposed to look like ? Dark, emaciated, hair dripping with mustard oil, or what? I mean WTF! ) :-

1. You don’t look like to you are from Bihar – Me: I underwent plastic surgery OR Why is that? Do Biharis have horns on their heads? OR I am a Punjabi who was born in Mumbai; my parents were averse to the rich cosmopolitan culture of that great city, so they relocated.

2. Your English is too good for a Bihari – Well, is that so?? I am sorry; my parents forced me to go an English medium school, which unfortunately had decent teachers.

3. You don’t sound like a Bihari, you don’t speak with an accent - Me: Speech therapy? Larynx transplant? Accent training? My answer depends on the dumbness of the questioner .

4. The way you cuss and swear, it is not very Bihari - Ohh boy...You shud hear me out..I curse, in my best Bihari.

5. Sir, aap Bihar se hain, lagta nahi hai (Sir, It doesn’t seem that you are from Bihar). This one came from a junior who was in my college to I : Me- An expression of incredulity and bewilderedness on my contorted face, mentally hurling abuses at him , and a really big WTF , when I was alone .

6. Man, you should be the Brand Ambassador of Bihar, given that you are so different from the average bumpkin: Hell Yeah. Why not? Moron!

7.Offshoot of # 2 -A Lady, in a train journey, to me – I am an English professor, have heard a lot of Biharis making a mince out of the Queen’s language, but not you - Me: When I was young my mother burned a Webster, a Wren n Martin and a few of the Classics, dissolved the ashes in the holy water from Thames and made me drink it. This is a tried and tested technique; it has worked for my sister as well. (Do not attempt this at home!)

8.Another Offshoot of # 2 - Do they have English schools in Bihar? ( An interviewer to my friend, apparently surprised at his command of the English language ) - Me(Had I been there) : No, I went to Eton for my schooling, and then I came back to India to complete my education , you JACK*** !

Maybe I should blush coyly and express my gratitude the next time somebody says something like the aforementioned. The Bihari Paradox is still unanswered!!!

With these words...the BIHARI in me has vented out his feelings....Control back to Mr. Vik$..the familiar weirdo!!!:)

---A Bihari has signed off!!!!!!

Life on AutoPilot...!!!

Hola Amigos!!
"I am Back"...as in the Terminator....Well...umm..not the exact way but yess....this time with a whole new Spanish accent(the pasta has rolled in)!!

Ok so, its usually customary that if you do not post anything for a while you outta' come back and offer an apology to all your readers who were waiting with bated breaths. But I dont have any such misconceptions, I know none of my blog readerswere waiting for my post....though I still hope some would remember this bloke!!:)

Before i start with the usual blah blah.....

DISCLAIMER: This may be a work of Fiction. Any resemblance to your life may be intentional but definitely isn't with any malice ... :)

I've always felt there are just two kinds of people in the world. Those who talk too much ... and those who aren't able to talk too much, as the first category (yappers) won't let them!

Seriously! ... I've come across many people who seem to be in love with the sound of their own voice ... and they'll ramble on and on ... and I feel like screaming -"Dude, if you love talking so much, at least say something interesting! ... or talk to someone who has similar interests!!! ... Don't persecute me just coz' I wandered into ur line of sight!"

Don't get me wrong here ... I love listening to people ... and given a choice between talking or listening, I'd rather listen(fingers crossed) ... But I'd rather give my time to friends and family and not to just about anyone ... But so many of these people just can't take a hint (or they choose to ignore the hints) ...

So I may yawn, program my cell-phone to self-destruct, tear my hair (I have lotsa them to run out) out in frustration, or just drop down unconscious ... they'll keep yapping away ... so long as I am physically present, anywhere near them ...At one point I thought I'd just ask the yappers to shut up and leave me alone ... but then I realized that I was actually benefitting from interaction with these fellas ...

1. If Patience is a muscle, I'm now a world-champion body-builder!
2. The ones who were spared of the torture coz' of me, treat with me with respect/pity/compassion ... and I don't mind it one bit! ... hehe :)
3. If I ever want to avoid someone, I quickly approach the first yapper in sight ... and he/she immediately strike up a not-so rivetting conversation ... and no one dares approach me!
4. I find that I can actually do quite a bit of work while 'listening' ... they don't really care if you are really paying attention ... they just want you to nod your head once in a while, mumble something like "yes" or "hmmm" or "i understand completely" ... So I've programmed myself such that every few minutes I nod and say one of those key-words ... they are happy and I'm none the worse for it ...
5. On account of the constant practice of nodding and saying "yes" without knowing what's happening, I think I'm perfecting the art that's practiced by all great husbands world-wide ... ;)
(no offence gals ... that's what most guys will end up doing anyways... always saying "Yes, Dear" )-------------------------------------------------

Till then..m on AutoPilot....Zoom! :)

The Divine Cup...!!!

So they have come up with a ban on smoking at “Public places”……not that I regret…..I have always been a non-smoker…a hard core one…..not like the ones who occasionally have one or two sticks popped in at the vehement request of their best friends for the company!!

So how did I react to the recently imposed law?? Naturally…I welcomed it to the core of my “healthy heart”…….but then it made me have a good look at the self contradictions and analogy of an addiction I had with the “Nicotine” addiction the Smoker Community folks were having.
Yes. I am addicted too…”addicted to Caffeine”……..too close to be a teetotaler.

The smoker fraternity would as well like to call it the Divine Stick (well I dread if this post will someday be read by Mr. Ramadoss)……..I have my Divine Cup!!!!
I wasn’t always a coffee snob. When I started drinking coffee in college, I did so for purely utilitarian reasons. It was part of a desperate plan to improve my plummeting academic grades. I figured that staying awake during class would be a key step in this effort. It didn’t help–either with nap-prevention or with my grades. But thank GOD my gray cells were quite developed to sustain me in the acads…..whew!!

One important thing I did learn during that semester was that there are few beverages more repulsive than hazelnut/caramel-flavored instant coffee. To this day, whenever I get a whiff of hazelnut flavoring I’m hit with a sudden wave of nausea, followed by an odd compulsion to pen down the very intricate chunks of Horatian Ode.

After my amateur years of Coffee Companionship college years, I began my journey toward a full-fledged caffeine habit, taking tentative steps toward the grown-up world of real coffee consumption.

Now I was really into the metamorphosis of becoming a connoisseur of this divine beverage.
I sometimes wonder..."Had I been allowed to gulp so many gallons by now if I would have belonged to the fairer sex...considering the taboo it brings along, in an Indian set up...Girls are seldom advised.....or shall I say....allowed....to take such huge proportions of a beverage that doesn't seem to go well with their toned complexion!!:)

Well I had no such restrictions...So I carried on the journey of fulfillment of my senses...
The random spots of my trysts with Coffee soon become a full time job. I started wondering whether I was drifting away too much ……..the day started, continued and ended with the cup in hand!

Well you can’t compare nicotine and caffeine in the same sense……just bcoz the terms phonetically rhyme!!!

The National Coffee Asociation reports that I am in good company----a major populace of Indians drink coffee. And in this respect, we are decidedly global, international, and cosmopolitan---we help consume the 400 billion cups of coffee that are consumed each year worldwide.

For those of us who depend on coffee to stoke our productivity and fuel our creativity, coffee drinking is serious business. Coffee is a liquid prism through which we view the events of our lives—drop by drop, cup by cup, and pound by pound. It’s important to be awake for the critical moments in life---and even seemingly mundane moments can be critical when each moment builds towards something better. Coffee is the drink of optimism. Drink coffee, be happy.

Because life happens when you're awake…!!!

"For I have known them all already, know them all -- have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”- T.S. Eliot

*This post was typed in utter boredome arising out of an extended waiting period at one of the so many CCD's mushroomed across the city...while I was waiting for my friend who finally turned up to comment on the same*

- Vik$ (off to a coffee break)

"AND"

"And"
Paragraph three starts with a conjunction, "and." You should never start a sentence with a conjunction.- Sure you can.- No, It's a firm rule.No. It was a firm rule. Sometimes using a conjunction at the start of a sentence makes it stand out. And that may be what the writer's trying to do.And what is the risk?Doing it too much. It's a distraction and could give your piece a run-on feeling.But the rule on using "and" or "but" at the start of a sentence is pretty shaky. Even though it's still taught by too many professors.Some of the best writers have ignored that rule for years, including you.Well, you've taken something which was mine......and made it yours. Quite an accomplishment.
Thank you.
-- Sean Connery/Rob Brown in the movie "Finding Forrester

The GreaT IndiaN WorkinG ClasS...!!!

Here goes an article published by Harward Business Review....worth a glance!!

When given the choice of whom to work with, people will pick one person over another for any number of reasons: the prestige of being associated with a star performer, for example, or the hope that spending time with a strategically placed superior will further their careers. But in most cases, people choose their work partners according to two criteria. One is competence at the job (Does Joe know what he's doing?). The other is likability (Is Joe enjoyable to work with?). Obviously, both things matter. Less obvious is how much they matter—and exactly how they matter.

To gain some insight into these questions, we studied four organizations selected to reflect a wide range of attributes—for-profit and nonprofit, large and small, North American and European. We asked people to indicate how often they had work-related interactions with every other person in the organization. We then asked them to rate all the other people in the company in terms of how much they personally liked each one and how well each did his or her job.

These two criteria—competence and likability—combine to produce four archetypes: the competent jerk, who knows a lot but is unpleasant to deal with; the lovable fool, who doesn't know much but is a delight to have around; the lovable star, who's both smart and likable; and the incompetent jerk, who…well, that's self-explanatory. These archetypes are caricatures, of course: Organizations usually—well, much of the time—weed out both the hopelessly incompetent and the socially clueless. Still, people in an organization can be roughly classified using a simple matrix.

A research showed (not surprisingly) that, no matter what kind of organization we studied, everybody wanted to work with the lovable star, and nobody wanted to work with the incompetent jerk. Things got a lot more interesting, though, when people faced the choice between competent jerks and lovable fools.

Ask managers about this choice—and we've asked many of them, both as part of our research and in executive education programs we teach—and you'll often hear them say that when it comes to getting a job done, of course competence trumps likability. "I can defuse my antipathy toward the jerk if he's competent, but I can't train someone who's incompetent," says the CIO at a large engineering company. Or, in the words of a knowledge management executive in the IT department of a professional services firm: "I really care about the skills and expertise you bring to the table. If you're a nice person on top of that, that's simply a bonus."

But despite what such people might say about their preferences, the reverse turned out to be true in practice in the organizations we analyzed. Personal feelings played a more important role in forming work relationships—not friendships at work but job-oriented relationships—than is commonly acknowledged. They were even more important than evaluations of competence. In fact, feelings worked as a gating factor: We found that if someone is strongly disliked, it's almost irrelevant whether or not she is competent; people won't want to work with her anyway. By contrast, if someone is liked, his colleagues will seek out every little bit of competence he has to offer. And this tendency didn't exist only in extreme cases; it was true across the board. Generally speaking, a little extra likability goes a longer way than a little extra competence in making someone desirable to work with. [...]

Yet is such a choice unprofessional? Is it a mistake to steer clear of the competent jerk when we have a job to do? Sometimes, yes. We may forgo the opportunity to tap a competent jerk's knowledge and skills because we don't want to deal with his patronizing, brusque, or otherwise unpleasant attitude—which is arguably a modest price to pay for the valuable assistance he can provide. We may even shun the jerk simply to deny him the satisfaction of lording his knowledge over us.

Everybody wants to work with the lovable star, and nobody wants to work with the incompetent jerk.But there are justifiable reasons to avoid the jerk. Sometimes it can be difficult to pry the needed information from him simply because he is a jerk. And knowledge often requires explanation to be useful—you might, for instance, want to brainstorm with someone or ask follow-up questions—and this kind of interaction may be difficult with a competent jerk. Furthermore, in order to learn, you often have to reveal your vulnerabilities, which also may be difficult with the competent jerk—especially if you are afraid of how this might affect your reputation in his eyes or in the eyes of others to whom he may reveal your limitations. By contrast, the lovable fool may be more likely to freely share whatever (albeit modest) information or skills he has and, without any intention of gaining an advantage, help others put them to use.

The likability bias: Pros and cons
Some people are liked pretty much universally. In other cases, likability is relative: One person's friend may be another one's jerk. This is because our positive feelings can result from people's inherent attributes or from the situations we find ourselves in with them. This distinction is important to keep in mind as we try to manage this tendency of people to favor likability over competence in their choice of work partners.

Social psychologists have long known that we like people who are similar to us; people we are familiar with; people who have reciprocal positive feelings about us; and people who are inherently attractive, either in their appearance or their personality—that is, they are considerate, cheerful, generous, and so on. Each of these sources of personal likability can contribute, for better or worse, to the formation of an informal network.

For Better. That we like people who are similar to us—for example, in their background, their beliefs, their interests, their personal style—is one of the most solidly documented findings in the social sciences. After all, these people make us feel good because they reaffirm the validity of our own characteristics and attitudes. But there's a business, as well as a psychological, benefit when similar people choose to work together: Their similar values, ways of thinking, and communication styles help projects flow smoothly and quickly.

Benefits also result when we work with people who aren't necessarily similar, but are familiar, to us. When you launch into a task with those you already know, you don't waste a lot of time figuring out what to expect from them or explaining what you mean every time you say something. In addition, because you are usually relatively comfortable with individuals you know, you're likely to be more accepting of their differences.

We also like to work with people who seem to like us. This can produce a virtuous circle in which everyone is more open to new ideas, more willing to help, and more trusting than would typically be the case. A similarly positive environment can be created if you work with someone who has an attractive personality—someone who is empathetic, for example, or generous. You know that you'll have liberal access to her intellectual resources, however abundant or modest they may be, and are likely to reciprocate by freely sharing your own knowledge.

And a person who is physically attractive? Well, in such a case, the job you do together can be, in some indefinable way, simply a bit more enjoyable than usual.

For Worse. One of the greatest drawbacks of choosing to work with similar people is the limited range of perspectives that a homogeneous group often brings to bear on a problem. A diverse collection of colleagues—whatever the tensions and misunderstandings that arise because of their differences—provides an array of perspectives that can lead to truly innovative approaches to accomplishing a task.

Even groups composed not of similar souls but merely of people who are very familiar with one another miss the chance to integrate the fresh perspective that new players bring to a project. Working with the same old colleagues can also dampen debate: People may hesitate to challenge or reject a bad idea put forward by someone they know and like.

A diverse collection of colleagues provides an array of perspectives that can lead to truly innovative approaches.

There is also an obvious downside when we gravitate toward people because they like us or because they are pleasant to work with. These individuals, however terrific they may be, aren't necessarily the ones most suited to tackling the task at hand. The required expertise or knowledge may lie elsewhere, in someone who in fact doesn't like us that much or isn't attractive.

One other danger of people working primarily with those they like: They may simply have a good time and get nothing done. An experienced venture capitalist recalls the case of a very capable manager who hired individuals based on his personal affinity with them. "His team had a great time going out for a beer, but the quality of their work was seriously compromised," says the dismayed investor. "If you keep hiring only people you like, you can kill a company."
The objective, therefore, is to leverage the power of liking while avoiding the negative consequences of people's "affect-based choice"—to use the psychological term—of work partners. Keep in mind that we're not talking here about formal work relationships: You work with your boss and your direct counterparts in other divisions whether you like them or not. We're talking only about people's choices of informal, though work-related, interactions. Even so, that doesn't preclude executives from doing some things that will positively affect those interactions and the often task-crucial informal networks that grow out of them.

The DreamGod Guitarist...!!!

Prologue(The Dream):

The lights dimmed; the crowd began to hush. As He walked onto the stage, He saw that the club was packed with people. The butterflies in His stomach awoke and began fluttering about, and He felt the urge to turn and run off.
In a dreamlike trance, He picked up my bass guitar and strapped it around His neck. A spotlight cut through the darkness and focused upon the stage, blinding Him momentarily. He heard the drummer begin a four count. Suddenly the club came alive, and resounding music filled the Whisky-A-Go-Go, where twenty-five years earlier, The Doors had begun their musical career. An exhilarating sense of humility and wonder came over Him as He thought, "How did I get here?"

Epilogue(The Life):

Till yesterday,
He was another face in the crowd
Another body grinding in the surging mass of humanity
Today,
He remains the same
Separated, yet a part of the populace
Respected, yet often misunderstood
Loved, yet often loathed
Adored, yet left alone in a sea of millions
Fulfilled, yet heartbroken
Practical, yet daydreaming
He tries to write, and knows that his words mean much more now and so does his music..the strings...
For he doesn't know the difference between a 'guitar' and a 'pen'....
He starts writing, and he knows that life isn't the same anymore
He continues writing, and realises that he is happy to be a normal person, yet, some shackles stop him from doing as he wishes
He concludes writing, and rues the fact that in spite of his love for writing, his work keeps him away from it, for months together
He knows that he will write again. Love has a way of bringing things around...
He plays His guitar again.....That was a dream....But It will materialize...Soon....yeah soon....
Till tomorrow comes...!!!

P.S: This post has basically been written with rather no motif.....mostly to apprehend the sabatical taken from this space by the blogger....and it shall be understood in the same way..that is..in case...if any soul chances across these words..:)