A three step journey I took months to complete.

I did something a few days back which I had least expected myself to do when I had joined the law firm after being placed from college. I walked up to my senior, who sits a few steps away from me, and told him something to the effect that I was quitting. My senior stopped typing on his laptop, took a rather deep breath, looked at me and asked calmly, "But why?"

Do you marry a girl because you hate all other girls or because you love her? Unlike many of my colleagues at the firm, I had no reason to hate the firm. I was in love with the idea of practicing in courts and I had to realise the object of my desire. Is that not a reason enough? It most certainly was the only reason for me.


The day i resigned, i officially removed the price tag from my dreams. My dreams, my love, are no more up for sale. I had pawned my dreams to take up the post during a fleeting moment when i was consumed by greed and peer pressure as i was passing out into the 'real' world from the cocooned environment of college. But the day i resigned, I reclaimed what was once my own when i was an idealistic prick in college-my dreams, my hope.

The words that may be used if I succeed in practice after taking this significant pay cut etc. may probably be visionary, shrewd etc.; and if i lose out, the word may be a much simpler and uncharitable one - 'loser'! However, the one word that shall never be used to describe my decision would be 'cowardice'.

The true price to redeem and realise your dreams is courage. It took me a long time to muster the required courage for i have no experience or reasons to back up this claim. I have only hope. I have only dreams. I have only love for what I want to do.

The views of an emotionally challenged on feminism and females..

I am emotionally challenged. I have never had a girlfriend so my views on females and feminism are entirely perceptive with little or no proof that can be corroborated by my senses!


Sorry to startle you, but I believe that the true sign of a truly modern liberated female is when(or if) she scratches her breast in public! I beg your pardon for such an un-dogmatic or rather un-pedagogic description of modern liberal feminism. Feminism, I'm told, has come a long way from the days of bra-burning and today females are very comfortable (if not cruel) with the display of their sexuality while leaving guys, especially like me, thirsting for anything more than mere a mere glimpse. I agree, my very very dear female readers, that chucking your bra is a definitive step in your struggle for equality for surely your body is equally worthy of a bare/'dabanng' display as the male body. After all, merely because a 'bare' display of your body perks up the sexuality of the opposite sex is no reason for you to wear uncomfortable inner clothing.

I'm sorry if I'm propagating my bench mark of modern liberal feminism but I would like to selfishly come back to my definition of feminism. Breast scratching in public is a phenomenon which you would 'usually' observe in middle-aged women with an anatomy which would not be described as 'conventionally beautiful' by the so-called patriarchal psyche. The question which comes to our mind is, what would prevent a conventionally beautiful woman/girl from scratching her breast in public? If I may re-phrase my question, what would give the courage to a woman/girl to scratch her breast in public while caring two hoots about the opposite sex with the gift of sight? Is it fair that while a male can scratch his disgusting hairy chest at any time of the day with gay abandon, a woman on the other hand is 'expected' to withdraw to private places to scratch her breast?

I am tempted to close the debate with the above sentences to win a few brownie points with my female audience but anonymity has its advantages and one of them is that one's dispassionate opinion on issues is not polluted by the desire to gain appreciation from the opposite sex. Here are a few uncomfortable questions my female audience, however dear that they may be to me, would rather not reckon with. Why would you wear uncomfortable clothing if its uncomfortable? Is is not a desire to gain appreciation from the opposite sex or an attempt to upstage your fellow females? If not, is it not at the very least, an attempt to comply, like a coward, with the 'conventions' of society?

Cowardice my dear friends, male and female, is not an excuse to dilute the soundness of my theory(that scratching ones breast in public is the true and unabashed display of modern liberal feminism) of which I am convinced, especially when placed in contradistinction with the arguments for not scratching ones breast in public. So, my female friends, scratch away to glory! Meanwhile my male friends, you are allowed, if not 'expected', to enjoy the sight. :)

P.S.: This post was written while i was quite drunk, please excuse me if this blog post does not comply with the idealistic and 'puritanical' posts of past by me.

On loneliness..

Its a Sunday today. I have interacted with two faces since morning (not that my week days are any different. I just see a few more plastic smiles and cement faces in office). Firstly, my bai who worked and went away silently and secondly, my newspaper boy who made me pay his monthly bill. In addition, Delhi seems to be headed on a definite and irreversible path to summer from this week on. Other than this, nothing remarkable happened today.

Before you write me off as a lonely, grumbling candidate for the loser-of-the-week award, please sample how my Sundays used to be while at Law School an year back. I shall also compare my Sundays with certain practicing advocates I'm acquainted with and prove to you, my discerning reader, how a law firm and certain legal departments in reputed companies or banks are propped up on the servile, routine or rather half-lives that their employees/associates spent at office and beyond.(Okay, no prizes for guessing that I may soon leave my job for taking up litigation!)

While in college, the word often used by me to describe a Sunday on the next Monday when guys sometimes asked what I did over the weekend was, 'Bakarchodi'. Of course, the incredible word might encompass a large variety of activities within its fold. A typical Sunday could ideally begin anywhere between 10am to 3pm depending on how much you drank on Saturday. Thereafter, you indulge in stimulating conversations with firstly with your roommates and then with others over the holy drink-Chai. Depending on whether the other guy is interested in talking to me, the conversation may range from girls, porn, college politics and professors to how politics influenced the allotment of a moot to a certain somebody in college. The evenings may usually be spent at movie theaters, rating girls(and the movie also). Of course, the way girls are rated by a guy may have no bearing on the girlfriend(s) he might fall for eventually. I have seen absolutely choosy and merciless raters end up with the most atrocious girls. Forgive me for deviating from my beloved Sundays..

Having given you a glimpse of my Sundays of time past, I shall now entice myself and you, my dear reader, with the possibility of how my Sundays could be, if i took up practice. Since, i have no first hand idea of practice forgive me if my surmises, half-guesses and hearsay information are a little off the mark. The day may usually start from anywhere between 5am to 9am with a bundle of files which may have to be read by the end of the day either because you have to plead them on the next day or because you have to brief your cocky senior. This is the payment which you make for the entertainment which may soon begin. Clients soon start poring in with unparalleled gossip material; often better than college gossip and always better than your routine office gossip. Clients may range from wives complaining about their husbands who cheated on them, an employee grumbling about his boss you might also know personally, to petty cat-fights which blossomed into juicy family disputes. Evenings may usually be spent, fervently discussing with office folks, the prospects of a show down between your senior and a certain unfavourable judge.

The future looks challenging and enticing and the past is a source of satisfaction and nostalgia. It is only the present which seems to have slipped into a vegetative state for me. I have no intention of stirring you, me dear readers, to rebellion against your respective organisations but I can only hope that you are not in the same boat because if you are in the same boat as me, look up at the flag fluttering on the mast, on which you'll see written large enough for the world to see-'Suckers'!

The Elephant in the Room

I score poorly on all standard indicators of measuring an individual's interest in the work he's doing;

"Do you wake up in the morning thinking about what you gonna do that day?"--No

"Do you loouuve your work?"-- No

"Do you get up after a day's work feeling satisfied that it was a day well spent?"--No

In view of the above, any career-counselor worth its salt would have asked the obvious question-"why haven't you quit yet?"

The question has haunted me night and day and i must admit the question often presents itself like an elephant in my office cubicle every time i sit and type a bunch of mistakes on my computer for my senior to vet and later castigate me over. The more I think over the question, the better I am able to empathise with people who often find it difficult to talk about how they feel about the proverbial elephant in the room. Yes, it is somewhat cowardly to write a blog, of all things, about it but I guess its better than basic and lonely ideation. (btw it also serves a very selfish need to sort things out in my mind)

The above question is a rather simplistic way of putting things and as a matter of fact, it has a number of undertones, sub-questions and hidden complexities. For example, some questions which may immediately follow any satisfactory answer to first question may be a) 'What do you plan to do after this?'  b)'How much are you earning now?' b) 'Do you like your bosses?' c) 'Howz the work, as such?' etc. etc. The questions fall like whips on any fledgling ambitions one might have of taking the big leap and  more often than not, crush to death any such 'deviant' thoughts.

Tonight, I have resolved one thing for certain. I shall talk about the elephant.- the way I feel about the work, the way i feel about my life and the way its headed, and the way i feel about my prospects in the profession. It is important to feel and having said that it is even more important to feel about things that matter to you as an individual. I feel because I am no machine. I feel because I am human first and an employee second. I feel because I am alive. 

And now I write because I feel and not necessarily because i think..

Prologue

Mine was an arranged marriage. My marriage to the law firm, i am currently working at in Delhi, was arranged by the ubiquitous marriage broker- the placement cell of my college. When my marriage was decided upon after a telephonic interview and a subsequent 'muh-dikhai' by way of an internship, i was thrilled like any fresh law graduate at the prospects. My marriage was grand with accolades and best-wishes from the near and dear ones. Its now been 7 months since i got married. The honeymoon is definitely over and what assures me of its passage is the stark mundanity of daily life.

Lest my discerning readers dismiss my writings at the very outset as a bitchy commentary on my employer or rather my senior, i wish to assure them that i have no such intentions. Most certainly, my blog would have got more hits that way but i have refrained from the momentary rush of popularity for the more calming pursuit of self-discovery [please bear with me as i embark upon my grand ideations :)].

To empty by burdensome bag of mundanity and then to rummage through its contents is what i intend to do. These writings may appear disjoint and disconnected but i have treasured these moments as priceless memorabilia in my chest treasure-chest called memory. These disjoint, disconnected and random events are my life and i one day hope to open my treasure chest to look with contentment at these days and events and smile with satisfaction at a life spent. These writings may probably end up as a cry in the wilderness called the 'world wide web' but since my intentions are clear, it shall be most reassuring for me to even hear a single voice in the wilderness; so what, if it happens to be my own.

I now write from behind the impregnable walls of anonymity. The walls protect the clear outlines of my ideations and feelings from being blurred or contaminated by the invasion of my personal attributes. Since traits and attributes, by their very nature, are subjective and often perceived with a biased or judgmental eye, it is probably best that the things that i say are not burdened with my past and certain pre-conceived notions about me. Writing with impunity on a clean slate is certainly a thrilling experience which i now hope to indulge to my fill....