When I was growing up, one of the programs I would watch every Sunday morning (apart from Sunday Morning Cartoons on Doordarshan) was the Bournvita Quiz Contest hosted by Derek O’Brien on Zee TV. For kids interested in quizzing, O’Brien was like a Role Model. My school was seldom invited to participate in BQC so all I could feel about it was to get envy. A few years later I did get a chance to see him Live in Birla Auditorium in Jaipur when Discovery Channel organized a quiz. I, along with a school-mate, almost reached the City Finals of the quiz but couldn’t clear the last hurdle and missed a chance to meet him in person. But I always wondered how would it be to be quizzed by one of the most prominent Quizmasters in India.
Don’t you sometimes inflict pain on to yourself just to see how much would it hurt or do you still have it in you? Like touching a hot pan to see what temperature can you handle, or trying to lift 10 KG bag of Aata to see if your backbone is still in solid-state or watch News on TV just to see how many decibels your ears can tolerate? I could dip my hand in boiling milk and I could lift heavy bags but I usually give up after checking the sheer loudness of the TV News for more than 5 minutes. And I live almost next to an airport so I know what loudness is.
I wonder how these news people sleep at night? Maybe everything they do is in ALL CAPS. GOOD MORNING? MORNING I SAID. DON’T YOU THINK THE MORNING IS GOOD? HOW DARE YOU SAY GOOD MORNING AFTER 12? What if they get a little extra salt in their food? What if someone overtakes them from the wrong side? How do they react with their Kids when they show them their report cards? Even the graphics on these news channels are so glaring that if you feel cold any day, keep a TV with News On instead of spending money to make a fireplace.
I have tried a lot but News is becoming more and more unbearable. I am not saying that it is not relevant. I am just saying that I have now become nihilistic enough to ignore it and still live normally. I have even tried the silent news channels. They are so depressing and dull about everything around that one feels that it would need some electric shocks to come back to reality which is normally just fine if not 100%.
The day is not too far when the TV would come with coolants and radiators. And if they get too hot due to the sheer loudness, you might have to take them not to a TV Repair shop but with you to some hill station so that they can take a vacation.
I am writing from a place of privilege, providence, and a pedestal of good fortune but I just feel sad when I open LinkedIn nowadays. The feed is full of people writing about their untimely exit from their jobs due to the ongoing pandemic. I am not an expert to give any advice to people who were working till March/April but not working anymore. The times are unprecedented and until we get a fully functional vaccine, chances of normalcy are bleak. So, we must keep trying, is all I can say.
However, I do have a word or two for Freshers who had job offers but they haven’t been called to report yet, or even if they hadn’t, they were ready to enter the professional arena this year but things have gone upside down, for no fault of their own. I do have empathy with them as I was in the same boat around 2008. I don’t want to mince words but the reality is simple: this time is worse than that time. I have stated this earlier on this blog too that I had 2 Job Offers when I graduated as a Computer Science Engineer. Thanks to the 2008 recession which did all it could to crush my confidence, I had to wait 21 months to get a proper job I preferred. Again being lucky, I got back the job offer in March 2010 from the same company which had sent me a regret letter before imploding due to a financial crisis of their own in early 2009.
I have a few potted plants in my balcony. I am not a gardening-is-my-hobby-person but I do tend to them once a day, nurture them occasionally by adding some manure and place them in whatever sun we get. They give a nice ambiance to the small space. There’s nothing better than waking up and observing their growth, isn’t it! Especially since lockdown, this has become a regular practice.
“When you waste time in watching a bad movie or arguing with people, you appear as if you believe that you have an ample amount of time in life and also possibly believe in life after death and rebirth.”
In today’s episode of World Famous Program: Work From Home Woes, we will discuss the arrangement of our Work Desk.
I am pretty good at directions (I think). If someone asks me the directions, I can quickly take out my phone and open Google Maps and tell them. While working from home for 6 months now, directions have become quite a distraction. Where to direct attention and how for how long has been a particularly painful problem!
Sanjay Mishra’s character Rajesh Bauji in the movie Aankhon Dekhi has an epiphany one day. He declares that he will believe in only those things which he would see himself. If he has not seen something, he won’t trust anyone else telling him about it. He has to see it himself to believe it.
Now, that’s one way of looking at things. Another way is to see things Live on TV and believe them to be true like we all do. (WWE can be excused! Undertaker did die and returned 7 times.)
I don’t want to brag but I might. There was a time when I used to ship one item daily of anything, be it a blog post, or a photoshopped collage, or a minimalist poster, or just something visually appealing (to me i.e.). That leads to mostly positive results.
One: when you do anything creative, you feel productive, you imagine vividly, you sleep better, and the next day you are charged up to create more.
Two: You have absolutely no idea where will your creativity reach thanks to the Internet (and it might inspire someone to take it and do wonders with it). If done with positive intent, it might end up bringing smiles to an unknown quarter. And, after years when you realize that your creativity brought some joy to someone else, even if it is minuscule, it fills your chest with pride.
I was just going through ‘Rasode mein kaun tha’s creator Yashraj Mukhate’s Instagram. There I noticed this:
