This is it!

This day last year was my first day in public relations. And here I am, one year old in the industry, and what a joyride this has been! From stuff that took me weeks to understand to realizing that sometimes a "story" is not all it takes. From demanding clients (and for some of them, challenging is an understatement) to the media's own, sometimes unpredictable, trips. From pre-event panic attacks to some wonderful, wonderful emails. From pitches to quarter presentations. From calculating and comparing SOVs in the last job to finally "getting and creating" them. And the people, oh the different kind of people that I met in the last one year. I might just be a "people's person" and it might just be more than interview pfaff after all, if it is people that makes this profession exciting for me. Whatay bloody joyride! And I say this in all seriousness.

My journey to PR was full of wrong turns. Engineering, market research, analytics, and customer experience. SME, MNC, and a start up. So many wrong turns that somehow add up now. This is what I should have been doing all my life. But it took me a crisis and a LOT of boredom in both of my Bangalore jobs to realize this.

I never thought I'd ever say this about a job, because I had convinced myself that all I was looking for was fun and money, but I think a career is what I am after, finally. This was long overdue. I am here to stay. Yay!

P.S. - TOUCHWOOD.

The clichéd year end post

It's been a good year for, bad days
Or a bad year for, good days
Well here we go again now, here we go again now 

2010. What a year this was! Calling it a roller coaster would be an understatement. The good thing is, if I had to live it one more time, there is nothing I would do or want any different. What I have learned in 2010 - That I CANNOT and should not generalize. That people are generally not perfect. That there are the losers, there are the winners. And somewhere in between, battling with auto fares, onion prices, boring evenings, disgusting relatives, overworked afternoons, and occasionally, the husband, is me. That if I can walk out of dicey situations, work or otherwise, unscathed, my dignity in tact, temper in control, and having learned either how to be or not to be, I will be a happier person. And I have and I am. And I am still learning to get better at this. That no matter how much I love or hate, enjoy or despise my work, the home with orange walls and the man with bad jokes are all that will ever matter. That I choose to obsess over situations not under my control and I don't exactly want to change that about myself, except maybe toning down the obsession a bit. What would really help though is to cut off when I am done obsessing for the day, weekday or weekend if you know what I mean, and then start afresh.

But 2010 was not all bad. Or tough. How can it be because like I just said, all that really matters is the man, the house, the forever rockstar family, and the few good people who come by and make all the difference? When there are those friends with whom a 5 line IM conversation, a 45 minute non stop blabber, or a 15 sms  long exchange makes all the difference. When there has been more laughter and more easy, comfortable love than I could even ask for. When all the hits and misses of the last year, the last 25 years in fact, brought me here. And trust me, it is a good, happy place to be in, in every way I can think of. So yes, it's been a good year :-) (And this is the point where I rush to touch the nearest piece of wood or wooden furniture I can find. Yes, that good!)

On that note, I will happily spend the next 7 days before my much deserved, much awaited, and almost life changing weekend away. Some sun and sand and beer will do me us, a lot of good. And 2011 is going to be more disciplined, more relaxed, and happier. I will make sure of that. Because all that really matters is that unadulterated happiness that comes from within. The house with orange walls.

Like someone's new year wish from this morning, may the new year be full of many good stories. See you on the other side of the decade.

Wide eyed wonder

.. Or why I love doing what I do.

I have been quite the cynic in the last couple of years. And cynicism does not go too well with my image, if you know what I mean :D I have been in the IT city, and the flaws that I had recognized a very long time ago, had resurfaced all over again. The sheer propagation of mediocrity, the whole sham of "offsites" and tech parks that surrounds what is essentially just another job/ degree/ industry, had been laughing in my face, and I had often been questioning my own decisions. But today, at the lunch table, I realised that there are still some people in the industry who see through the sho sha for what bodyshopping is really all about, people who still believe in the sanctity of journalism, people who don't need the veil of jargon to hide their flaws and stupidity and complete lack of anything intelligent to say because they have a point of view and they know how to put it across, people who believe in doing and not just "thinking out of the box", and people who see value where it really belongs. Of course I am talking about more than one person here, and I have come home with a lot more pride in my choices and decisions, and it seems like a blessing after living in cynicism for such a long time.I can now let things be. "The point that needed proving, mostly to myself, has been proved".

And I saw Irrfan Pathan. Aren't Fridays the best?

One day..

.. I will learn how to treat work more objectively. It was reasonable (NOT!) when work was my only deliverance. Now it is just an annoying habit.

The one that started out as a note to myself

Over the years you have often realised that if you could change just one thing about yourself (after of course you learn how to weave magic with words and lose the tonnes and tonnes of extra weight accumulated only because of unhealthy eating), shutting your trap would be it. Repeat after self-

I do not need to feel strongly about everything under the sun. Good strong, bad strong notwithstanding. Sometimes indifference is OK too. And sometimes it is OK to hold on to one's opinion till it changes. And not just because it changes! Everything that enters the head does not need to come out of the tip of my fingers or my big blabbermouth.

Repeat every morning, afternoon, and evening. Till you get rid of this OCD. Unless of course, you want to see yourself doing foot-in-mouth gymnastics often and not even win any awards for it or lose any weight because of it.

-

Quick update - My motorcycle (without gears) diaries begin now. The shiny sexy thing is here. Please welcome her to all the madness! For now she sits pretty next to the car and our parking area looks colourful, pretty, and a little more mine. The only cruising I have done until now is putting on a brave show for the neighbours and laundry people while I scream, screech, accelerate, brake, and generally feel like the Jack Bauer of the colony.

P.S. You hear all the talk about weight loss etc? I think it is time to give some thought to my nawaabi lifestyle. A gym in my otherwise wayward life would be good idea. A lot needs to change around here, especially the weighing machine reading! What you sow and all that. More on that later.

Image courtesy: hellosunshine.org

सात रंग सतरंगा मेला

The whole world and their third cousin knows that I recently switched streams to communication. Which causes me to finally give up my long break from that thing called the newspaper. Most of the news I caught was on TV, word of mouth, social networking, and online news. I was about to write an ode to the comic strip, the only thing that I even picked up the newspaper for. Notice the past tense? Now there is no escape from the figurative rants of a million trees crying over newspapers that don't deserve circulation even in double digits, and the sheer mediocrity of journalism in India. They are not all bad, I must say that. But a lot of them are. I love Mint though. I guess I have always been an opinion person, not a fact person (which defines everything I am going to say in this post, don't kill me for it.)

I fail to understand how those that get their bread and butter from the art and science of communication, and I am not talking only about journalists here, make the lamest, most cliched grammatical mistakes ever. It is like building Taj Mahal on a very unstable foundation. And don't give me that cliched "you were just privileged to go to that school you went to, we were not all so lucky" (believe it or not, I have heard that), 1, because it sounds stupid, and 2, I am talking about people who were "more privileged" than me. They went to the brat schools, scream at the top of their lungs about their engagement rings being the size of their *PG adviced* asses, and only seem to write incorrect English. And Hindi. And nearly every other language they claim to know.

Which also brings me to the fact that I cannot escape the sham called the Commonwealth Games and the *political incorrectness alert* futility of the Ayodhya issue. Every time I read an article, see some "breaking news" comprising of a picture of a rat in the CWG village, or as much as see a Tweet, I feel like I am back in the 90's. Political scams marked all of my growing up years, especially because I grew up in Bihar. Don't get me wrong here, I love every little Bihari eccentricity, I love every Indian cliche. But that does not stop me from seeing what is wrong with the places I call my own. Especially this kind of blatant, irrational, ruthless, reckless corruption that shows. I hope the CWG does not happen here. There. I said it. There are people who have worked very hard, spoken really well, and have made an impact to make sure that India becomes synonymous with "emerging economy". I just think that all their hard work does not go to waste because a bunch of paan spitting, crass politicians decided to make a legacy for their progeny out of the budget of an International sporting event, one that could have, and would have, added to the "India story". We are a bunch of good people, we work hard, we love life, and we are not all dishonest. I read this somewhere, and I am quoting, "Also, it’s better if the rest of the world didn’t see us, than see us like this." and I couldn't agree more. I don't care about the CWG, I don't even care about the cricket world cup or any other sport for that matter. But I am amused to death at the sheer stupidity and unbelievable greed that has led the rest of the country look like such corrupt fools to the rest of the world. Unfair? I would say so.

Which now brings me to the Ayodhya issue. At the risk of sounding foolishly politically incorrect, I will say this once and for all. I don't care whether they build a temple there or a mosque, or a church, or better still, a shopping complex on the land all this ruckus is about. And I am pretty sure nobody, and I mean nobody except a few rudraksh toting/ not-rudraksh toting politicians. And as a generation, I am guessing our opinion is a tad more important than the said ancient politicians. I understand that religion was and will remain a sensitive issue for a lot of us, but I don't see any reason in this raging madness in the country over this. This may sound anti Hindu, but I am a believer. And yet, I don't know if Lord Ram was really born there or is just the protagonist of a fairy tale that got taken seriously. And the not-rudraksh toting groups already have their Mecca. Let that land be free. Maybe make a shelter for the homeless there, because heaven knows our country has enough and more places of worship, all equally crowded and totally not in keeping with the standard of purity that is associated with the idea of religion. Another thing that is irking me is the fact the judgement getting deferred. If we couldn't take a call in over a decade, what difference is another 5 days going to make? The media is flooded, no releases going through. Half a day got wasted wondering whether or not we should plan any work on Friday. And then suddenly we were wondering about next Tuesday. And that is not my only reason for being supremely irritated about the whole thing. This kind of delay is unavoidable among our people. Starting from the Honda showroom to the powers that be.

Anyway. So my thoughts are all muddled up now. I am ranting about too many things, some trivial, some not so much, in completely garbled, terribly formed sentences. So on to the trivial things. I think I will soon start posting pictures of speaker systems in all my posts, even when I write about the bird in the sky. I guess that is the only way to get some traffic from the husband's laptop. The man seems to be incapable of reading anything except work and speaker reviews on the net. I have been reading Devbagh though. Because good things come in small packages, and our December vacation has been cut short from 10 to 2 days now. But 10 days all over vs 2 days on an island, by the beach. I will have to say the beach wins.

And it is raining.

And it's Friday night. In every sense of the word.

And R finally has an unadulterated 2 day weekend.

And Jimi's Cafe calling.

Life is good :-)

Edited to add: I realised last week that if you say 5000 disconnected words to me, I will give you 5000 linked opinions about all of them. And I really need to unlearn that. When you look out of the auto on your 10 minute commute to work and judge every single person you see, you should know that it is OCD. No questions asked. Although you should know I have a thing for exaggeration.

I do need some education

Image courtesy - http://sgaissert.wordpress.com

Piyu tagged me in this post, and it got me thinking. Everyone around wants to learn something. I will be honest with you, I have never really wanted to learn anything. I am not kidding! I studied what I studied because I first thought it sounded cool, and then I wasn't allowed to quit. I could probably tell you things I have wanted to study - all "at that moment" sort of things. Journalism after watching Burkha Dutt (in her better days) on TV for an hour, policewoman after watching Udaan (the TV series I used to see when I was 6, not this recent movie that everyone's raving about and I hated - horrible acting!), psychology when I could not for the life of me "understand" people. Then I realised I never really cared! English literature when I thought I read/ wrote something I loved. The latter was subjected only to my opinion.

I wanted to learn how to draw once. That was only because I assumed it would help me pass Engineering Graphics.Until of course this friend of mine I strongly believed should have studied design instead of the uninteresting things we studied but never learned, also flunked the paper.

I have had my moments - photography, guitar, singing (I daydream about being able to sing in front of a bunch of people and getting a standing ovation. That is exactly what it is - a daydream. You have to hear me sing to believe it. Photoshop, even. But I don't think about it long enough. I once learned Kathak for some 3 years. Imagine! Quit one day because it was beginning to bore me to death. The fact that there were sudden rumours of my guru ji being involved in something illegal, made it easy for me to convince Ma. I had joined art classes, but that was only because my art teacher strictly thought I needed extra lessons to keep my brush within the margins. Even that was a tall order for me! I started playing drums in the school band. One week. Taek Won Do - 3 days. Singing. With harmonica, mind you. I never got beyond Sa. You can say that I don't have the discipline to learn anything. I can try to sound cool by saying that the theoretical first few days of learning something bore me enough to quit, and it might just be true. No wonder my college years were such a torture initially. Because of my complete, unapologetic inability to sustain the first few days of learning. But then again, what does education have to do with learning? (And that I really mean.)

There are things I want to learn. I am not sure if one can. Like shopping well. I shop. Not too expensive, nothing extraordinarily cheap. Most of my clothes are quite nice too. But they are all the same. Similar colours, similar patters. Cotton and denim. That is it. And I won't count the wedding sarees and salwaars, because they were all packed to perfection exactly one week after the wedding. There is hardly any variety in my wardrobe. I wish I could go on a shopping spree and find 5 pieces of clothing, all completely different from each other and from the ones I already own. Even if I buy a new top, it will look like one of the older ones. I don't know how I always end up doing this! How can unlearn this?

My patterns of love, hate, and indifference are extremely erratic. If I am let down by someone I REALLY care about, I just turn away. Indifferent. But it is the non entities I lose sleep over. I just need to know they are alive. That is enough to irritate me. Turn me into a bitter person. Irrespective of whether that person is around or not. And there is a chance that these people neither betrayed me nor personally did me any harm. What the hell! Another thing that I need to unlearn, and learn the opposite of. Only I don't know what the opposite is.

I want to learn how to really read something that is important but uninteresting. Rent agreements, bank letters, forms. I have the attention span of a... I don't know. I can't think of a simile. But I can never read anything important. Important to everyday existence that is. Except Marshall Goldsmith of course.

I want to learn how to weave magic with words. Be cryptic yet make sense. That is not my style (if I have one that is - I have an obsessive need to put this disclaimer every time I talk about style), I know. But I want to learn. And I know I can't. One can't learn something like that. Right?

I sound as (adorably) pompous as Frasier when I say this in my head, because I cannot relate it with the image I have of myself. Or the one that a lot of people who know me, have of me. Of late I have wanted to learn Indian History. Not study. Learn. I wish someone had taught me how to put history lessons in perspective back in school. As you grow up, you realise that a lot of your present finds its roots in history. School emphasized on that, but they never told us why or showed us how. The more I read/ watch TV shows, an odd NGC show, Saira Khan's Pakistan, Story of India, the more I want to get that elusive learn-all book of Indian History. Not a refresher course, there is nothing to refresh. (It is a strange feeling to have foreigners excite me about Indian History).

So that is that. Do you know who can teach me all those things? All except Indian History. Quick question - is learning always a result of teaching? I know the converse is not true.

On an aside, the weather is magical these days. Happy-sunny and happier-rainy in parts. I was reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth for the 100th time (I have nothing else to read right now, and there are some books I keep going back to for no apparent reason). There are these lines that say something to the effect that the protagonist hasn't lived anywhere long enough to really belong. Beautiful lines, but I can't find them in the book right now. I felt a sudden connection to those lines. I have been so far for so long from the one place I ever belonged, that I no longer feel that sense of belonging. Go figure. And then I switched cities so often that I never grew roots. Same country, and yet such stark, in-your-face difference in cultures. That is a story for another day. I remember a time when people lived in a place for so long and left it even for vacation at such long intervals that they knew everything there was to know about a place. The people, the galis, the sabji mandis. Everything. I don't see that happening now. I think that is a good thing about small towns. Or bad.  I am now beginning to think Bangalore is going to be the place I eventually grow roots in. I will know this place like one knows home. It is not Bombay, so it is not even difficult. There are days when I have my doubts. But then one evening after a crazy day at work, I return home to an overkill of green and the aftertaste of a heavy shower. This is where the auto stops. In front of the gate of my building.

And suddenly I feel all my doubts melting away.