Coelho.. Part 2

[Continued from yesterday...]

So… what was I trying to say? Well… even we `loafers’ have some idea of what we want to do… it’s just that we don’t realize that that might be it. Like that time when everybody applauded your acting, or when the seminar you helped organize went so smoothly, or that person that you had a refreshingly comfortable and long chat with, or the time you managed to throw out just the right sales pitch and clinched that deal.

[Double Coffee]

The popular reference to most of the 10 Richest People in the World being college drop-outs is worthy of mention when discussing the issue of ambition. A walk down the road-often-trod is unlikely to lead to greatness, or, well, most people would be great [and then only the greater and greatest among the great would be known as great, and the average great would only be known as…. well... not so great.] Anyway, the point is that these drop-outs walked a different way. To almost quote Star Trek, they boldly went where… few men had gone before. So what made them do that? What made them break tradition? Perhaps they felt like doing things differently, or just followed their heart. Perhaps they realized that it’s difficult to streak ahead when there’re too many people running, and that they had to discover a different arena. [Funny; when I was small, I used to kick goals through the posts in the adjoining empty field, but nobody noticed.]

So why is following your heart on your own, a difficult thing to do? Although, it does sound simple; Adventurous, exciting, high-risk/return [sounds like an equity investment]. Once again, we hold back because of our comfortable options: we’ve always got vanilla. So, in some sense, I guess we should respect those college-dropouts. However, if one were to look into their background, it would reveal that most of them were driven by desperation... they didn’t really have vanilla, just stracciatella [which incidentally, is doing rather well in Europe].

Ofcourse there’s always people like that guy who wanted to be a musician, who’s scratchy music record companies refused to purchase, who ended up entertaining the railway passengers. The failures are always there as a warning to the reckless, but they end up as being strong agents of discouragement. While those of us who are sitting comfortably in front of our screens can hide behind this excuse, it’s pretty sad that we cannot boast “It’s what I always wanted to do… so one day I got off my ass and decided to just do it.”

Well, all that apart [and at a final conclusion, I think] anybody could easily live a pretty content life and enjoy it if he was oblivious of any calling. But if you ponder long enough over what you’ve just read, I have the feeling that it’s going to gnaw at the back of your head like that song that you wanted to download, but can’t remember, or that strange dream you had last week…

Coelho.. Part 1

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The other day, I read the first few chapters of Coelho’s Alchemist. A short and well-paced book by most standards, it's interesting how the protagonist is apparently a simple-minded soul, but the things the author puts across are more than he would seem to be capable of articulating. The wandering-writing style adopted by him performs the usual function that most cult-writing does. [Uh, which is to appeal to a smaller audience, but probably with a greater impact.]

While I am certainly not qualified to criticize his work [having not finished the book in the first case], I find that I did like some of the things he mentioned. He said, [in different words], that every person has a calling: A certain idea of what sort of… achievement would make them happy; but that there’s a certain mysterious… force [?] that constantly clouds that desire with doubts, fears, and a certain apprehensive intuition that they cannot achieve those things.

While this could easily be interpreted as a simple lack of confidence, I think that there’s more to it. I think that the reason people don’t step out of their shell and really explore their “calling” is because of… well... several reasons. One of them is the availability of comfortable alternatives. Most parents, only out of innocent protectiveness over their “children”, discourage following of the path less-trod. So either parents do not want… us [?] exposed to the harshness that way-lays us down that path, or they have just not ripped down that way and felt the thrill of answering that call.

So where does this ambition thingy come from? Well, to bring it into perspective, I think ambition is misunderstood. Most people experience something they enjoy doing, and decide to devote a portion of their life doing that. What deserves respect is the decision they make/made: a decision which strongly shapes their future… a decision like marriage or a career choice. Well, people change careers, and… wives/husbands for that matter too, right?! So is ambition stable?

I actually know people who seem to have been born with an ambition printed on their foreheads. However, most of my friends and me were born with a slightly different genetic make-up, and do not have the above-mentioned governing protocol imbibed in our systems. While we popularly refer to ourselves as loafers, that is not to say that we consider ourselves useless. We’re more than capable of intelligent action. Sure, we’ve found things that we like, but do we like it enough? Perhaps we’re more careful, or scared, perhaps we were more protected as children. The kind who might worry more than others, or take longer to get into a relationship, or be less likely to run to a theatre, 10 minutes before the show and ticket-less.

[Continued on the next blog...]
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The Twin City

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As the plane flew over the outskirts of Hyderabad, my eyes defocused over the airline-provided literature. Oh, sure, there were some interesting articles in it: especially the one which explained how Air Deccan managed to actually be low-cost. How they kept smaller aircrafts for shorter flights and increased frequency instead, how they downsized on the cabin-crew and encouraged internet booking. But my losing interest in them wasn’t due to the article-content; it was because of the changes occurring in my life.

I was finally stepping out of the protection of academics, and into the working world… although there’d probably be a temporary shuffle out of it later. D.E Shaw… the presentation given at the hotel was still vivid in my mind. Their mindset, their policies, seemed so… in tune with what I’d call ideal… it seemed so Utopian to me. Excite.com’s review seemed particularly interesting.

Like Bombay, I finally felt the city’s vibe when I understood the common man’s language. It’s not like the people in Chennai can’t communicate in English, I would never have gotten around if they couldn't. It’s just that feeling is the most difficult thing to incorporate into your language fluency… although it can be made up adequately with tone and body language. However, with the amount of concentration that had to be put into framing sentences that a linguistically-retarded person like me could understand, there was little room left for that. Besides, a common man with charisma and good communication skills would only fail to remain common.

And… hmm… lost track of what I was saying.
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