You know what? Am kind of proud of my surname and won't give it up at any cost. It's for obvious reasons, the reason not being Nobel laureate Amartya Sen!

Finally Charmed!

I never thought I'd say this 1 year back. I will miss IGIDR. Not the people, but the life. Waking up at 11 in the morning and cribbing about the lack of sleep, hearing autos gyrating by even at 3 am in the morning, a heartbreakingly beautiful skyline from the guest house balcony as the evening wind breezes against the cheeks, the crows awake at 2 o'clock in the night, the late night sutta near the swimming pool, the pathetic food of the mess... so very IGIDR.

I guess once you start enjoying your work and stop cribbing about the people around, any place grows onto you. This place is indeed a researcher's paradise! Free internet and what speed! An in-house gym, swimming pool, baddy court, tennis court, the perfect seminar halls, the prim and proper cleaning of each building corner, free access to any journal you want, any software you want, any database you want! And god what a library. Infrastructure wise no institute can beat IGIDR in the near future. Take away the Santoshnagar music and if I want to be in academics I'd definitely want to be here! And in a 2.5 months this will be over, it'll be like throwing us out from Santa's big bag into the big bad world. Then I wonder should I stay back for a Ph.D?!

A Possible FB App

Facebook should start some app for the perfect match making you know. With the amount of information available, it should not be very difficult! I mean just going through the kind of books a person reads, the kind of movies, TV shows he/she watches and the music he/she listens to, you can figure out so so much about the person. I mean every time I visit someone's page who hardly is active on FB yet is my friend, I can see that in the pages he/she likes. It's the same for people who are not my wavelength matches. It would save many people this hassle of dating and finding the perfect partner. Of course the ones not believing in online friendships or the power of ingenious apps can go on looking. It reminds me of a How I Met Your Mother Episode where Ted is about to find the girl with whom the dating agency matches him and she's already taken: some strange algorithm but interesting all the same.

Puzzled...

Am actually afraid and I don't think am saying this because am smitten. I am truly in love with Finance and financial research is pulling me with a power nothing ever could. And I thought a job was my ultimate goal. For some reason I feel that we should be responsible for shaping the toddler that Indian finance right now is. And no, it's not coz of Susan, she showed me a way but then if the thing am working on makes money, I shall really think about it.

We the stupid people of India?!

India has poverty, hunger, corruption, bad taste in music, movies, books (subject to what view you prescribe, this is true of every country!). We watch pathetic Bollywood movies where there are 5 songs declaring love, cheesy dialogs, mindless comedy, senseless fights and no story. We enjoy them! We listen to songs like "Munni Badnaam Huyi" or "Dekha jo tujhe yaar, dil mein baji guitar!", we distort our culture and heritage by copying the west (this i hate, but that's India), we sketch and declare love on the walls of heritage monuments. We wear tacky clothes, like tacky things, go crazy romantic. We have a hundred thousand problems. We are conservative yet liberal at times failing to be just to either. We try being people we are not. We Indians are stupid. We waste time on cricket matches, we prefer beauty over brains. We have no sense of time or proportion, we have no proper healthcare or sanitation, we are poor, we fight over issues so bad that we scare away MNCs from our cities, we get communal, we fight and tease each other about their state, we take false pride in belonging to communities that are said to have progressed a lot. We have cheap booze, we buy branded clothes from the export supply roadside shop. We live on panipuri and chat. We drive rash while listening to pretentious hard rock music, having very much Indian ethos that we feel ashamed to acclaim. We allow movies like Slumdog Millionaire to be shot in the country and we run after the Oscar only because the West approves of it. We realize the talent in Amartya Sen or Satyajit Ray or even Tagore only after they've be applauded by the world. We Indians are really stupid.

But there's passion in our stupidity, there's intellect coexisting with everything tacky. We, inspite of being "underdeveloped" are liberal enough to let the West mock us while we laugh at them. In spite of being stuck with a population problem, we are the fastest growing economy. We have our music, our dance, our paintings- and not one, high quality and more than 20 schools in each. We have lingual and cultural variety. We have 28 countries in one and yet we are one. All the stupidity makes sense because at heart we are caring, compassionate and die-hard romantic. Save a few terrorists and mafias, we basically are innocent at heart. And that is why we have been fooled time and again into being parts of various civilizations through history. And even then we haven't changed at heart, we've grown! We've taken sciences from the vedic ages, we have taken medicine from the Guptas, art from Mughals, courage from the Rajputs, spirituality from the world across. We are Indians and we are proud of it. And trust me, whatever you Westerners think, we love our country and this is the only place we ever want to be in!

Tumi Ashbe Bolei

Tumi Ashbe Bolei- Only because you'll come: One of the best Durga Puja lyrics- truly feel the warmth and the importance of being good and true to yourself and the fact that man is god fearing because man wants some order in the society.

Role Models (contd.)

You know, role models become so for a reason. Not for the money they are making, not for the fame they have earned not even for the passionate hard work they put in; it's simply because they are ingenious human beings. When in dire crisis, even though busy as crazy they'll try sort out things with you, help you, put humanity as a priority. And such people these days are rare. And that is exactly why she is my role model. She gave me counselling when I needed, guided me with my work (which I agree is a part of her duty) AND she was the first person to volunteer to donate blood inspite of being so very busy. If I were a guy I would have found so much hotness in her coolness. Seriously she's a rockstar!