_UnPrEdictAbLe_

Do you see air-shows – the ones where they play around with their plane swirling and rotating and flying upside down? One of the most thrilling stunts is – flying vertically down in full speed, and then pulling upwards just in time. I’ve always wanted to do that once I start flying a plane!

Generally the pilot knows that he is flying vertically down and approximately when to pull up. I was in a similar situation financially, except that I didn’t realize I was in it. Cheques started bouncing and credit card dues started mounting. So much so that I couldn’t even pay my monthly rent. Perhaps all that was not enough, and I kept on going downward.

Then, one fine Sunday morning, I got another shock – whose eventual consequences were financial. Then it hit me, and I press the panic button. Obviously no one can change completely in a day, but still I managed to fix my attitude towards things to some extent.

When expenditures are low and salary is comparatively high, you feel that the salary is infinite. You can go crazy and still never exhaust your account balance. Slowly your lifestyle transforms into a high-spending one. The mental picture still remains of the salary being inexhaustible. Then when you hit a roadblock, you realize that we’re playing with finite numbers here, and given enough carelessness it will get over some day.

I’m really fortunate to have a fairly decent income, and I know people manage in a lot less – even manage to save some. The crisis is over now, and I’ve come out a little more responsible than before.

I do my job and get paid for it. This is how most of the world earns their bread and butter. In the role of a person doing his job, customer/user is everything for me and I generally try to please him as much as possible. In the role of a customer, I expect similar treatment if not better. Vodafone apparently has the worst customer care possible. I’m not sure whether they’re paying their employees to please the customers or the other way around. Anyways, let’s cut short the cribbing and back to the narrative.

I’m all set to leave Hyderabad, so I pay the outstanding amount in my Vodafone bill. Then I call up customer care, and say,

me: “I’ve paid up my outstanding amount. Is that correct?”

cc: “Yes sir, all amount is paid.”

me: “I want to terminate this account. Can you confirm I don’t need to pay anything?”

cc: “Yes sir, no more payment is required.”

me: “Ok, what’s the procedure?”

cc: “You need to send an email to ….”

I sent that mail immediately (in June 2011). They replied to me saying you need to pay more money and didn’t close the account. I’ve been repeatedly sent emails about their inability to close the account until outstanding amount is paid. If there is some amount due, keep it due. What is the sense of levying charges for June, July and August? I wasn’t using your phone network anyway.

I refused to pay any money, as this is all due to Vodafone customer care’s incompetence. Now I get a threat to send a legal notice. I don’t want to carry this headache any further, but I really wanted to share this – I AM PAYING FOR THE INCOMPETENCE OF SOMEONE ELSE, NAMELY VODAFONE. I ban them for life.

(Attached is a copy of the threat mail. Go to hell if you say I’m valuable to you and point a gun at me.)

Did I become a pain to read recently? Must be this flag.

preach_mode = false;

Now things should get better. Anyways, just wanted to narrate something that happened yesterday.

You guys know I am lazy, right? Well – oops – now you know. I had to pick up my bike after servicing, and as usual I was an hour late. It was closing time, so I pleaded/insisted to give me my bike then. They agreed somehow, but then my eyes read this sign board – “Payments in cash only”.

What kind of business doesn’t accept plastic money? And that too when you’re sitting right in the middle of a metro-city. I requested him to wait until I withdraw cash, and went running across 100 feet road. As I finished dodging traffic, I saw a biker, sitting on the ground, bleeding a little, spitting blood. People were already there to help him, so I continued towards the ATM.

I saw the ATM, half of the front was covered with lot of bank advertisements. And the door was open. So I just walked straight in – rather ran straight in – and thud! It was the glass door which I didn’t manage to see. The ATM guard was laughing – can’t you see such a big door! In my defense, it was a complete glass door, with no frames, no stickers, not even a “Push” sign.

Phew! Happy Sunday.

God vested all his powers in Bruce Nolan. However, he was not empowered to control free will.

We’re all – as Bing calls itself – decision engines. Every moment we’re making choices – preferring something over another, favoring someone over another, dismissing some things, accepting some things – some of these choices are made under external pressure, and some are our own.

If we ignore the forced choices for now, a person can be said to contain many multiple choice questions, and their respective answers. There is no specific trend to these choices – some are calculated practical decisions for personal gain, while others are emotional decisions out of love, affection, philanthropy.

It is thus impossible to reason out why someone decided something. There might be one logically correct option, ethically correct option, politically correct, practically correct and so on. You can prove that someone’s decision is wrong based on logic, but if they believe in it, it’s not very easy to make them change it. People might give in to your unending nagging, and agree to the option you suggest. Nonetheless, given a chance to freely decide, they’d revert back to their own decision.

Knowing this fact simplifies life – you don’t need to be pushy, possessive, controlling, demanding – because it doesn’t work in long-term. Instead, you can be some of these – open minded, flexible, accepting, patient. Not only does it give a pleasant experience to others, it increases your chances to be chosen, because people just like you for who you are.

It can be hard to follow this sometimes – to let go. Although it’s pretty cliche, but this quote fits here perfectly – “If you love somebody, set them free. If they return, they were always yours. If they dont, they never were“. Perhaps the only thing you need to do is to become the best person you can. All the chasing, impressing, pleading is futile. He/she will only accept you if they were really going to in the first place. You didn’t really do anything magical by bending on your knees with a bunch of flowers.

It’s time to open up your mind. Happy weekend.

Adios.

One of the worst inventions of mankind was, perhaps, the calendar. It does sound absurd, but it’s partly true. Procrastination – one of the evils that we fight with all our lives – the calendar helps us procrastinate – sometimes knowingly, sometimes it’s not so obvious.

I’m waiting for the weekend, I need to … I’m waiting for 4 o’clock, I need to … I’m waiting for new years’ eve, I need to … I’m waiting until I turn 21, then I will … Our relationship isn’t old enough to marry, we’re dating only since …

Does this sound familiar? Although God created the world without a clock, perhaps it wasn’t natural for us humans to live without one. Imagine, there’s a naturally created sign board on the Equator – “completed 4540 million years rotating around the Sun“.

So, are clocks the problem? It does sound absurd, and it completely is. Man created clock to keep track of time, to “utilize” it more judiciously, to mark periodic events in an year, to keep track of age, and so on.

Right now, the most precious thing is – no it’s not time – petrol. Imagine that you turn on your vehicle, but don’t go anywhere. Either way, the petrol is burning down. Can you blame the fuel level indicator for it?

Life is like a running engine. The “time fuel” is burning down every second. Look at each day as an opportunity – 86400 seconds of infinite possibilities. Instead of planning for tomorrow, plan for today. Today is huge.

When mankind evolved on earth, perhaps his first thoughts circled around getting food and shelter. Once he had an easy and predictable ways of getting those, he had spare time to do other things – science, arts, philosophy, astrology, astronomy, … and so on.

Bangalore is without doubt an awesome city to live in. The weather is awesome, rains are fun, so many trees all around, great and active city life – a dream come true. Although I try to appreciate all this, but my current life situation keeps on pulling me back. And then I go back to the stone age, looking for food (not really) and shelter.

Perhaps it’s a crime to live alone. Wherever I say I need a place for ONE PERSON, they look at me with astonishment, disgust and pity – mutter something in Kannada, which I don’t understand – and finally say there is nothing available. Living out of one suitcase is fun – managing in those limited set of clothing, realizing I don’t have anything to wear the next day and its raining so hard I can’t really wash – lots of fun.

As if my life wasn’t exciting enough, God decided to add a little more. Perhaps a second crime is to migrate from state to state – although I definitely remember it is my fundamental right or something. You can migrate all you want, but don’t EVER EVER migrate vehicles.

So what that my bike is ‘MP 09′? Don’t I have the right to move it from Andhra Pradesh to Karnataka? Well, not really. I thought it’d be convenient if I transported my bike beforehand. So, I sent it via transport in early April. Apparently, the police thought my bike is a stolen bike and they seized it. Now, it is sitting in a godown somewhere outside Bangalore.

Obviously this is not enough to pull my spirits down – to stop me, scare me, depress me. More so because I have such awesome friends, I don’t feel I’m homeless or wing-less in Bangalore.

God was perhaps one of the first inventions of mankind, or should I call it a discovery? When our race was young and naive, there were more unknowns than today. Man wanted a placeholder to take care of these unknowns, namely God. It was comforting (and perhaps necessary) to assume that God is good – imagine having a world whose master is evil.

The world has had many philosophies explaining atom – most of which have been discarded, and now we’ve settled on a more or less ‘common understanding of atomic structure’. Nonetheless, it is only a theory that explains most phenomenon related to it – no one has seen an atom yet.

In a parallel context – religions are also theories explaining God. However, in case of atom, we all agree that we’re talking about the same atom – only the theories are different. At least for myself, it is pretty intuitive to understand that all religions are also trying to explain the same God.

AIDS – the incurable disease, I hope one day we find a penicillin for it. When that day arrives, people in those times will laugh at the kind of treatments that were tried on AIDS patients. If God is a coin, and you’re betting on heads, then perhaps the religion ceremonies and rituals are tactics to persuade him to flip in your favor.

Unfortunately, just like AIDS, we don’t know what will make God flip in our favor. If things turn out to be in our favor, we thank the rituals we performed. If they don’t, we console ourselves that God can’t always fulfill our wishes or that perhaps God has something better planned for us. We never ever question him – after all he is supposed to good.

In my heart, I feel that God does exist. I believe he doesn’t want you to perform any rituals – what’s the use of performing rituals whose purpose and meaning you don’t understand? What’s the use of chanting mantras which you can’t comprehend? If God is omnipresent, doesn’t he exist inside you? Doesn’t he know that you don’t understand these rituals? If he knows that these rituals mean nothing to you, isn’t he mature enough (questioning God’s maturity is perhaps a bold step) to understand that there is no need for these rituals?

If God exists in your heart, if he can see your thoughts – the best way to please him is to pray from your heart. You don’t need to fold hands or bow down. All you need is to close your eyes and speak in your head. God is already sitting in your heart, listening to all the words you say. He doesn’t mind if you use Hindi or English or Urdu or some sign language.

I’d confess that as a personal choice (if I can call it that), I like Lord Ganesh. Whenever I close my eyes and pray, I talk to him. However, that’s just to help me visualize God. It is hard to visualize a formless God, and I’m sure he won’t mind if I give him this shape. He knows that in my heart, I’m just praying to THE GOD, alias Ganpati.

I hope I didn’t hurt anyone’s sentiments. I know it is hard to let go ones religious identity. And hey, I’m also just another person like everyone else – perhaps what I think and write is completely wrong – and I’ve an open mind for new thoughts.

Before I end, some food for thought.

Adios.

23.257 plus 34.22 plus 1.39 plus … oh I’m just trying to sum up the past whole year. As usual it began with Happy new year 2010 and why 2010 going to be much more awesome than 2009. Fast forward to today, the slogan has changed – Happy new year 2011.

365 days; 8,760 hours; 31,536,000 seconds – in short, millions of moments to live – along with a not-so-noticed round trip around the Sun.

I am very bad at remembering events of the past – especially in chronological order. So, I would not dare to list down events of last year, in any order whatsoever. In summary, I joined a new company with a different culture than the last one. I came to Hyderabad. I met new friends and colleagues, learned a lot of new stuff.

As such, this new year didn’t mark anything important in my life. On either side of the boundary line, life is a static monotone. In a way it is a favorable situation to be in – there is certainty, stability, ease. Isn’t it just awesome? Well, not really.

In context of video games, we begin playing at Easy level, and later graduate to Moderate and Hard. Why? The lower level is too easy, too boring. We keep living life for years, but don’t like to play even Moderate. We just love it if life goes on in Easy mode. So does that make life the most boring game?

However, unlike video games – there is no restart button in real life. So, we shouldn’t always choose exciting and challenging over stable and safe. The answer, perhaps, lies in the middle path.

Okay, I’ll stop torturing you with my boring post for now. Happy new year everyone! I hope this year brings stability and prosperity in your lives, along with keeping it fairly challenging.

Adios.

Glass – it’s such a marvelous creation of mankind, perhaps it can be attributed at par with the wheel. Mirrors, window panes,  bulbs, vehicles, tube-lights, computer and television screens, cellphone screens, utensils, murder weapons – the utilities of glass are just endless.

I’m a big fan of glass, but only until it is not shattered. Shattered glass – that’s my weakness. They even have a name for it – Crystellophobia. Well not exactly, because this one includes “non broken” glass as well.

Today I had to face this fear of mine. I was happily spraying some cockroach killing liquid in the kitchen when my elbow nudged a couple of glasses. Although I live on the second floor, but even then the gravity here is quite strong. I wonder at what floor do things start floating instead of falling.

Anyhow, coming back to the topic – two glasses fell on the floor and shattered just 1 inch away from my bare foot – and I let out a sigh – oh damn. The next twenty minutes was a unending battle with a floor that had a layer of glass smoothly paved.

Every time I’m dealing with finely ground glass pieces – I get this feeling that some small piece will magically fly and go into my eye. Thank god nothing like that happened.

I guess I’m not the only one who fears shattered glass – or for that matter anything shattered – shattered hope, shattered trust, shattered bond, shattered …. . The right thing to do is carefully pick up the pieces, clean up the floor and go buy a new glass tumbler. And make sure you don’t hurt yourself.

With the excuse of not having anything else to write about, today I’ve decided to talk about – _UnPrEdictAbLe_. Although there is no deep meaning in this word – just a simple English word written in jumbled case.

Let’s begin with confessions first. Who coined this name and why? It all began in college days, when we used to play multi-player network games. Generally, people don’t use their own name in such games – but an alias – something which they think is cool and stylish. Example aliases – _skp, P@in Killer, _UnPrEdictAbLe_, oBeLiX.

Contrary to the name, I’m always very predictable – be it the computer games or real life. Then why do I use this name? Perhaps I want to prove myself cool and different, which almost “everyone” does. Yes – I won’t deny – it is one of the reasons.

Our whole life is centered around faith and more often than not, things work out as we expect them to. What? You disagree? Think again. Imagine the day you were late for the last bus to office – only to miss the most important meeting of that month. Well, standing in front of your boss, while he is screaming on top of his voice, you’d feel the entire universe is conspiring against you.

However, how many of your faiths were actually shaken that day? The sun rose, oxygen content of air remained normal, temperature of your city remained hospitable, social atmosphere was peaceful, your alarm clock rang, your cellphone alarm rang, city buses plied normally, traffic situation was smooth, … and so on. You wasted (let’s suppose) most of the time searching for door keys – which were “unexpectedly” sitting under the sofa – isn’t it such a setback to your faith in the world?

I live in an unpredictable world where a small thing – like a door key – can have huge ramifications on the course of events. That is why I don’t believe in promises. I can’t promise that I’ll be there for you; I’ll live up to your expectations; I’ll save you from all problems; I’ll be the perfect employee; I’ll never hurt you.

The only thing I can always be certain about is my inner self. I can promise that I’ll always have the best intentions to fulfill the promises you want me to make. However, the outcome of any event isn’t just dependent on my intentions or actions. THE OUTCOME is a mixture of various external factors which I cannot control, and so I’m not in a position to promise on behalf of all those other factors.

That is why I call myself _UnPrEdictAbLe_.