You are just a phone call away!

The number of contacts in my mobile phone run well above two hundred; when I open my gtalk or yahoo messenger I see more than a dozen friends always online; my orkut account has more than 150 friends and so is my facebook account. Many of you will have much more than that. Am I not lucky to have so many friends at the click of a button? And yet sometimes the world seems so lonely! Hardly the phone rings apart from the very familiar ones; hardly someone scraps and yet I like to think I am in the middle of everything! At the end of the day before going to sleep I can hardly count the number of people I can count on. Is there really anyone to whom I can pour my heart out?

This world is strange - you come alone in this world, you leave alone and yet like to think that you are not alone. You hate to be alone, though its a fact that we all are alone! Alone in our own world, where we silently laugh, smile, cry and shed tears. Our world is a very personal one. On one hand we like to share part of our world with very few people, on the other hand we want this world to be as private as possible.
Its a dilemma.

Do I really want to let others know who am I and what I think? We always try to don some type of the mask - in office we are different(quite professional), in home we are on our own (as close as it can get), in playgrounds we are competitive, with a bunch of strangers in a flight or train we are reserved. Are we not trying to camouflage our identity depending on the environment? And in the midst of all these sometime we perhaps fail to identify who we actually are. As for me, sometimes I can remain so cool, while at other times I may lose my cool, sometimes silent and hardly participating in any conversation and sometimes so full of energy. My dilemma with myself continues. Exactly who am I and how am I? What do I want in life? Is there any boundary line or does the milestone keep on shifting? How much happiness is happiness? Why do I feel lonely even when I am inside a crowded football stadium? Why did I feel that eternal bliss when I alone sat for hours under the Lakshman Jhula bridge beside the shallow Ganges in the Himalayas? Why do I feel at one moment that I have all that I need in life and the very next moment I feel I have nothing that I can call my own?

I dont think I'll be able to find answers to any of these. Or perhaps I will at the end of my life. Perhaps all the answers lie in the destination, may be like a pot of gold, and this journey is just the road to the destination. Its like you climb up the mountain without really knowing whats there on the top. The day when I reach the top , perhaps, the meaning of the journey will be as clear as a whistle. Perhaps, that day all the jigsaws in the puzzle will exactly fit onto each other and I will find answers to all my questions. That day I need not call anybody to relieve me of my loneliness. I need not login to my facebook or orkut to find out if anyone left a scrap for me. I will be my own complement. The world would not need me anymore; I would not need the world either! Everybody who thought their life dependent on mine will soon find that I am not indespensable. Everybody's life will be back to normal -it will be business as usual. Like the beautiful rose in the garden which thought that it brought that extra glow in the garden and when one day it faded it realised that the no one notices it after a day or two, same thing is applicable to all of us.
So, there will come a time when I wont be blogging any more,when people will scrap me in the networking sites, mail me or ring me, they will not get any reply. Because, by that time I would have got answers to all my questions and would have already started my next journey.
Ah! What a feeling!

Shrinking world or shrinking mind?

In today's world of mobiles and wi-fi internet we claim that the world is in our hand. You know, the "Global Village" concept. But more often than not I wonder how many people have really been able to rise above their small narrow world and have got a taste of the actual "world". Or is it that we know what the world outside is, but pretend that our one, even if its inferior a thousand times, is a better one. Its like the story of the rabbits that I heard when I was small. My grandfather used to tell me that when anyone chases a rabbit, it puts its head inside the burrow or hole on the ground. Since it cant see the world outside, it thinks that the world cannot see it to, though its little tail keeps signalling like a flag to the hunter! Let me give some examples:

The first one is when I just got a chance into my good old Cranfield University. And someone commented that there is not much difference between an UK - obtained degree and an Indian degree. Now it needs to be clarified here that the Indian degree in question is one of the lacs of B-grade Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degrees doled out by thousands of B and C-grade Engineering Colleges across India. I was going to ask the person, are you sure what you are saying? Was it really ignorance or was it shutting the window and claiming my house is the best, because I have not seen any other's house? May be, jealously. Or may be plainly foolish.

But then what do I conclude when the "Economic Times" on 4th August, 2009, claims in an article that "Students have left LBS, Cornell, Stern to join the great Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta"! Nothing but pathetic reporting! When IIMs (as the Indian Institute of Managements are commonly known as) never ever figure in the top 300-400 world MBA schools in the world, how can they think of competing with the market leaders? And may I know who these students were? What are their credentials? Quoting one (insane) student does not prove the world thinks so! Feeding the Indian public with IIM news has become a sort of pastimes for the media, which IIMs dont regret, because they get good publicity, nonetheless. Yes, we know we live in a "Global Village", but what about the feel-good factor that "we're almost there!". We became second in the race. Then a footnote: There were only two comptitors.

We all have our own world - our comfort zone, where we eat, drink, sleep, dream, work; where we live. Good, bad, ugly - we love the world. We know there is a better world outside and there are others who are living in the better world. Most people like to handle such situation in two ways . Either they dont want to see, which the rabbit-like attitude. Or they start comparing, be jealous...start those back-bitting. Modifying one small joke that I heard some months back, I can say fighting with the second category people is like fighting with a pig in the mud, soon you realise that since they dont have any other work, they are enjoying, only you are getting dirty. Best way to treat these creatures of the society: IGNORE.

I thought in the open world today, people would have realised that there are as many ways of living as many people are there on earth. If I have got a B-grade engineering degree and failed to obtain better degrees, then I should look how I can obtain that. Rather than , foolishly, comparing that B-grade degree with a B-degree (Business Degree) from A-grade worldwide renowned college.

And that brings me to my question - how much global are we? Do we pretend to be global (when we are just plainly narrow-minded) or we know what the world outside is but fail to accept that better and bigger world.

Surely not many have availed the facility of obtaining knowledge at the click of a button. And thats why even reputed publishers get away with such cheap articles. And thats why people still swear by the IIMs. The approach of IIMs and foreign universities towards the course are different. IIMs rely on the high placement (and thats more because of the growing Indian market), foreign universities on the quality and state-of-the-art knowledge, universal exposure. Yes, we all go to B-schools because we want to earn money - more money, perhaps, some days down the line. But not only because of money do we all go for MBA. There are illerate real-estate brokers, fish merchants, smugglers and lot more where you really dont have to be too much educated, but mint a lot of money. If money was the only parameter, people would not have gone for PHDs and thus spent the first 35 or so years of their life learning new things. How much is monetary gain? Very little compared to the intellectual one. Since monetary gain is simple to measure, IIMs use this parameter to create the hype and hooplah. And so, when the JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi) or the ISI (Indian Statistical Institute) or the IISC (Indian Institute of Science) and such other renowned educational institutes develop thousands of intellectual mind, their parameter is hard to measure. It does not make spicy news articles. So sad! I may categorically want to mention that my aim is never to demean IIM, but to say, it should not be compared with the other foreign school names mentioned in the article. Its a fact...come on, lets face it. Every education, every degree has its own position. Even the B-grades and C-grade ones. But comparing them with the creme de la creme only provides a laughing stock.

I would say our forefathers were more global as without having access to radios, TVs, let alone, phones,internet and all, they were so much better informed of the outside world. And that was through classical novels, books, un-biased newspapers. Above all, they were not narrow-minded. They appreciated others and learned to live with many under a common shelter.

Today, is it too difficult to accept the world as it is? To accept the reality? To accept that "Yes, he is a better person" ? To stand up and applause when somebody hits an ace? Can we,for once, shut up and clap for appreciation? As the world shrinks, I am afraid, so does most our minds.

I cannot conclude without writing a note of thanks to none other than my alma mater Cranfield School of Management for introducing me to the real and beautiful outside world.