Persistence

 

Jolyon Wagg - A frequently encountered side-character in the Tintin Series by Herge

Of all the professions in the world, the enthusiasm of a salesperson (probably) needs to be the most indefatigable and deep rooted. Not being fully invested in her work is not an option she has. Whatever be the product or service and its relevance to the customer, her only job is to push the sale to an often less-than-interested client. No wonder the salesperson is a favoured character in comedies, dramas and tragedies alike. We have all encountered a character like Tintin's Jolyon Wagg in our daily lives and our irritation with them is tempered with the fact that they have been given a tough job to do.

While all of us have some part of our professional lives that we struggle through, it is eased by a formal separation from the selection/rejection whatever it is that we have been giving at least 8 hours a day towards. We mostly work on a small part of a larger impersonal project and rejection, while worry-inducing, is not borne alone. The salesperson on the other hand is handed a product or service that she hasn't designed or built, convinces herself of its distinction from all other similar products and pitches the same to strangers whose interests and motivations may be universes apart from even the best features of Product X. 

I understand that sometimes the product sells itself and sometimes even the customer has an active interest. I remember the time when a door-to-door salesperson brought little plastic lights, blue and white and shaped like spaceships (as per an industrial designer and an imaginative child), that could be tapped on for a warm friendly night light. My mom and me were equally enamoured and at the price at which she was selling them, the sale was a foregone conclusion. Those lights remained at use in home long after I had ceased to qualify as a child.

In some respects, I suppose that sales can also be viewed from the frame of just another job where strategy and selection yield 'results' with the right 'execution'. But the biggest challenge in my (ignorant, inexperienced and unsolicited) opinion would be in how to make the rejection not feel personal. When you have approached someone with all your charm and conviction only to be told "Not interested", sometimes repeatedly, how do you keep the fire going?

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2023/06/persistence.html]

7571

A casual glance at the Gallery folder of my 8-month old phone gave me reason to pause. 7571 photos lay entrenched in that particular location. 7571 photos that I had consciously taken within 8 months and none of them selfies! Until that moment, I had had airs of being superior to "this generation" who spent their entire lives in front of cameras it would seem. At 1000 photos a month, I couldn't make any real claims of being above it all. Even if I wasn't clicking pictures of myself, I was spending enough time with the phone camera to lose all moral authority to judge others for the same.

Pets dominate my mix of photos with landscapes that then seemed interesting coming a close second. In a very telling contrast, most of the landscape pictures seem bland and repetitive on a later viewing but the pet photos retain their warm cushiness. Flesh and blood even as a static image have a life of their own but rocks and trees lose their vividness once the environment they were clicked in is not immediately accessible. In a desperate attempt to take some of that beauty back with me to my less scenic daily life, I had clicked vigorously and to an extent, indiscriminately. The end result is a lot of high definition pixels which only re-emphasize that it was so much better in person.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2023/06/7571.html]

The Longest Day

The longest day is already upon us and with it the arrival of the monsoon. A morning person like me has hardly any reason to complain in that regard. Extended hours of sunlight shielded by clouds loaded with relief is a win-win in my book. June is almost over, with it the half-way mark of the year, causing the well-organized to recap what was achieved thus far. Unlikely to be accused of such good qualities, I take the time to savour the change of air after summer’s long sultry goodbye. There’s a thrill in having survived another sun-fest season in a top floor room.

What do I do with the extra 2-3 hours that I get by waking up early? I use it to breathe a little easier and enjoy the luxury of not having to plunge into the day’s frothing pool of activities in a barely awake state. This is not to say that I approach the dreaded work hour with a confident calm. It is more about having some free time before rushing into the due-yesterday channel of professional commitments. In its favour, besides the long daylight hours, summer offers the chance to be less drawn into the infinite charms of sleep as its co-conspirator, the blanket, has been put away for the season. 

My dogs are happy campers with regard to the hours I keep. Dawn is their golden hour too. At the slightest movement showing my emergence from slumber, they pop up at my bed-side eager to wage battles or pursue alliances in the as-yet unplanted fields behind my house. The seriousness with which they survey their home turf and the protocols with which they deal with friends or foes makes me wonder if inefficiency and error susceptibility are the best markers of being human? 

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-longest-day.html]

Airport

 

PC: Dall-E, Open AI

Maybe because it was December, her favourite month - with its cool weather, her birthday and Christmas in sequence. Maybe because it was seeing the variety of people streaming out of Dehradun airport - all manner of personalities and styling choices. She would have had an observation on all of them - funny and/or deep. As I waited at the exit gate to receive a senior conservationist for a work conference (someone whom I always look forward to meeting), a wild wish bubbled up unbidden. What if Maa also emerged from the gate? Wouldn't that be awesome? The impossible, the illogical wish should have induced a chuckle in the always rational me. I knew that it was a ridiculous thought.

As the wait grew longer, the wish grew bolder. The more I pushed it away, the more it popped up front-and-centre. My brain was outright refusing to co-operate with reality. With a drying throat, my eyes scanned the gate ever more intensely. Could it be her? Would it be her? Every burst of laughter, every embrace of the travellers and those waiting for them added more detail to the wish. How she would emerge (a slightly harried expression on her face, as long journeys usually made my otherwise high-enthu Maa feel), how she would smile (when scanning the crowd, she would spot me), how she would wave (both arms fully committed to the cause, as she was in every other aspect of life).

Come on. Get a grip. I told myself. It's been so long since she's gone. Don't you remember how you tried - not acknowledging her limited time, insisting that her comeback was just around the corner - in the fierce belief that not talking about it would keep her here forever? Don't you remember the searing failure of that 'plan'? Don't you remember all the details of your rushed journey home? Don't you remember the nightmarish wait outside the ICU, not allowed into that cold world of expertise, knowing that inside she was slipping away? Physically I was at the airport, but inside my little boat of logic battled huge swells of emotion. It tried, it fought, it lost.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2023/03/airport.html]

The Batman (Overload)

 

In what may be perceived to be a good sign in certain quarters, maturity may have finally punched through to me. Before giving too much cause for celebration, I ought to clarify that this is to do with my expectations and emotions for a Batman movie. Another Batman movie.  Grungy voices, dark settings, childhood traumas, contested heroism - all classic Batman tropes I was previously invested in feel like excessive melodrama even before I step into the theatre. With no new supervillains and an underwhelming choice for the central role, I go in with a ho-hum attitude. That's a first.

In the real world, supervillains are rarely contested and as the Russia-Ukraine madness plays out, it is more like a supervillain v/s supervillain scenario as citizens of Gotham negotiate their survival in between the two, pleading with one to survive the other. Batman with his 'no kill' rule is an absolute buzzkill in the face of oxygen sucking, thermobaric ammunition from live news. A superhero specializing in non-lethal combat (eventually) and spouting monologues on justice is so out of sync with these times where even narratives are out to murder each other.

But I do have to watch the movie regardless. Familiar characters and backstories tweaked in a certain manner to suit a director's vision at least inspire some sort of opinion about his choices. Having watched a few cast interviews and friends' reviews, I have a vague idea of this movie's uniqueness too - the ol' How-this-Batman-is-different spin. Practically speaking, I go in without any anticipation of surprise and revelations. Maturity dictates a stony acceptance that the Batman can exist only on that side of the screen, not this. Despite its honest efforts, fiction can hold but one lonely candle to the many dark streets of reality. Come to think of it, I am beginning to feel more like Batman, less like a fan!

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-batman-overload.html]

Kriti Arora Profile - A Post on Orkut

 

This is interesting. 

I swear I don't know who Kriti Arora is and what her Orkut profile looks like but the Blogger team seems to have decided that I should write about her. An 'Ideas' panel has automatically popped up on my Blogger homepage and among the many AI-generated blog ideas for a post most of which were about cricket and cricketers, this one seemed the most outlandish as I had not the slightest notion of why such a thing was suggested to me. 

May be I have written about the long dead Orkut social network in the past thereby triggering the AI to suggest something guaranteed to give me more views? Thank you, Team Blogger, for taking pro-active concern at the state of my decade long stagnasis on my blog and suggesting some motion. 

I now have one more opportunity to learn something completely new and have the luxury of not writing about it. 

In all fairness though, I did find it interesting that the original Googler, after whom orkut.com was named, has brought the defunct domain name and is now using it to promote another social networking site named Hello. Quoting the first paragraph

"Hello,

I’m Orkut.

You may not know me but 13 years ago I started a social network called orkut.com while I was working as an engineer at Google. I'm the guy orkut.com was named after. In 2014 when Google announced that orkut would be shutting down, it was a sad moment for us. orkut had become a community of over 300 million people and was such an amazing adventure for all of us. Nobody wanted to lose what we had created together. We met amazing new people. We went on dates. We found new jobs. We even got married and had kids because of orkut. We made it happen, together."

His thing, the baby that brought the world together, actually mostly India and Brazil, may be a faint blimp on our generational memory but that it lived for a short while, back in the day when all of these concepts were brilliantly new and shiny and Google Chrome still needed to promoted, is reason enough for its happening.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2021/11/kriti-arora-profile-post-on-orkut.html]

Always With Me

Sunday, 8^th August 2021

Dear Ma,

I write this to you in mild disbelief. I half expect to walk into you tidying up the next room. That you would tell me of today’s must-read Indian Express article or order me yet again to abandon my decade old T-shirt. This I understand is no longer possible and I am here to talk about my memories of you instead.

My first memory, from long long ago, is your laugh, humming the eternally popular Ripon Street baaraat band tune “Tequila”, and a just-learnt-to-walk version of me stumbling along to it. You don’t drink and I can’t dance so this is a strange thing to recall. At the same time, it is so you. Your giggle and your endless stock of made-up games put you up as a firm favourite of generations of children, three your own and everyone else’s. The ease with which you engage a child’s endless energy is sure proof that you did never grow old. It is our privilege to have grown up under your joyful and imaginative attention.

My second memory of you is sombre. The impact that moving to Bharuch had on you, an out-and-out Kolkata girl uprooted from its urban bustle to a small back-of-the-woods town in Gujarat, into a world so different from what you had known. Your initial shock and your subsequent rising to the occasion were something that even a 3-year-old me could appreciate. As hundreds of your students and acquaintances from two-plus decades there will attest, Kolkata’s loss was Bharuch’s blessing. Adventure is often shown as conquering distant hills and forbidden valleys but the wonderful, protected life that you and Baba gave us 3 kids in a land so different from your own was no less exciting and brave.

My chosen third memory of you is more a running film than a specific span of time or incident. A camp-fire, a relentless passion for doing the right thing in the right way, which comforts greatly but occasionally burns. You do not appreciate half-heartedness in any form. I think you’ll agree that filtering your emotions isn’t your forte. You laugh as hard as you roar. You are a rock of comfort in critical times but don’t shy away from letting the tears flow either.

I remember the roasting you gave me when I, in teenage ignorance, ridiculed your favourite poet Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill”. I recall your thirst for knowledge, a core trait shared with Baba for 49 years, which kept you learning and inquisitive all through, in your own words “up-to-date”. Cable TV, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, microwave oven, PC, laptop, smartphone – you negotiated through them all, living it up virtually as much as IRL. Your sudden revelations of knowing the latest Guru Randhawa song or the exact details of a Jason Statham fight scene leave me wondering who is the older among us.

I worship your energy in all that you do – host of a ridiculous amount and variety of get-togethers, most opinionated road-trip participant, queen bee of your Brahmo Girls school girl gang, painstaking saver of money for incremental improvements, teacher of history and English in all their nuances, writer book-lover librarian extraordinaire, setter of impossible standards for pet care, denouncer of political extremism and sloppy dressing (phew, that’s only about 10% of your abilities) – all with a warm heart and a booming voice. Your beloved parents, Dadubhai in his meticulous perfection and Dimma with her emotional core, live on and spread their goodness through you. Hope your reunion with them and waggy tailed Putputti is even more perfect than I can imagine.

You could have aimed for the stars with your intellect, education and capabilities but then you wouldn’t give yourself any relief from your duties as Mom either. Through sincere work in whatever life I choose, I hope to respect your ambitions and make a few amends for your sacrifices. I never got to tell you this while you were still here, but you are my hero and your life-story is the stuff of legends. Maybe I will write it all out someday, in all its pain and all its glory. Much as I will miss the immeasurable comfort that you gave me as Mom, I will also remain in awe of the relentless perfection that you sought as a professional.

The greatest regret of my life will remain not being right next to you when your time came. Those stories of my travel which will now remain untold to their most eager audience. That long list of your planned food items during my visits home will now each hurt in their own way.

“Kutush, don’t be selfish” was your one advice in life and I try to follow that within my own limited capacity. But I’ll make this one exception by claiming your time though I know that you’ll watch over everyone that you loved, not just me. In what seems to be the only consolation for your absence from this world, when roaming areas with limited mobile connectivity or on busy days, I no longer have worry about you worrying. Now I know you’ll be there with me, on every mountain trail, in every urban jungle, on every motorcycle trip. Friend. Judge. Guide. Mom. Always with me.

Lots of love,    
Kutush

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2021/08/always-with-me.html]