Sunday Posts

It took me a while. Several months, in fact.  Once this blog was my life, and I posted at least twice a week. But lately, this became a graveyard of new starts. Every time, I was starting afresh - there have been several new starts for me in an extraordinarily short period of time in the recent years - I made posts pledging myself to restart. And, then, I lost my way and became silent again.  I want to make it different this time. I am looking back and wondering why I start and stop. It is perhaps because I did not accept in the past that I failed, either completely or at least to make good of the pledge that I made to myself when I restarted. Therefore, I guess, instead of making statements of hope and looking into the future, as the American self-help books would have us do, these restarts should start with an acknowledgement of failure. That is exactly why these are restarts in the first place.  But, before that, I am questioning myself - why do this publicly? When an...

One of the great regrets of my life has been that history ended too soon. I was not even out of college when Soviet Union collapsed, and all ideology seemed to end. Everyone, right and left, agreed that there is no point arguing about how to build a good society and all difference is about the difference in emphasis. But I was already past twenty and arrived in this post-ideology world rather stuck in old-fashioned cocktail of idealism, values etc.  Worse still, I found my nirvana in Internet. That became my place to run away from life. My Indian suburban life, all its expectations, restrictions and pre-conceptions, could be left behind at the first crack of modem handshake. After that, I was transported to the world where people spoke my language, a different type of friendship, dream of an unmoored life. I could be ideological again, at least for those connection minutes I could afford to pay for.  But then it became more user-friendly. The browser was the start of the frami...

I am lately in the question of morality. I almost know that it doesn't matter. History tells us clearly that the sense of morality is historical (what was right in one age, was wrong in another) and mostly relative (based on the person's station in society and context). Yet, a sense of morality is the bedrock on which our certainties about life stands: If there is no right or wrong, it is almost impossible to make the choices one has to make all day, everyday. My problem, therefore, is not that moral sense is pointless, but the unsettling question that I have the wrong sense of morals. I have always maintained a level of integrity at work, and a level of transparency in personal life. For example, I tried to be dutiful and consistent, respectful towards others, democratic in disposition and never greedy or envious. In personal life, I believed that the transparency of emotions will keep me honest: Even when I am making a mistake and don't know it, being open about what I am...

Journey is an over-used metaphor. It presents a particular relationship between space and time. But the inherent assumption in a journey is that one moves forward. At a time when someone feels going in circles, journey is not a good metaphor to cling to. Such is my situation. After a long time, perhaps the first time in my career, I have lost the enthusiasm for my work. I have always traded financial reward and security for interesting work, so such enthusiasm was never in short supply. But as Christmas holidays draw to a close and I look out to New Year, I am so not excited!  May be I am getting old. It seems finally my attitude towards work is becoming like a normal person's, which I have always failed to understand. I hated the moaners and those who complained, and i changed jobs before I got to that point. This is possibly the first time I feel unenthusiastic but also stuck! I have made some big commitments lately, trying to assemble a team around me with whom I can work long t...