Category: Life Ordinary

  • Halve nots

    During N’s last visit to Bangalore, the final minutes of our conversation was around rights and wrongs. Zeros and ones. Black and white. At some point in our evolution, we created halves – half rights, grays. Who’s to say your gray is grayer than mine? It becomes subjective, contextual. For argument’s sake, we could say that rights and wrongs themselves are such. But each time we make that gray decision, we know, and we pretend not to notice that little voice.

    Many years ago, as I sat eating an ice cream at the Cream & Fudge Factory in Koramangala (it no longer exists) an old man’s eyes met mine for a few seconds. He probably didn’t mean it, but as I took in his frayed but neat clothes, and his gaze that somehow conveyed that he couldn’t afford what I was having, I was suddenly struck by the unfairness of it all. These days, I wonder if I just imagined it all, and it was just my sub conscious conveying something to me. In any case, it’s like that subtext that once is known, is impossible to clear.

    We have to live, and make a living, N said. He was kind, and gave me various ways to assuage my feelings of guilt. But every time I make a choice – across life’s various scenarios – an extravagant meal, a new pair of jeans, a movie – I know I’m watching myself, and judging. It is easy to allow myself things, but who’s to say where the allowance ends. How objective can I be about myself? Every time I ignore that little voice, I add to the imbalance, blur the lines in my own eyes. A life has to be lived after all.

    until next time, live long and proper..

  • Realty Check 3

    The location was right, and strangely, so was the price. In fact, almost everything was right and she told the current owner so. To make it perfect, she decided to ask him anyway. After all, they had done it before with soups at restaurants. “Excuse me, can you make it a three bedroom from two?”

    until next time, Part 1, Part 2

  • Year trumpet

    Last year, almost to the day, I became a social professional – not just in terms of going back to work at an office after a year and a half of being home-based, but also in terms of my domain of specialisation. I wrote then that I chose to go with this opportunity because it gave me the maximum scope to implement the concepts I frequently write about on the blog. A year later, I can happily say that not only have we evolved a blueprint for Myntra on ‘social’, but have successfully begun implementing too.

    The last update from me was when we shipped the fashion blog. It isn’t as though nothing has happened since then, in fact, the reverse would be a better reason. So much has happened that I haven’t really found the time to document it here. Brand building on social networks, setting up and monitoring customer connect on platforms, product level integration – we’ve had fun. In fact, many of the things I spoke of during the India Social conference were based on experiences at Myntra.

    Last week, when I wrote that “Every day is a new and exciting adventure” in the ‘About‘ page at the brand new Myntra corporate blog, I meant it. The nature of social is changing everyday, new challenges arise, but more importantly, so do new opportunities. Ecommerce is probably THE red hot vertical in India right now, the organisation itself is well placed among competition and growing at a blazing speed, and I’ve been able to do meaningful work in a function I’m deeply interested in. Along the way, I’ve met some amazing people who have helped me learn. Touchwood.

    until next time, until next year 🙂

  • Naming exercise

    The alarm rang, as it did, usually. He snoozed, stretching his sleep time a bit. But he knew he would have to get up soon. He was already late for his other kind of stretching. That’s when he figured the alternate reason for the name of the new concept they had come up with – Yogalates!

    PS: Yes yes, pronunciation, I know!

  • Legacy, Mastery, Success

    At Brain Pickings, that treasure trove of awesomeness, I found this quote attributed to Ray Bradbury on legacy, through a character in Fahrenheit 451:

    Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

    The subject of legacy keeps popping up here, and my understanding, especially since the last post has been that it is not something that one works towards, but happens as a (side) result of doing something that you love to do. In that sense, I would read between the lines above and add that ‘doing what you love to do’ as a prequel to the quote.

    One of the best posts I have recently read was Hugh MacLeod’s ‘On Mastery‘. I immediately riffed on it over at the other blog. It articulated things that I know for certain were muddled up somewhere in me, wanting to be told but finding words missing. He starts with trying to define success “Suc­cess”. What does it take to be suc­cess­ful, pros­perous, happy, have a sense of pur­pose etc?, separates it from the by products like fame and money and arrives at “It’s something that truly belongs to you”. For the master (as someone commented on the post) it’s more about the process than the product. Low key, known by a few, but masters in their chosen domain. “It’s something that truly belongs to you, always.”

    In the ever hyper world of real time media, micro-celebrities and experts, fame and money are many times the definitions of ‘success’, and though I do know at least a few people who have bucked that trend, it was heartening to read posts that told me that such thoughts weren’t really alien.

    There is an interesting article I read on the subject on HBR titled “You Are Not a Failure” which had an intriguing classification of  types of creativity — “conceptual” (in which a young person has a clear vision and executes it early, a la Picasso or Zuckerberg) and “experimental” (think Cezanne or Virginia Woolf, practicing and refining their craft over time and winning late-in-life success).

    Thanks to the deluge of information and opinions, it is ridiculously easy to give up on yourself and lose confidence. As Godin writes in “Do we have to pander?“, it is also easy to compromise, and then defend.   I think this is not just for greatness (people or things), but also holds true for personal belief systems and mores. And probably, at the very end, the perseverance really doesn’t achieve anything other than the satisfaction of setting one’s own definition of success and spending time and energy on it. But I have a feeling it’s worth it. A legacy in itself.

    until next time, this happens to be post #1000 here 🙂