He was the chief guest at our school day once when I was a kutti boy. He was quite a spritely old man in his 80s. The mustache was imposing and worthy of a Field Marshall. I don't remember what he spoke about but I was in awe of him, and proceeded to read up on the Indo-Pak wars in excruciating detail. I was kicked to find numerous mentions of him, and the occasional photograph. This combined with Biggles filled my head with dreams of flying MIGs and performing Immelman turns.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Failure
J.K Rowling at the Harvard Commencement Address :
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
You...
You are depressive when on a beautiful Thursday evening, on the way to a nice restaurant for dinner, you say - "Shit! I cannot believe it is Thursday! The week is only 4/5th over!".
You have no choice but to become an underachiever when your father is a lawyer who went to school with "Bill", mother a playwright and brother a trader, all from Yale, and all you could do was Vanderbilt.
You have no choice but to become an underachiever when your father is a lawyer who went to school with "Bill", mother a playwright and brother a trader, all from Yale, and all you could do was Vanderbilt.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Score!
REM concert on Friday evening. Liked a couple of songs but most of it was lost on me. That dude is seriously depressive. Who wants to pay up cash to get depressed?
Ethopian food at Demera on Saturday evening. Love it! It is suspiciously like South Indian food. The Ingera tastes like Dosa, the Sambussa is the Samosa and the Dor Wat tastes like Chettinad Chicken. And they eat with hands! Ethopians have a strange look - not African, not Aryan, a little North African, trim and athletic, complete with Cleopatra-esque noses and frizzy hair. I must say that this combination of genetic factors made the waitresses pretty pretty. To think about it , I can swear I know some Malayalee types who share 70% of the look. Strange. The effects of ancient trade routes persist many a thousand years.
Went to the Printers Row Book Fair on Sunday evening. Picked up these 7 books:
Keep The Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
The Rubaiyat - Omar Khayyam
The Beautiful and Damned - Scott Fitzgerald
Norton's Book of Personal Essays
Feynman's Rainbow - Leonard Mlodinow
Macroeconomics - Richard Froyen
The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
Guess how I paid for them? 28$!! I actually bought the Macroeconomics book for 1$ (obviously sold by someone who was totally lost on it's real economic value or just didn't care).
Then went across the street to the Chicago Blues Festival. Music was great but rain + mud + lots and lots of people = not fun.
Ethopian food at Demera on Saturday evening. Love it! It is suspiciously like South Indian food. The Ingera tastes like Dosa, the Sambussa is the Samosa and the Dor Wat tastes like Chettinad Chicken. And they eat with hands! Ethopians have a strange look - not African, not Aryan, a little North African, trim and athletic, complete with Cleopatra-esque noses and frizzy hair. I must say that this combination of genetic factors made the waitresses pretty pretty. To think about it , I can swear I know some Malayalee types who share 70% of the look. Strange. The effects of ancient trade routes persist many a thousand years.
Went to the Printers Row Book Fair on Sunday evening. Picked up these 7 books:
Keep The Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
The Rubaiyat - Omar Khayyam
The Beautiful and Damned - Scott Fitzgerald
Norton's Book of Personal Essays
Feynman's Rainbow - Leonard Mlodinow
Macroeconomics - Richard Froyen
The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
Guess how I paid for them? 28$!! I actually bought the Macroeconomics book for 1$ (obviously sold by someone who was totally lost on it's real economic value or just didn't care).
Then went across the street to the Chicago Blues Festival. Music was great but rain + mud + lots and lots of people = not fun.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Love this song!
Love the lyrics and melody. A little touchy-feely but touchy feely in a good way ;) . (This reminds me of a trader at work who lost money, and when asked replied , "Yeah I lost money, but I lost money in a good way.")
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Enron Redux
200,000 emails sent by Enron employees from 1999-2003. Quite interesting to browse. Never know what you might find ;).
Enron Explorer.
Enron Explorer.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Ai ai ai yoo..
Been plagued with recurrent knee pain :(. I think its the new running shoe I have been running with for the last 4 weeks, as the knee has steadily deteriorated over the period. My old shoes were brilliantly left at my friend's place in London. My advice to you is to avoid like the plague these colorful new fangled shoes that claim to do all these crazy things. All the techno messes up your natural balance and cranks up your injury risk. The worst ones are those with a raised heel that leave you feeling tall, pumped and bouncy - they increase the pressure on the front of your foot which then levers into your knee. Given this, I don't understand why women wear high heels! It can so easily turn into a nightmare, where a heel slips, ankle twists or worse still a ligament tears. (The sacrifices people make and risks people take to look good ;) ). Moral of the story : stick to simple shoes for athletic activity. Wear the fancy shoes (heels for example) if you want to look good.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
'tis the season to be married!
More precisely, it appears to be the weekend to be married. The city seems to be overflowing at the gills with couples getting hitched. Every hotel I walked past had at least 3 marriage receptions going on. Michigan Avenue and Grant Park had like 20,000 couples looking to frame their greatest moment most beootifully. Limos everywhere, from sedate black Lincoln town cars to out and out outrageous stretch Humvees with screaming inhabitants. Every other passerby on the street was either a bridesmaid in flowing primary colors or a black suited best-man. For a little bit I wondered if I was having a delusional hallucination of deep hidden issues that really have no other way to find the light of day, but my friends corroborated my observations. Either they are having similar hallucinations as well, or it is indeed true that everyone everywhere has decided to get married at the same time.
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