Blocked calls

#166

If I were to die today, my entire being would flood with regret for an absurd over-emphasis on relations. We give too much importance to others, we even try to wriggle our way to their good books. That’s pre-digital age mentality. We were told that Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence others” is a gold standard for living in a society. Bull shit. I would write a more relevant book titled, “How to make life difficult for others at the first opportunity.”

            I am not cynical or over-dramatic here. The world has changed beyond recognition in the space of a decade: Being nice and courteous in this age is being a moron to the extreme. The joint family died in the 60s and 70s, maybe the nuclear family died in 2010 and now in 2020 it's me and my interests alone.  
            I am saying this with all the earnestness at my command: Please don’t be kind and courteous. Being rude and boorish is fine but it should be done at an art level. You need to be sophisticated. Don’t parade your SELF-CENTRED streak but serve it with layers in false show of concern; have sweet words for the mouth but no feeling in the mind. Your job and duty is to care only for one person and that’s YOU. 

            For me 2020 started with Ajay’s “I will ask my wife if I should give you a loan.” That shook me up as the thoughts gained momentum: The world just does not care for an individual. If you realize how little the society thinks and feels for you, you would not open your mouth. The only person who cares for you in this digital age is not your wife or daughter but online marketers. Once your number gets into their database, they will badger you on “personal loans”, sell a vacation to Mars and anything in between. You are loved for the money in your bank balance and not you; if you think someone loves you then it's maya, the ultimate self-delusion. Want proof? Lose your job, don't buy your wife and kids any gifts or lay infirm for a week - you will soon realize how hollow and self-centered all their affections were. 

Blocking spree: I need a guarantor for my loan and the first person I approached was Srinivasan. He said, “Give me a day and I will get back to you.” It's as much a smart stalling move as after a job interview “We will get back to you, don’t call us.” I waited a couple of days before blocking his number. Then I sought out Mugundavel my builder for a guarantor. I know he is as cunning as a perpetually starving rat, he has no morals but I wanted some humour as I kick-started this social experiment: Sir, will you be my loan guarantor? He said, “I am already a guarantor for a close friend, I cannot have a second one concurrently.” I smiled and blocked his number. Then tried Krish with the same request. I was under the illusion he cared until he chickened out, “Sathya, if I sign as a guarantor my credit score would come down. Then I cannot avail any loans in the bank should a need arise.” I was sorely tempted to block his number but I thought: if he were to ever call by mistake, let the phone ring itself out. Then I wrote to a friend in Dubai on Whatsapp: Man, I feel like talking to you. Would you call me this week? I got no answer as I deleted the name from the contact list. Last month I was happy to an exuberance to block Vivek on my cell phone, a friend of 13 years, on another grouse: He simply got into the habit of annoying me. Sathya, what have you done to your sisters to merit hospitality? That number went for a year before this straw broke the camel's back: Sathya, I told you that getting a loan is very difficult. Why did you buy this Palavakkam apartment now? You should have first made money in the stock markets and then ventured into these buys. Most sensible advice on hindsight but this is a classic “I told you so” on a burning deck. Then there was Ramesh, Yohanan, Manikandan, Rajaram, Prithvi, Siddan, Prabhakar who fell on the wayside for no reason. 

            In all these ruins there is just one person who shines; 88 years old TH Iyer mama. He calls me daily wishing me luck and hearing my laments. In this world if you have just one person to EMPATHIZE, you are fortunate. Napoleon lamented he had none to trust, Alexander the Great had just Hephastion, and I have my TH Iyer mama. To the rest of world, be kind and courteous but from a mile away. I must warn myself that any flood of friendship is wasted energy on a unsuspecting public. It’s a pity we are not allowed to carry guns and knives in our society particularly as human population is on an exponential rise. But in your mind, just kill your kindness and compassion. If not at least start blocking numbers on the phone. Welcome to the digital world of Aadhar and Pan card and 16 digit credit card numbers, don't think you are bigger than them!!! 

Sathya, the Alexander

#165

Needless to say, Alexander the Great.

            This loan imbroglio (extremely confused, complicating and embarrassing situation) served some wonderful lessons. Today I know as much as a loan consultant on procedures and documentation. For those regular to my pages this is one more affirmation that we indeed are a rotten apples society for an insight: when you approach this system from the front door, they’ll ask you for come through the back door.

            These loan procedures are a funny thing – you get a housing loan within six months of purchase, interest rates for a home loan is 9-10%, minimum 5 years to a maximum of 15 years duration. Then there is mortgage loan and Personal loan (say 10-11%) while the private financiers starts from 12% onwards (say a Cholamandalam Finance or Muthood Finance). Loans are given to salaried people and people with good IT returns; so if you are a self-employed asshole like me, ask your auditor to dress up your IT filing. Pay a nominal income tax even if you go through the entire year without earning a dime. Now with this much experience, I am getting loan by greasing a lot of hands. That shows even if I have 5% odds of success, I have enough cunning-ness to open the doors wide.

            The first 3 months of 2020 got me to introspect a lot. Take these as my insights: The world just does not care for you. My definition of Maya is the self-delusion that we are cared and protected in this society. It’s further away than meeting Harry Potter’s characters on the subway!!! Second: India is corrupt to its neck and ass, exploit it to your advantage.

            When I look at my life, I have grown leaps and bounds. My teenage years were a blur, the 20-30s was a decade of RAW COURAGE as I managed jobs, heart surgery, 30-40s were years of SLOW RECOVERY as I found a lot of solace in TS walks, Swami Paramarthananda’s lectures. And now 40-50s is the decade of re-birth. It feels like going back to a womb for a world of possibilities. For isn’t the definition of DEATH is that we lose all that we know and feel to BIRTH where we are born and start from scratch. Mindfulness turned me inside out for a new leaf without the scars of the past.

            One of the worst sins of living is GUILT which is a result of wrong interpretation of the past. The SELF-CRITIC in us must die so that a SELF-FRIEND is born. Most people don’t bat for themselves they are busy batting for Modi or Rahul or Tendulkar or SRK. How absurd!!! A daily practice of GRATITUDE makes you HUMBLE of creation.

            I will be 51 in 6 weeks-time and I will not change a line of my script. Nature is a mother and a thousand times kinder and wiser for it gave me a Balakanth, Sarada mami, Ranga, TH Iyer. It also gave me a morally vacuous pUsHpA who entered my life for a dose of romance, and the exit couldn't have been better timed. It’s then the penny falls – we need the gross characters. But for my sisters, I would have never grown.  

            When I look at my past I have nothing but love and respect for me now. I have survived storms, tsunamis of shame and abandonment. Each time I fell to the abyss – rock bottom – I clawed my way back to the summit. For a long time I thought of myself as a bird without wings and mortified of heights until I realized that I have been an eagle along. We don’t live in a random universe of chance, it’s a painstakingly orderly in its writ, each dot and line on the canvas is a work of a supreme artist. This is a universe that is so efficient that it records every thought and feeling of all its creatures. These mental imprints are the inputs for evolution. The recording and storing is not in the heavens above but as energy packets in your own mind. Once you know how to handle those energy streams of the mind, you win always. Including bribing your way to a housing loan!!! Just love yourself, trust yourself, and you'll have the mindset of Alexander. Whatever I do, it's world-class for an output. I add value to life with each moment or as many as I can. 

Relationships in the Digital age??

#164

Wisdom is not something you arrive by reason; it takes life experiences to get a fleeting sense of it. Reading books, attending inspirational talks won’t make a person wiser, probably you will come home and parrot the words for an impressionable value. Borrowed words never make for one’s wisdom.   

            This is a rambling introduction to this thought that bugs me at the moment: the world we live is a terrible one. My life is interesting for it spanned three different times for a study in contrast:

            1970-1990 were my growing up years from birth to graduation when the world was still sane: television entering our homes, the neighbors knew each other well (we had the first landline in the locality and neighbors flocked to us for the phone facility, they now had access to an instrument to talk to their married daughters and sons). My father who had a flourishing career never stopped worrying over the fate of his fourth brother who could never keep a job. 

            1990-2010 were the years when I entered adulthood. I had a massive culture shock in the IMT hostels – the transition from a Nawabi Hyderabad society to a lifestyle-addicted, aggressive Delhi crowd took a long while for my mind to adapt. The society at this point was consumeristic: people buying Maruti cars, joint family became nuclear which meant no elder brother fussed over the unemployment or penurious state of his fourth brother! These years became what I call the: I, my wife, and my kids centered vision for existence. These were times when people voted for money and status – the more you had them, the more you were respected in contrast to the 1970-1990 phase when intelligence and culture got a legroom. There is often quoted axiom: the world is nothing but a mirror of your thoughts. If you were friendly the world reflected back that aspect to you which these years more or less held.

            Then came the post 2010 years where the world was classified as winners and losers as the IT crowd took over. They are truly global, their lifestyle no longer wrapped in Eastern conservative mould. Women smoke and party, pre-marital sex tacitly approved, and we simply stopped caring. Today we have reached a stage of not caring a damn to wives and kids. Today your own spouse will walk out if you lose your job regardless of a foreign vacation six months earlier. That by extension meant “We not only lost the art of caring for a nuclear family, we lost out on caring for ourselves”. Today if you are friendly, you will be mistaken for a madcap. Today if you fall in love, you will sign a pre-nuptial agreement. And if you are me, you will keep a gun under the pillows for self-protection!!! Today marketing men are more interested in your money than in you, pharma companies will dance with joy if chronic illnesses rise each percentage point. You will not know your neighbours, sad thing is you will not know even your siblings. We have changed our food habits, women use their breasts for a fashion accessory, and money is the only currency that is respected everywhere. Long lost in the desert are intelligence and culture and sobriety.

            For me, these phases of the society in transition hit me straight in the eye – I had the vantage point of being alone. Today anybody would be fortunate if you can find four friends in the city on whom you call: Buddy, let’s go for a movie this weekend for my wife rubbed me to the ground. Or buddy, I am in some financial trouble. Can you loan me 10 k for a week? Everyone understands that they are an island today – there is no premium being nice and friendly, you don’t have to fake a smile. People like me who have no societal shackles can look at you straight in the eye and say, “You are a bother, keep out of my way,” without a pang of guilt in the conscience. Today we look at a colleague or a sibling or even a spouse or a kid feeling, “This fellow is out to touch me, let me be careful.” Faith in gods was the first casualty, that vacuum was first filled by Sri Sri and now Sadhguru for a dose of pop spirituality. Then went the family customs as we severed from our parent tree, then came all the vices from women’s empowerment and effeminate males (would you believe it, most wear ear studs in one ear). Once we lost the caring aspect, we became strangers to ourselves as those aspen leaves tossed around by the slightest breeze.

            2020 got me this wisdom: The world is a friendly place but it does not care from Ajay. Then this corollary naturally sprung in my fertile mind: When you realize how little others think and feel for you then you’ll never open your mouth. Nor will you smile or mouth those useless good mornings. Now I have reached such a state that when someone smiles at me, I pause to ask: What do you want from me? Or you an insurance salesman or trying to sell me land in OMR 20 kms from the city?? Or a membership to a resort or selling a vacation??? And if I am going to commit suicide tomorrow, I will set fire to the planet with a gleeful smug: the journey from the innocence of the 70s to the callousness of 2020 is complete. 

March Misgivings

#163

This year was supposed to be a Consolidation year, but there are no green shoots of growth as of now. This loan has now become a knotty thorn, I pray that this month provides a solution.

            Yesterday I had a drink with Ranga at Maris and that’s the reason for this blog post. He has an original mind, greater in depth than me. I plan to use this medium to capture yesterday’s thoughts:

a)     Sathya, if you have noticed that even a sober guy acts animated in a group. You will always find group conversations at a bar boisterous where people shout to get themselves heard. It shows poor character to me. You only talk in two situations: a) where you are respected enough such that the other person waits to listen without interrupting, b) you open your mouth to add to a discussion and not noise.

b)     When I told him that self-love saved me from moodswings, he said, “It’s wrong usage of the word self-love.” You mean “you stopped blaming yourself and you were immediately healed.”

c)      Tambrahms are not ritualistic, Sathya as you keep parroting. They are highly conformist. I am Telugu Brahmin and there are no constraints my community imposes on me; I can be me. But in the case of a tambrahm, non-conformity becomes headline news. There is so much pressure to fall in life – that’s why you’ll see the maximum chanting crowd in a temple, or performing rituals like Amavasya tharpanam, or non-smoking or non-drinking made into a such a virtue.

d)     When I was cribbing about my siblings lack of care, he said, “Sathya, only you can define your duties for you. You have no right to conceptualize on other’s duties. Do so and you’ll find misery clinging on to you.”