Faceless Enemies

You might have heard this many a time when elders in our families say “Someone would say something”. Is there a more vague reason not to do what you wanted to do? These “someone” would never have a name and the “something” they might be saying is never verbalised. However they wield such a strong influence over our decisions. Its not just the untold but also the unseen is also to be feared.

Soda Bottle Enthusiasm

I don’t know if you have heard this term. It is like the initial fizz while opening a bottle of soda. We would start doing a new project with lot of enthusiasm. We would be in a bubbly mood. However after some time we tend to slow down and before we even know we would have stopped.

It so happened to me when I joined a school to learn music. My cousin Anbu and I went and enrolled ourselves. In the initial spirits I went on to pay the fees for 3 months in the first installment itself. We were not asked to but I did. But we did not attend the classes beyond 2 weeks. Of the many such occurrences in my life another incident worth saying would be the joining the gym by two best pals. It’s Shankar and me. This time it was even better (or worse). In three days we were back to square one.
So at some definite point of time in the past I decided to get better of this phenomenon. How? I decided to take things slowly and steadily from the very beginning. But it totally backfired. I’m not even getting to begin anything new. I wait and wait for the right time to start so that I would have enough time to go on with it. Earlier it used to be the idea of powering through. Lets start and things will fall in place. However with out the SBE the initial momentum is missing making be idle. So I think SBE is good, provided you can get it going after the initial thrust.

What do I see?

A corporation is like a tree full of monkeys.
All on different limbs at different levels.
Some climbing up, some fooling around, some simply just idling.

The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces.
The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes.

Praptham

This was a conversation between my friend (with a tonsured head) and me. He is just back from Thirupathi.

Me: Nice mottai.

Friend: From Thirupathi. It’s a great experience. If the crowd was less I would go there every week. But the place is so crowded. This is my only visit in five years.

Me: I’m helping you by not adding to the crowd.

Friend: It is not so. He (Venkatachalapathy) sees those he wants to. “Namakku praptham irukkanum boss, Thirupathi poga” (We should be gifted (I don’t think that’s the word) to be there.) It’s not we who decide but him.

Me: Then I guess you should think again about your every week visit.