About my infant boy

About my boy child

I have got two kids, the elder one being a girl who will turn six of age next month, and the other being a mere fifteen months old boy.

Typically, the girl is more attached to her father during the first ten years of her life, and then with her mother after that. In my case too, she has shown attachment to me in her first five years.

Whereas, the boy is always more attached to his mother than to his father.

This “skewed” bondage also results in the mother developing more

 emotional bondage with her kids.

My boy is already showing glimpses of having innate curiosity to explore different locations, toys, people in our immediate vicinity, and “things” to eat. He does not really mind if he is happily munching a torn ragged piece of paper or wildly hogging on only two or three pieces of pomegranate. He does not how to distinguish between the edible and non-edible food yet.

Having grown up in the outskirts for Delhi, I quickly developed a culture of food, something which is a hallmark of Delhi. I also quickly latched on to the hustle-bustle and the outcome-based attitude of Delhiites. I wish that my boy also gets blessed with assimilating these benefits that Delhi has to offer.

Only yesterday, my family was watching a very nice movie “Bala” featuring my favourite actor Ayushmann Khurranna. It was a stunning and a highly captivating movie. However, for me, the most learning came from my boy.  I was enthralled to find that my boy had enjoyed unabated in the vast open stretch of brightly lit shopping mall with only a handful of people near him, after coming out of the dark film theater in a disconsolate mood. That he repeated this behaviour when we took him back to the movie

Just like me, he likes freedom too. I always had my points of views and wanted to spew those out either through the medium of news reports or via publishing in blogs. I do not know if my boy would be equally marauding and hungry in expressing his points of views, but it would be a good to have trait.

Now coming to the bad habits. Some of my girl’s bad habits have steadily and on occasion swiftly crept in to my boy, such as yelling and yearning to always take him out of the house for a quick walk or a lazy recline in our new car. He is so fond of changing the gears in my car! Whereas my girl was always fond of taking the driver’s seat and bossing the wheel!

It is the other bad trait that I want to hinge this blog on. That bad habit is that my girl, just like many other kids of her age across the globe today have started being selective in their choice of food and their choice of content to view on television, Youtube, or on mobile phone. The perspective of the kids is reducing every day, and it is also making them hooked on to the highly addictive world of video games, virtual world that is often shown with bright colours, and with tremendous layers of aggression. I find such content to be completely detached from the real world situation and how to cope with the demands of living each moment in the real world. For instance, my daughter needs a

lot of assistance in eating her meal. She cannot appreciate my spending two hours sweating out under the hot Sun in playing lawn tennis. I do not want to use this blog as sounding board, but I need my boy to come out with me and train himself hard in jogging, playing tennis, football, and all other games that require physical activity and training. The trouble today with the gadgets is that one song (or any other content) will have dozens of similar content (for instance, for a popular Bollywood song, there would be  a tomboy who would be singing, a coterie of seven kids attempting to dare a dance step on that song from the terrace of their home, etc.), which has the effect of keeping the viewer in that virtual yet vortex like world that does not let the viewer come out of that world. What I would want him to understand is that the best friends have got a lot of meaning movies in common, and that he should project his most favorite movies along with lessons learnt from those movies in his first blog. That would be special feeling too!

In the end, I want my boy to approach life with dignity, to always be classy, to show off with black or grey goggles but not to overdo the art of marketing oneself, by saluting heroes like Abhinandnan Varthaman but not to overdo patriotism, to publish books and blogs, but not to project himself as bookish, to express his points of views on multiple burning and pressing topics – such as Delhi burning due to stubbles put on fire, how to improve the happiness quotient of oneself, how to value small things like growing of plants, cultures of various countries that I used to so dearly learn from the splendid stamps that were around me during my childhood – all concurrently, yet not in a boorish manner.

Next, I want to mention some quantifiable things.  Some people say that it is the first time that the child learns to walk is the most pivotal moment in its life. However, I have now discovered that we need to timebox the moment when the child learns how to avoid jumping into troubles when it attempts to reach the object that is placed in front of it. This is because it does not know how to learn and apply cognitive abilities to find alternate ways that are safer and easier to reach to the object that is lying in front of it. Only yesterday, I was scared to find that my boy attempted to jump off the sofa to reach to his blue bicycle. Whereas a safer path would have been to step down from the sofa and then walk towards that bicycle. It is yet another revelation that he has not yet learn to climb down from a sofa! So, for me, it would be fascinating to know when he learns to step down (say from sofa) and then safely walk towards that object of interest. To diffuse the situation, I had pushed that bicycle out of his sight and far from the sofa. His only tools and weapons to save him from such situations at this age are his cute shouts.

I also want him to imbibe my good habits, which are walking under the Sun, walking bare foot on wet morning grass, experiment with mixing and matching of food (e.g., pomegranate with samosa!), how to connect with neighbours, and how to develop an empathetic attitude towards others yet have a sense of humour. He should work with full honesty throughout his life and always value nature, simple living, and a benevolent attitude. He needs to understand in due course of time that I have always valued fiction above non-fiction, abstract ideas above those that can give you short-term gains and living in the present than worrying about past or future.

He needs to learn from me how to value learning from reading, from gaining perspectives of different people across the world, and how to take things in perspective before jumping to any conclusion. He also needs to learn from me how fast I can arrive at mathematical computations, sometimes faster than a calculator. He also needs to learn from me how to stay away from air conditioners and all the things that enslave you. Finally, he needs to learn from me that I am learning from my within and from the Research fraternity the time when he would stop making silly mistakes.

I wrote this blog while being seated at my rocking chair.

Bully the brunt

Bully the Brunt

I was avidly watching the movie “Gully Boy”. Watching that movie and the acting in the male protagonist Ranveer Singh itself was a life changing experience for me. I must say that it was more like a soul searching and mirror reflecting moment for me, as in more ways than one, I could see the effect of the actor as well as the movie boomerang on my nonchalant nature, so much so that it created an upheaval in my mind and led to a gigantic clash of ideas and creative juices. I intend to use this blog post as the first in the series of a few savoury yet succinct messages that are sure to stir your soul.

I would like to start this blog by ironically two of the last messages shown in that movie, one which was spoken by Ranveer himself, and the other which I saw from both my eyes and that left a compelling tail effect in between my eyes. First, Ranveer had told to his father during a heated and a heavy slap exchanging elongated discussion that he had refused the job only because he wanted to pursue his passion which was to be a top rap singer of India, and that people in this world would like to remember his good deeds especially when they look up to someone who has been raised from a stinking slum in Mumbai. This act of selflessness seeped into my these days shallow soul and stirred me to life. All my life, I had adored and yearned to follow such humble personalities – mostly from the world of sports like tennis and cricket - as Federer, Messi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Steve Waugh, Manoj Bajpayee, Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, AB de Villiers, Usain Bolt, Mother Teresa, Brian Lara, MS Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Martina Navratilova, Kumar Sangakkara, Shane Bond, and Stefan Edberg, and of course my father who has now become the COO of a large European multinational firm. This is because all these men had and still have the diamond like trait of having explored the hardest heights and the dizzying depths of staying cool in the face of adversity yet coming across as the most humble and approachable people. Many of these now illustrious names were not innately talented, neither did they come from rich houses where four rooms would have sufficed but were still having ten rooms. They all came from not so gifted backgrounds, which can aptly be captured by my creative brain as a narrow and choc-a-bloc street, which in the slums of Mumbai can be resonated with the Hindi term “Gully”.

The other message that I saw from both my eyes and that left a compelling tail effect in between my eyes was the word “bblunt” with the first occurrence of the letter ‘b’ occupying much bigger vertical space than the remaining words in that letter. Somehow, it clicked me that I can carry forward that alliteration of the word ‘b’ and find a three word title to my blog. I quickly thought of “Bully the Brunt” because a bull is more positive than a bear, and the word bully rhymes with the word gully.

I was brought up in a very normal place in Bihar, where I had spent fourteen of my formative years next to the residence of MS Dhoni. I had spent most of my time either playing sport or practicing painting near streets that were often swamped with natural yet creepy creatures like crabs, dogs, scorpions, snakes, and snails. That experience had left me ingrained with a feeling that even though I am facing lot of adversity and obstacles in my road to success, yet there will come a time when people would like to remember me only for the right reasons and for having created a lasting lyrical message in their lives.

In the movie, there was a contest shown where the judge rotated a glass bottle on the floor, and the contestant on whose side the bottle last pointed toward, was gifted the chance to open the duel of singing rap song. At this, Ranveer had to bear the brunt of the other contestant who belonged to a very rich background and sang for a very long while and did not hesitate from making some very personal jibes at Ranveer. At this juncture, it was easy to imagine that Ranveer was being bullied. However, Ranveer picked up from that point and instead replied in such a machoistic manner that he held that contest by the scruff of his neck.

I am not an army man, but being passionately patriotic, it feels to me that I have come to the culmination of my first of a series of blogs in a manner that feels like a pyrrhic victory for me. I would like to end by the caption “My time and your time will surely come” - I saw this in spite of my not being a good time manager these days - because it is important to leave my readers with a poignant image of them imagining only positive elements in me.

The still undercurrent

It was a scene from the famous movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’ where Matt Daemon was narrating to Tom Hanks (and they are my all-time favorite actors alongside Al Pacino) that he and two other friends were trying to save the life of the girlfriend of one of those friends as she was being attacked by a very violent mob. The gifted girl had climbed up a tall tree that was also fairly fat when compared to the swank, groggy lasso. Her boyfriend Adam was ruminating because he had left her alone in the middle of the mobile mob that was surrounded solely by soon to be bygone bushes behind the backyard of their huge house. Now afraid to the highest intensity of upon having climbed to the tree and reaching the apex of that tree, she in a still motion swooped down to the ground (not the Gradient Descent method way!) but found her clothes and her inner wear getting shredded to pieces before flying in all directions resembling a gyrating motion, including in the direction from where Matt was watching in a state of pensive yet constant shock. To add to the hysteria, she had touched down all the brown branches of that giant tree (she had not having any time to apply any pruning mechanism or optimized her way to descend) before landing on the ground with a loud thud. There she lay like a still leaf in a rain socked pool of water having little undercurrent.

Sadly, Matt reckoned that it was exactly two years ago that that scene had transpired and when he and those friends were last to be seen together.

Having heard this, Tom replied with ‘Oh, my’ and Matt quickly convoluted to a state of still and then let his laughter aloud. He was laughing from his gut. But before he could gather his wits, his head felt a huge undercurrent and his mind ricocheted in many directions that were not devoid of desolation and despair (we can call these weighted vectors and tensors when speaking in an academic institute of repute).  It was the moment of melancholy which also resembled a lull before the storm, or as I call it the still before the undercurrent, because they were laying stranded in the middle of a fierce battleground with the sound of guns and artillery blaring their ears for fun.

This scene was shown right after the interval of the movie.

Perhaps we can have similar moments in many other movies which decide their fate. For instance, in the movie ‘Sanju, the movie was veering towards a dull biopic of Sanjay Dutt until after the interval, a Gujarati origin man named Kanhaiya from New York city, never married before persona, entered the movie and gave some sane advice to Sanjay Dutt, and stole the limelight from Sanjay due to his demeanor, easy on eyes acting that was often juxtaposed with traces of wit and humor.

We should get videos of such scenes that can potentially change the course of the entire movie, resembling the undercurrents that we can often see in the business world! Can we cull out such patterns spanning say ten minutes from an otherwise two hundred minute long movie, and exclude those movies whose interest and plot tails off in the first half itself?

There can be other patterns in the movies as well, such as the beginner's luck as was evident in 'Dev D', 'Vicky Donor', etc. But we can analyze that pattern in our future analysis.

Definitions of undercurrent:

1.       A flow of water that moves below the surface of the ocean or a river.

2.       A hidden feeling or tendency that is usually different from the one that is easy to see or understand.

3.       There is a strong undercurrent for Mergers and Acquisitions in India right now. Many conversations are happening, even if the deal news has not been announced.