India has seriously got talent

I have been a religious consumer and admirer of the reality show India's Got Talent ever since it was aired first on television. The acts vary from mediocre to extra-ordinary, barring the funny ones. The talent coming on the show is just growing by leaps and bounds in every season. I am glad the confidence is being built in many performers to come on to the show and perform; otherwise in a country like India, we would know of many people whose talent just remains inside their houses due to lack of opportunities, encouragement and resources to come out of those walls; many don't even know what talent they have; very sad!

We all think good nutrition etc. is necessary for a healthy mind and this is a necessary condition (but not sufficient) to focus. I notice quite a few individuals who come on to the show have gone through no professional training - whether it is for a particular dance form, or for any other type of an act. Some people who do balancing acts are so fit, their arms-strength so good; many of these have not got any kind of formal fitness training. Many of these individuals have good muscles also, which usually are thought to be built by regular gymming. What I realize is these people don't survive on food or water, they eat and breathe their passion and their dreams; which they see with open eyes; and that's what gives them all the energy. In a country like India where people don't know and understand the meaning of the phrase 'personal space', taking time and space out to keep practicing dedicatedly, to pursue one's dreams is indeed commendable.

In one of the earlier seasons, a group of two boys had performed using some yoga postures and it was seamless beyond imagination. They had represented India in an international games event and had won too; but unfortunately their talent is not recognized enough in India to make them a good living. When the International Yoga Day was announced, the first thought I got was 'Wish people like them get recognized and they can make their good living out of their talent now'. I think some money should be spent on promoting other games and sports also and not just cricket.

Some time back we had gone to Las Vegas and my colleagues and I went to watch a show whose ticket was worth Rs. 6000; the show was definitely very good; but even at that time apart from one act everything else I had seen in one of the India's Got Talent seasons. Unfortunately, we don't publicize our own talent enough.

India has seriously got lots of talent; there should be more platforms created to showcase this talent There are so many award functions where celebrities of big and small screen worlds perform; why not give this talent a chance to perform in those award functions? There should be a way to reach out to these people to invite them to perform in corporate parties or events too.

Even when I was watching KBC the last two seasons had got contestants who were from the lower sections of the society and I thought that was a very good initiative. Every single person in the vast majority of India has a tragic story; and that story & struggle is what keeps giving that push for one to dream, dream with open eyes, and pursue one's dream.

My personal favourites this season of IGT are:
Individual performers: Yogeswari Mistry, Manik Paul, Prahlad Acharya, Jaydeep Gohil
Group performers: XIX Junior Group; Sonu and Shikha,
A very special favourite is Nangbia Chanda because she comes from Itanagar which is a different world altogether and I hope she reaches great heights through this exposure!

Yes, there are too many; as I said this season's talent is at a different level :)

The road towards imperfection!

India is a strange country, not in a positive or a negative connotation but just as an observation. The strangest section among the strange India is the middle class section. This is the section that is always struggling to move towards a higher point than where it is currently, but more often than not it is not able to, never in the first generation at least. It always keeps working the hardest, getting only modest rewards, and whatever little rewards it gets it keeps saving for its next generation.

Among the strange things that quite a big portion of this strangest section battles with is something called 'perfection' which comes from insecurity most likely, especially in the lower middle class family. Meet parents of this section, and their only aim is to make their child the perfect child on this earth. When they let the child meets their friends, the friends should praise the child the most! They want to send the child to the best possible school (which everyone wants to), but they also want the child to have 100% attendance, they want the child to come first in many different things and so on and so forth. I was one such child from one such family.

My father was fine but my mother wanted me to not skip even a single day's school, restrictions on just about everything from watching TV to playing time to what not! I got 4 marks out of 10 once in a class test and I was dead scared to go home because I knew that day I had to have it from my mother! Having been brought up like that, slowly and steadily I started becoming a victim to this disease called 'perfection'. If I miss school one single day even due to very valid reasons, I would cry and feel like the earth is going to shatter. If I come second in the class in any one subject, I would feel like that's the end of my life! Extreme addiction to studies also stems from the fact that I belong to Andhra Pradesh in India where if you study arts or commerce, people would not even look at you - I hear it still is the same in most parts of the state. I would prepare extremely well for an exam and if I forget a small formula in the exam, I would not be able to digest as in how could it happen to me, I tried so hard!

Having such a thing ingrained into me, I was still like that during the early years at my work. I would not use my Frequent Flyer number when I travelled for work, I felt that is not correct :) I must accept life had become very difficult post studies for me. After all, from a perfect atmosphere within yourself, when you come out of it, it is an imperfect world, and it is not bad. But it becomes very difficult for you to adapt to it, and accept the imperfections. It becomes very difficult to let it go or to accept the people around you who let-go. And it is very critical to do that. Till date, that instinct exists in me - when I play a game on an app, I am not competing against anyone but I want to score more than my last attempt otherwise I feel bad. This leads to a lot of stress, you can't concentrate on better things in life due to such small and unimportant things bothering you unnecessarily. It is very bad for you in every way.

My current workplace and industry keeps challenging me on this same weakness of mine, very frequently. There was a day a few years ago when suddenly I went to the cafeteria early in the day, everyone was talking about this viral video 'kolaveri di', and I was stunned on why I didn't know it. Then I realized it all happened overnight. In today's era, you follow many different apps, first thing in the morning possibly you browse through the 3-4 regular apps and check the updates. It is possible that one 5th app you didn't have time to open, go out and learn that it had an update which already everyone knows about. You reach office and people start discussing. I have learnt that it is fine if you don't know it, you missed it because you probably spent that time in something that mattered to you more that morning. Once you are out of this trap, you are also able to set targets for yourself which are practically achievable, once you start achieving them that in turn builds confidence in you.

Some time back, I had written this post on 'Obsession to self-dependence', my biggest learning is if you have the obsession to self-dependence, you need to have machinery to depend on or you cannot be obsessed to perfection, else it is impossible to live life happily. I used to get restless when there was even a small amount of dust around me, because I knew I had not cleaned it up and I possibly would blame myself of not being able to manage everything. Today, I see the dust and know it is there (there is dust on this table which has this laptop I am typing on :)) and when I think I know there were 30 mins when I just sat and chilled or watched TV or read a book but did not use that 30 mins to clean the dust, but I still don't care that much because I know its fine. I let it go :) I have moved quite a bit towards the better side though, now that I am gaining a bit of wisdom may be. But one thing I still cannot compromise on is punctuality. I want to take my dog out at 6:15AM sharp, my husband usually delays by a few minutes and only I know the amount of stress that spreads in the atmosphere during those few minutes. A colleague of mine delayed for a client meeting, he was quite chilled out while I was getting very restless. When we reached the client location, we still had to wait for quite some time, I still want to be on time from my side though I have learnt to let it go.

I see many parents around who want their children to be perfect again, they get stressed out if the child is not learning something in school that the other child has already learnt in other school. This stress passes on to the child too. To all parents, it is not possible to learn and know everything in this world. Let the child be, let the child learn at his or her own pace. Even if the child becomes perfect, there are only so many places where perfection stays, rest all is an imperfect world. The individual needs to learn to accept the imperfect world, and the imperfect world also has to accept the individual. Most importantly, such children/individuals would have extreme problems and would face a lot of discomfort and may go into depression too when they notice imperfections being rewarded as opposed to perfections, and such things do happen all the time. Teach children to let it be; that's how the world is and unfortunately we are to live in this same world!

Our Core Competence - Bargaining!

Remembering the days when I had just passed out of the primary school, I was staying at my grand mother's place. Looking back, they were amazing days of life but had it been a fulfillment of just about the daily needs it would  have been a lot better. Anyway, it was a small town, the district headquarters named Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh where my grand parents used to stay. It was very small a place that everyone staying in the colony would know one another well & have time to ask about the whereabouts while passing by one another's homes. I saw the development in & around the colony in terms of numerous apartments coming up & the lanes in between not even spacious enough to let even a Maruti 800 to pass by, let alone bigger vehicles. I hate this part! Otherwise the houses were so spread out that we could see the television in the drawing room of a house at 50 mts distance from ours. The game then between we all kids was to guess the movie being played on that television. I was pretty good at that I must say! (Especially when it was like Akshay Kumar's song 'churaake dil mera, goriya chali' from Main Khiladi Tu Anari :-))

Like in the smaller towns now, there used to be men & women selling different types of vegetables holding that typical basket (actually टोकरी)on their heads usually. Every such woman would stop by our home, just wanting to chat with my grand mother & forcing her to buy something even if she said she didn't want to buy, don't know what pleasure they got when talking to my grand mother. One such woman came & she had about 2.5 kgs of mangoes (it was peak summer & mango season) in her टोकरी. My grand mother called her & asked her for the price. The woman replied about Rs. 35 per kg or so. My grand mother said, 'give me the entire basket for Rs. 30'. The woman started cribbing & yelling saying, 'what amma, blah blah blah blah, do you know how many kgs are there in this basket? You are asking all this for a meaningless price blah blah blah'. My grand mother refused to listen to anything. The woman kept cribbing for a while & finally, helplessly went away when my grand mother didn't accept anything other than the Rs. 30 figure that she arrived at, God only knows what was in that figure! The woman went away, only to come back after 30 minutes. Don't know what guilt they had if they were unable to give anything to my grand mother. She came back & offered a price of Rs. 40 for whatever was there in the entire basket, the quantity was the same as it was earlier. My grand mother still was stuck at Rs. 30. Finally, after 30 minutes of cribbing & so on, she gave everything for Rs. 30 & went away. I didn't see any guilt on my grand mother's face & that woman was having mixed feelings which were very evident :-) I couldn't help!

Bargaining, is our core competence. I always thought it existing in older generation, that of my grand mother's, especially in the lower middle class people. But I see almost everybody around me wanting to bargain, could be for any minimal amount. We feel as if it is a point to put up on our resume? When we go out on vacation with our friends & head for shopping, I see people wanting to bargain for just about any amount they can. Somehow, my father never had this quality & we could never inherit it, but it can be very contagious at times. Apparently, we have to give the shopkeeper lesser than what he quotes as price, for sure. If we give what he asks for, we start feeling that the shopkeeper made a fool out of us! What if he actually has made a fool too? Say for a suit-piece, he quotes Rs. 2000, we don't bargain & give him Rs. 2000. Fine, what's wrong? Are we feeling bad that he has made some money? Don't we make enough money for our living? And it that Rs. 2000 was not affordable, could we have even bought it? Now, we bargain a bit & he gives it for Rs. 1800. If he feels comfortable giving it for Rs. 1800, we still feel guilty that since he has comfortably given it for Rs. 1800, he definitely has made some money & the entire trip, we keep thinking 'had we only bargained a bit more!'. We further bargain, & bargain, & bargain to get the price down to Rs. 1400 where he himself is forced to reveal that he is not making any money. We feel so good at this point when he further reveals that at less than Rs. 1600, he wouldn't make any money. We are then fine with giving Rs. 1400 (mind you, not more than this), knowing that he isn't making any money, he feels depressed, he is probably thinking of the sweets that he had planned to take for his kids in the evening, or the gift that he thought would buy for his daughter! What fun do we have creating such unhappy moments in someone's lives, I don't know! And this gesture is not only in middle class families, where it is still understood. People who earn enough to waste at least 1 kg food everyday, people who earn enough to be able to buy at least 5 things worth Rs. 2000 each day, people whose daily income with no uncertainty is more than that shopkeeper's monthly income which is filled with uncertainties & seasonalities.

I agree, once in a while we are fooled by such shopkeepers & others, but in most cases, we are just trying to show our superiority & being cheap in the process of anticipating cheapness. God help us become wiser, don't know how but wisdom is in a big scarcity in our country!

What A Life!

What is so striking about India, as a country is that there are very strong pros & cons in everything. Just about anything can become an opportunity as well as a misfortune, almost anything can have its own benefits and in anything to everything, there are hidden advantages for some life. There is a "latent" demand existing for each and everything that one can think of and which is why there is no dearth of opportunities possibilities, solutions, answers for some, as much as there is dearth of the same for others!

I was going around for a walk with Bruno, my 3-year old beagle when I was not liking the grass grown beyond limits, all around stinking due to rains and the roads literally cut in many different shapes making it absolutely impossible to drive without the fear of a puncture in the tyres.

I hate putting this picture on this blog as much as I love pondering over it :-)

While I was walking with this feeling sinking into me to a lot of depth and while my analytical brain starting to think of any possible solutions and the judge in me trying to curse the government and the authorities, I found a pig sleeping in this mud water (the water must have been there for about a week now!). It was in the most sound sleep, feeling like heaven, enjoying the sleep to the fullest!  Now that's what I call boon for someone whereas a curse for someone else!

It was a pleasure watching that creature having so much of pleasure & enjoying its own little world to the fullest! The population of pigs have multiplied to 4 times in the past 1 year around our residential area and so is the dirt around - the unwanted trees grown up beyond limits, the rainy season bringing in a lot of unhygienic air around and what not!

It is these amazing trade-offs that we live with, in our country, at every stage and that's what probably makes us more flexible, tough to hold on to any situation, versatile to think beyond a structured approach & processes, adaptable to any situation around us, being self-dependent to find out solutions for any problems that we face and so on... and so forth!