The Infernal Diurnal Journal

 On Feb 10th we are planning to have a party at our house. For this I plan to make it a musical party, wherein I will set up my guitar and speaker combo, along with the microphones outside in my backyard. There are electrical points, but will need to test in advance if they function and how it all comes together. This is a milestone, if it works out. I will perform a little more officially, my goal being to do a few songs solo to kick things off and then do some  "standby" material with Tilo. The total length of the program I would like to say should be 1 hour, but maybe that is too much given it is the first time for me to perform for that long. Also, one does not want to lose the attention of the crowd and become background music, which happens all too often when you get a random crooner with a guitar at a house party.  In recent times, over the last 6 to 8 months , I had the good fortune to see three such acts from close quarters. The first was this act on the 50th bir...

 I awoke early today- which is to say Jan 30th- I am now 4 days behind in my journaling. At some point I need to catch up because it is so easy to fall behind. At first I was a day behind, now am 4 days behind. Tomorrow is the last day of the month. I need to try to catch up by then but it is unlikely given my work load. I have a lot to accomplish. The first half of the day I need to play hooky form work. I need to dispose my 10 year old vehicle, by going for a cash sale at Dubizzle. For this I need to drive the car all the way to Al Qusais- at the Sharjah border, first thing in the morning. They will prepare a contract and start to transfer the money. Hopefully the money will show up in a few days in my account because they will have my car. Somehow I am not very comfortable with this process- whenever there is a used car and a salesman involved yp on what you expect some trickery, some form of betrayal lurking in the shadows. We shall see. Thereafter, if all is sorted, I will nee...

 Back to the Test Cricket fold. A lovely tussle between England and India is ongoing at the moment in Hyderabad. India batted first and got a first innings lead of 175. But England fought back brilliantly in the second innings, against all expectations to set India 230 to get in the second innings to win the game. How Test cricket has completely transformed in the last 30 years is something that should be written about. When I was in school , I could not care about watching a Test match even in parts on TV. It was the age of One Day Cricket- with colored clothes and sleek TV cameras and sharp microphones that caught the occasional parley between players on the ground. It came about in 1985 for me, during the benson and hedges series played down under. Ravi Shastri on the title of " champion of champions" amidst a lot of controversy. He did end up getting a lot of runs in that successful championship, but it had been argued that he played too defensively to deserve it. The rew...

 There are a lot of balls in motion since yesterday. I was trying to figure out how to sell my car for cash, and apply for a golden visa-while trying to recover from a cold. In the morning, we had an invite to Radha's for a Hanuman Pooja- something she does once a year since she is a devotee of Hanuman. My wife is too, and so we were all-in. On reaching, it was a familiar mix of bengali families many of whom we had met at their residence a few times before. Some made a special appearance but clearly were not into the rituals. Again, a very familiar bengali phenomenon. The closest to rituals a bengali gets is during Durga Puja- and this is possibly only because the tedium of  rituals are compensated by the binge partying that goes on for 5 days with lots of excellent food and drink. It has always intrigued my how for away Bengalis were from traditional religion. We always have had a contra-line to religion historically.  Raja Ram Mohun Roy and the Brahmo Samaj was founded ...

 It is really frustrating and deeply annoying, not to mention slightly unsettling psychologically. I have soreness returned to my throat again. I met Atul for lunch at Zuma and not he long drive back to work, I felt it coming on. And it got more prominent, as it usually does, in the next 24 hours. No one, least of all me, wants to read about my cold and soreness. I still have to write about it because it seems to be always on my mind .Because it is always in my body. 2 rounds of antibiotics and I thought I had finally wiped off the bastard clean. But it only lasted a few days and now back. What is it going to take to get rid of it and how I do I maintain equanimity. Do I just get used to this as the new normal. A normal which always has physical discomfort which waxes and wanes but always lingers. And so all the activities that I have take myself to accomplish keep getting derailed. I didn't feel like a swim today so I didn't go. I wasn't feeling like writing my entry eithe...

Last evening I showed up at the CIPS Networking event. As the day progressed, I was slipping into my usual self wherein I started looking for excuses not to go. What was the point? What if I bumped into vendors who are currently bidding on live event and would ask me stuff I couldn't  answer or make me uncomfortable? I didn't know anyone- what if I ended up just hanging around while others interacted with known networks? And the traffic- what to speak of traffic to get to DIFC at 6  or 7 in the evening? So,  at some point I called the wife to seek an opinion. An involuntary response if there ever was one. She said the traffic would be really bad- you should skip and let them know. I was happy that my excuses were validated. But something told me that I needed to fight this. Fight the tendency to avoid and shy away. I recorded Take on Me a few days ago - one of the key phrases that keep repeating,  although more in a romantic context, was " You're shying away!". Th...

 Some headwinds at the workplace- and not just for me. Maybe it is the beginning of the year and a lot of people are out to impress at the get go. Salesmen are booking unrealistic orders that simply cannot be produced in time. We are being blamed for not having enough safety stock, not following up on key purchase orders, not monitoring payment schedules- yada yada yada. Then there is one man who is trying to make tremendous changes in the operations and routing of the manufacturing process. Not all the changes are bad, but the manner in which he is going about it is simply bizarre. No discussion, no planning and simply implementing it from the next day. He is of Egyptian origin, but the way he is going about his job, he might well have been Iraqi. Because it reminds me of the angst that I had experienced a few years ago while in Basra, when the Customs Department, which reported to a particular Import/Export Ministry, kept changing the rules of the game on the fly. We had cargo al...

 I received some good feedback from Kartik on my rendition of " Take On Me"- so I duly uploaded the video first to my youtube channel and then shared the link on Facebook. I have been doing this for a a few years now and everytime I do it, I look for appreciation. That dopamine addiction takes over. However, in recent times, hardly anyone reacts to these within my facebook friend circle. Initially it used to bother me, and I thought to myself what is the point of posting. But then I realised that people post on facebook also for themselves, It is like a digital diary. It is an argument made by my wife, which to me if truth be told is a weak one. I can always upload into my channel without sharing the link on FB. There are a multitude of reasons for the lack of "likes". It could be that they did not, in fact, like it. It could be that they liked it too much and were jealous. It could be that most of them had moved on to Instagram and didnt spend much time on FB. And ...

Today I was supposed to deliver a talk on Spend Management- but I did not show up.   I feel rather disgusted with myself. I have been meaning to atleast show up this year. No more hiding behind the bushes and waiting for a divine signal to show myself. But today was different. I had had a really full weekend thanks to a visit by a very close friend – Kartik with whom I had kind of dropped off the radar for a number of years. He, I had heard, also had gone into a shell whereby he hadn’t kept in touch with other close friends. In my case, I was a few continents away from him so it is still somewhat understandable. And there was probably some undercurrent that pushed me away as well. But I don’t want to dwell on that. Late last year, I flew to New jersey very suddenly and on literally no notice. This was to attend another musician friend’s gig- who goes by Pankaj. Hardly a good reason to most, but I chose to do exactly what I have been meaning to. Just ponder on the event for a bit-...

 I have recently come across this Vedantic notion - into two very separate places and in quick succession. As mentioned in a previous post, whenever such events occur I cannot help but look at it as some sort of divine signal. A message from somewhere beckoning me in this direction. The notion in question is what is referred to in Sanskrit as "Tena Tyaktena Bhunjitha". And I will endeavor to take this apart a bit to explore its true meaning.  On the face of it, it means " Renounce and rejoice". This is abstruse- does not tell me much, If I renounce, then I should rejoice with what exactly? Does it mean renunciation will make me feel joyous?  Whatever it is that I want to pursue, at some level I do it because it will bring me joy- where joy is a generic moniker ascribed something positive and generative in a good way. If you tell me that I should not pursue, then it would seem you are asking me to be inert. If each one of us had been inert, what would have happened? ...

Niall Ferguson happens to be a Professor of History at Stanford and has written some book about the End of the World- or rather the human being's obsession with this concept- as can be seen from the fact that we seem to have consistently over-predicted the armageddon or doomsday since time immemorial. It is almost a pastime of at least a certain segment of humanity. He argues that we all ineluctably know that our lives will end- and this is the worst thing that there is to deal with- even for billionaires. They know they will go. And so it is somehow less of an encumbrance if we also know that it is not just us, but rather the whole world that will also go. This makes the bitter pill somewhat easier to swallow- much like the fabled spoonful of sugar, in the film Mary Poppins.  As I heard him speak, I also reflected on my own ideas on the end of the world. And I realized I had none- nor did I ever spend any time in consideration of it. And this is where something struck me. All of t...

 A remarkably engaging discussion that I had tuned into over the last three days by way of a podcast.  A certain Dr. Sarah Hill- some sort of expert on female biological research was sharing some of her findings as a researcher in a rather arcane subject. The broad discussion was on the notion that women are somehow told things systematically that actually deny various natural biological features that are salient to them. This is a typical right wing argument against feminism but it goes a bit more precise than what you usually hear when discussing this subject- mostly in the garb of  that very political theme that foes by "feminism". What you usually hear is that women are meant to have children, men can't- and therefore it is not natural for women to focus on a career and a endeavor to climb the corporate ladder at the cost of other domestic responsibilities. This notion interestingly came to the fore for the first time contemporaneously with the invention of the birth ...

 It was my 23 rd Marraige Anniversary today. I never like to be fussy about it but when I reflect on how my married life has turned out, I cannot but help look at things with some relief. Some of my peers have had rocky marriages, divorces, situations where their kids have suffered from depression on account of the separation. Also, I often wonder how much mindspace is extended to dealing with separation and during this period how does one otherwise stay productive- particularly at work? Knowing me, I know I would have made a meal of this. I cannot get things done in my normal daily routine- even without having to deal with something as monumental as separation with a partner. For example, aside of being somehwat pereoccupied with work- and I say somehwhat because I have good days and bad days. At work currently or indeed in the past, I have days where I see some higher purpose and others when I feel I jsut need the pay check. Increasingly I also have days when I think I dont need ...

 I met my boss after what seems to be a really long time. He always pokes a comment at me whenever he sees me, which to me - with my infinite perspicacity- translates roughly to " you really should see me more often, I feel ignored by you". From my standpoint, I tend to see the executive management very less. Partly because I am busy doing operational stuff. And partly because I actually only enjoy doing operations stuff. The political head-banging with my peers, which should be what I should bother myself with - and what is clearly what the boss wants from me, does not do much for me. Yes, I see a lot of the Executive Team are doing stuff not quite right. But when you peel the surface, you uncover all kinds of subliminal power structures that exist. People are connected in so many ways externally to the board and to the ministry. And you are trying to take them on as a peer. What for?  What would I ever gain? I would rather do operational things- things that are tactile and ...

    I think it is worth mentioning a bit about the situation unfolding in Maldives. While the two wars of 2023 rage on, things are happening elsewhere too. For one , the Houthi rebels are attacking commercial marine vessels in the Red Sea. There is no real explanation other than to blame it on a very desperate Iranian political leadership.  They are losing support in their own country especially from their women. Equally the Abrahaman accord seems to be moving Israel close to Arab states- this making Iran deeply isolated internationally, regionally and, as mentioned, even locally.  They are trying to move Muslim citizenry on to one camp, and one way to do this is to get muslims slaughtered by the other. And when that also does not seem to be working, they are trying other adventitious skirmishes- basically carpet bombing and hoping they hit a target.  One of the most world-changing transfromations int he last 5 years or so is, funnily enough, not related to Arti...

 As my health recovers gradually, I remain silently bewildered and bemused. There is a subliminal soreness in the throat that is still lurking, it just does not want to heal-and every morning when I wake up I am expecting this niggle to disappear but it won't. I certainly don't have fever and overall I feel better but  there is a soreness that somehow is connected to both my sinus and my head causing me to feel the inkling of a phantom headache.  Maybe it is a state of mind, a mind overwhelmed in the last decade by a plethora of health related issues such that it cannot be in any state that perceives all to be 100% well. In any case, it is what it is. Let us speak of the devil, but only briefly I say..  At the moment, I am ensconced in my beautiful backyard and typing away over a cuppa. Def Leppard's "Love bites" playing in the background.  A bit about this tune: It has come up a few times in the past few days, and whenever something like this happens, I cannot ...

 I had been toying with the idea that my next vehicle would be electric. I am not an early adopter of new technology , which is why I had held out for years in which time many of my friends, particularly in North America had bought themselves Teslas. Now over the last few months I had seem many a Tesla show up in the parking lot- apparently it made sense if you drove long distances to work. It made sense to do the commute to work in an electric vehicle. This is because the distance of the commute constituted some sort of sweet spot as related to battery life from a single charge. This would work but if you decided to drive 5 hours to Musandam in Oman, along that incredibly picturesque coastal highway along the Gulf of Oman, you would struggle with the charge in the battery. It would probably exhaust itself completely thirty minutes before you arrived at your destination. And when this happened you would find yourself in the middle of nowhere. Not a good situation, by half. But in o...