Of boys and men

This post has been swirling in my head for some time now…and it’s Ashish’s baby. I’ve been wanting to pen it down, but for the thought that it might reveal too much. But it seems every son’s going through the same thoughts these days…and I don’t know if I’ll ever have them again. So this again seems to be destined as a post for posterity…something my blockhead son can go through when he makes a list of how he won’t be like his Dad.

And the list does exist. We guys probably started scrawling into them from the first time we were denied the 5 Star chocolates and the Police cars with flashing lights and sidey alarms…and we still jot down stuff when they go ballistic over the latest love marriage in the family, or the expense accounts, or the latest mark sheets. The whole list of ‘this-is-how-we-wont-act-with-our-kids’. And you may be 1 of those folks who claim your Dad is your true hero and your role model and what not….but dude…the minute he whooped your ass for something…I know what you did. It’s time to own up now. Just take comfort in the fact that, well…it’s a fact of life. A common folly.

And it’s been going on for a while, I suspect. My grand dad and my dad are polar opposites, so I’m guessing Pops too came up with a list in his time and stuck to it. And I’ve been sticking to mine so well that there were comparisons that the baton’s gone full circle….that I resemble my grand dad in not a few respects.

Then again…my younger brother has turned out pretty different from my dad. And from me. Do younger siblings have more than 1 list? I haven’t been able to gather enough intelligence on this…but would love to know. Davis does think I’m a blooming idiot…but then, so do most. Is the influence really strong enough to want to make him consciously change?

And why can I talk of this now? Cause well, it just hit me that the list is immaterial. That you do invent your own flaws, even if u think you’ve taken care of those of the previous prototype. Cause the father and son in this family finally seemed to have made their peace with each other. He (and you too, I guess) would opine that I’ve reached a long delayed adulthood. I’d rebut that he reached his too only now.

Dad isn’t the verbose, emotional type…and neither am I in real life…so there’s no chance of any overt changes in what happens between us. And given that this is probably the last vacation we spend together before the family moves to the US,…it’s happened just in time. We’d probably still be at each other’s throats at the end of these 40 days…but it’s cool in the long run. Buddy types now.

Bro too turned into a mini man somewhere in the last year when I was in the hostel…the dude's changed from a dumb cretin who did nothing to a dumb cretin who is an IT whiz and plays the guitar. He’s in between the stage where I could wrestle him, and where I can…wrestle him. Any brighter ideas abt what to do with a younger brother…do drop them in at the comments section.

I think we’d prefer going back to the stage where we would fight over first batting and over police cars with flashing lights and broken alarms. With Dad around the corner with a fresh can of whoop ass.

This adulthood business throws up wayy too many questions. How the teetotalers survive it is beyond me. And I’m in no hurry to find out.

Currently listening

Night swimming - REM

We be pimping

The latest post is on another pet project, y'all.....well..not as much as a pet project, than a "vaada raha" statement by 2 sozzled idiots, but here you go anyway.

Check out 18tillidye.blogspot.com. And pheedback is the bhaery bhelcum.

hola

Campus has split into two kinds of people over the last few weeks….those who have taken placements very seriously, and are slogging their asses through paper presentations, certifications and competitions…and talking about stuff that I still have no idea about.

And there are those who’ve cocked a snoot to it all…..those of us who’ve vowed to get sloshed thrice a week, finances be damned. Those of us who truly live like it’s the last 2 months of our lives, not just the last 2 months in college. All that bull crap I wrote about us waiting for placements day turned out to be that….bull crap. It seems we wouldn’t mind another Thursday morning where one wakes up, switches on the music, hollers across people through IM multicasts, grabs a massive bag of crisps and grins at the fact that you wouldn’t have to move your ass an inch all day.

And then again, there are those of us in the middle. Too way past being the guy who worked his butt off for his 10th Grade, and not yet the bohemian with a stash of 100 plus beer cans in his room. There’s the music for company, and there’s sycorax, (God bless the girl), but the rest of the day’s this constant question mark about what I should do.
The worst part is, others have found their answers…there’s a group of 25 year olds playing Monopoly everyday. And another bunch who’ve huffed and puffed through every rat fart school’s annual day fests, winning whatever they can. The people with the “do everything to the very max” credo…

Moi?

Thoda reading, thoda beering, mostly lazing around in a way that cannot be adequately explained. To each, his own method of madness. And happiness.
I shall meet new people. I shall pretend to be interested in GD topics. Maybe I will find whatever it is I am really searching for. But these days, joy comes packed in the shape of a laptop screen, a 2.1 Creative speaker system and a pint of Mallya’s finest.

To give you a clearer idea, I’m posting the contents of the Post It’s I’ve written on my desktop (nifty software, but only if you actually plan to do anything on the list)

To read:
Damodaran – (Investment Valuation) – By month end.
Wiley – (Modern Banking) – By month end
Hull – (Options, Futures and a WHOLE BUNCH OF MINDNUMBING CRAP) - 1st 10 chapters – by 20th
Chopra Meindl – Supply Chain Management- Mid Nov.

Learn Excel, SAS and Powerpoint.
Enter atleast 1 BSchool competition. Present 1 paper in your shameless life.
Exercise. Footballing once in 10 days does not count.
Spend weekend getting the time of your life. Alcohol is optional, but is found to help.
Write that Knopfler post again.
Get phone display fixed.
Spend weekend with family before they pack up and leave again.
Start reading fiction again.
Enroll for bike learning license

I think I’ve written this more for myself…so that I can look back at this post 8, 10, 20 years later and smile.

Currently listening

Lithium - Nirvana