What's the Catch?

It was love at first read. The first time I read it was in college. It helped me during my MBA entrance interviews as well, as it played the part of my favourite book, favourite author and also the last book I had read (it probably was). There is something about the Catch because of which I keep coming back to it. So do a lot of others it seems. It has been voted one of the best novels of all times in several surveys.
Someone once told me that one of the reasons I was not floored by "Catcher in the Rye" was probably because I did not read it at the right age. With Catch 22, I think I got it right.
What did I like about it?
The humour. Black and dry and variations of the same.
The confusing narrative, which jumped from place to place and person to person and forward and backwards in time - all in the same sentence some times.
The characters - Yossarian (the anti hero, ofcourse!), Ex-PFC Wintergreen, Milo (The capitalist) and Dunbar. in fact, all the characters were like different possible roles one acts out in real life. Many a time, I have spotted Wintergreen, Cathcart, Yossarian and Dreedle in real life.
The book is also a melting pot of so many underlying themes - the arguments of one person's welfare versus many, the sanity inside insanity, heroism and the lack of it, the absurd extremes of bureaucracy, the absurd extremes of normalcy as well, love versus lust - it never fails to excite.
Heller also made disguised references to earlier works and usually let his characters take the opposite position. For example, Yossarian is the opposite of Achilles all through the book when he always chooses his life over others. He is also the opposite of Jesus, when he choses to make a deal with the colonel.
I used to have a very worn out copy, which had survived the college hostel, numerous train  rides between Delhi and Mangalore and long rainy evenings in London. I got another copy as a birthday gift a few years ago. Getting something you really like is nice. Always.
The next book which comes anywhere close is "The Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. But that is another post.
(Also, blogger sucks!)

The Lawyer

This is about a friend. She is one of the brightest and funniest people I have met - a budding writer, a human rights lawyer and a child at heart.

I met her in London, where she was on a scholarship (of course!) to do a one year post graduate course in Law and Literature. I did not know that these two things could be or needed to be taught together. I still have limited ideas on the subject. This was the cool thing about knowing her - she came from a very different background. She thought differently and had a different approach to life. All my friends were mainstream professionals - engineers, MBAs, bankers and the odd CA. Most, if not all of us were in it for the money, more or less. It was nice to get to know someone who cared enough about things to devote time in it. Someone who read things and then went there to help. She had lived and worked and taught in refugee camps (At the same point in time, I was in a campus about 4 kilometers away with nothing much to do). She had lent a hand when dams were to be stopped from flooding villages. Her job after law school was with a firm which worked on gender and sexuality issues. Someone just posted a comment about how we live in our shells and tend to forget how bad things can be. This one was different. She always wanted to be in the thick of things.
She was the kind who could give a 20minute rem on Freud (very contextual, because I used to live in a house right opposite Freud's home) and make it quite interesting with examples and subtexts. She taught me words like poco (which is short for postcolonialism) and new words which were used in poco literature. For some reason, she used to think, rather strongly believe, that I am (or people like me were) homophobic(s) (I really wish there was a milder word for this).  I had never thought on those lines, nor do I think I am one, but still, it remained quite a discussion point for us.
What were the things we had in common - interest in lots of food and lots to drink, making merry and chatting about all and sundry  Other common traits - laziness and chaos. Trust her to miss a lecture (she used to have about 2 in a week) because of all kinds of reasons. Chaos - this one was worrying sometimes and she did surpass me. Missing deadlines, rocketing phone bills, dropping things.. She had this knack of finding things which did not belong to her (like she once found a cheque which she then returned after locating the owner).

Here's to the lawyer chick. Happy Belated Birthday. 

Life and times at L 326

I work at Envigo and love it, though I will be accused of being biased. There are about 12 more people here - the number keeps changing (increasing) though this month is the first month this number has not changed till now. They may not share my opinion, but chances are, that they will.
There are a few simple things which make Envigo a good office -
 - work timings are not emphasized, work is
 - there are clear and mutually agreed upon appraisal documents
 - client work is rotated amongst the team and across functions
 - there is ownership of performance - both good and bad
 - analysis is emphasized upon, reporting is only an enabler
 - the food is good and there is beer once a month
There will be some profit sharing, once there are some profits to be shared.
More than an advertisement for a job, this post is a snapshot of the way things are here, in what will be referred  later (if there is one) as the "early days."
What are the things which need to change -
 - Documentation of a few processes needs to be improved
 - Mind numbing carelessness by the promoter has to be tamed
 - A good agency person needs to be hired - we can learn a lot from such a person
 - We need to move into better premises

Democrazy

A large part of my day was spent as below:

1. Gurgaon Sector 43 to Sarita Vihar - 31 km - 2 hours
2. Sarita Vihar to Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon - 40 km - 1 hour, 10 minutes
3. Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon to South City 1 - 10 km - 1 hour, 30 minutes

It is sad because Gurgaon is a new city - it did not have 50% of its currently built up areas 10 years ago. All of Gurgaon is planned - there are broad rectangles of land cut across by roads. The growth was probably not expected. But how could they miss out on public transport? That is not a recent invention.
Every one has to have a car. Last week, I went for a walk with my parents just outside the gated community we live in. We stepped out to buy ice cream. I realised that it was the first time I was crossing a road on foot in Gurgaon. I also realised why. The traffic is incessant and there are no pedestrian friendly features. So, we have city which has a zillion plots worth about a million times more... did we forget that people will live in it? Some, at least. It is a city meant for the double-income-no-kids, I-spend-half-my-time-in-the-US IT/ITES family who have one car per person and are supported by an army of servants.
But surely not every one can own a car... how will they manage?
Is that even a question we need to ask? Is that a question any one asked? If you travel across Gurgaon at rush hour, you wont be blamed for thinking that no one did remotely think of asking this question. Large parts of Gurgaon were developed not by the perennially blundering government agencies - HUDA divided the land into sectors, but the sectors were developed by dynamic companies like DLF (remember the largest IPO ever in 2007! now trading at a 30% discount to the issue price) and Unitech. There are no provisions for buses or taxis inside the colonies. No body really misses these provisions, because there are no buses.
Why does any of this happen? Why does not any one seem to care?
The rich get richer and do not really care about anything. Every couple of days, they complain about the country going to the dogs while staring into their single malt. The educated middle classes are breathlessly emulating the rich. They spend more and save less. And since there are about 200 million of us, the average Indian family looks quite bling and sits happily every time there is a power cut or a traffic jam.
What happens to the not-so-rich?Caste and religion decide that there is someone who will stand up for you, so what if the issues are economic or welfare oriented in nature. No wonder the parliament touches new lows only now.
Democracy ... of the people, for the people and by the people.
We can only get what we can come up with! Someone should have thought about this earlier!

Have a look at the below - Omar Abdullah (from the NC) making the Left (who is now in bed with the Right) squirm!