The omnipresent "shaadi" message is almost a torture - people need to be more mature

It had been less than a week since I returned home after completing MBA. My bags were still unpacked. I could still feel and smell the fragrance of Singapore, and I was missing my days at NUS a lot [I still do], when I was popped the shaadi question by my parents that December morning.

Wow, I thought, it's been less than a week and my mother seems all too eager to get me married. Anyway, I told my mother that day that I am not yet mentally prepared/ready for shaadi, and that I will myself tell her - in a couple of months - when I am ready.

It has been a couple of months since then, most likely exactly 11 months, and during these months the samaaj has been literally torturing me with the shaadi proposal. Relatives, distant relatives, neighbors, friends, nephews, nieces, cousins, bhabhis, uncles, aunties, business associates, pandits, matchmakers, and so many others have unstoppably been contacting us with proposals, coercing, and questioning. Wow, why can't they just understand - when they've been told already - that I will say yes when my mind and my heart says yes? Why can't they stop gossiping about my impending wedding at every family gathering? Why can't they just stop asking me the same question - when are you getting married?

People really need to respect others' views. I will of course get married, but when my mind tells me that I am ready. I am in no hurry to catch any train, and no flight will be missed if I wait for several months more.

Even Google, Yahoo, etc., have started showing me endless ads of matrimony websites!

Update [May'15]: The image below, created in PowerPoint, is related to a comment on this post.

At the last stages of his life... (hopefully not)

The Emergency room is dark and silent. It's a little cold these days in Ludhiana, and the temperature inside the Emergency room is cool. Faint sound of a few cars passing on the outside road can be heard every few minutes. It's 1:25 AM and it's the festival of Diwali today, the biggest festival in my country. A few firecrackers burst outside every few minutes.

In front of me on the hospital bed is an old man, at the last stages of his life (hopefully not). His name is Sh. Sita Ram, and he is my dear grandfather. The L&T Medical pulse oximeter beeps faster than the clock ticks. His pulse fluctuates between 85 and 90, and the blood oxygen level fluctuates between 96-97%.

He was unconscious in his bed today morning, and that's when we realized that something is really wrong. When I looked at his unconscious face today morning, a strange sense of philosophical and spiritual sadness dawned upon me. The sadness grew when my uncle told that Sh. Sita Ram, his father, during his youth, used to dive into the river Ganga on one bank and used to swim to the other bank.

I looked at this 90 year old man's still face, covered with white stubble, and the thought that this man used to rage and rumble half a century back gave me an eerie uneasiness. The world was so different back then. My country India was so different. I wasn't even born. It was his time, his era back then, just like today it's my time and my era.

Time is an unstoppable force. An agent of change. A cleansing agent that weeds out the old and brings in fresh life. It's an agent that no human has ever been able to avoid, from Alexander to Hitler.

For a moment, I will make a tiny wish that the feeble old man, my dear grandfather, regain his consciousness. That he look at me again and recognize me as Rishabh, as he always had. But I don't know. I can wish though. Deep inside I know that the hope is little.

I started writing this page on my phone inside the quiet Emergency room and completed it on my computer.

Sinusoidal Mood

A short poem I wrote...

Background photo credit: "I Saw the Sine"
http://powerofpi.deviantart.com/art/I-Saw-the-Sine-184973491

The bed that is now empty

My grandmother's bed is now empty. Today papa visited Dhuri to meet my grandfather, who is now in Dhuri. It's the first time that he has visited Dhuri after my grandmother's death. It pains me to imagine the sadness that he would've felt upon climbing the stairs and turning left to see my grandmother's bed empty. She isn't here. She's nowhere. She has left this world. I remember her smile and her happiness whenever she would see me. I miss her. I'll miss seeing her on her bed. I can't accept that bed without her. It's hard to believe that she's no more. Heart still feels like when I'll go to Dhuri, and I'll climb the stairs, and I'll turn left, I'll see her and my grandfather both sitting there.

Criticizing collectivism, and then preaching it!

In some of my case studies [American] as well as course material [German], the management culture in some of the countries in East Asia [particularly Japan] has been described as collectivism. The undertone has been negative, in that collectivism isn't such a good thing, since it impedes quick decision-making, and so on. The culture of individualism in the West, in contrast, is supposed to be a better culture - even the media frequently praises the West's individualism.

In stark contrast, in business schools, we're actually taught to shed individualism, and to put on a coat of collectivism [yes!]. We're taught things like "team-based projects", "constructive criticism", "group decision-making", "incorporate team members' suggestions", "take inputs from everyone", and so on. What is all of this? It's nothing but a disguised form of collectivism.

To make long things short, there's some conflict visible in what media and business schools preach, and in what they hail as good. Keeping your own decision above that of your team's is one of the manifestations of individualism. Western-style MBA courses teach you to not do this. Yet, they call Japanese management style backward.

Plenty of Indian food at Singapore - peaceful days!

Finally, I sit in the classroom with a stomach filled with Indian food. In China and Korea, I would frequently attend classes without having food [no time to cook], and many times my first meal of the day would be at 3 or 4 PM. I now realize how good it feels to study with a full stomach. You're not restless. You are at peace. You are calm. You can focus on the lecture. It's a positive change that I'm liking.

FT.com is going to be my primary source of news for the next few months (courtesy NUS)

Received an email from NUS today that all NUS students have complimentary access to the Premium subscription of FT.com. This is a wonderful news, since I'm a prolific reader of news and I now have access to one of the highest-quality news websites in the world. So for the next few months, instead of hunting for high-quality news using Google News, I'm going to try to consume news only through FT.com. I'm sure I'll enjoy it [except, of course, that FT's stance on political issues related to Iran, Libya, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, etc., is going to be as corrupt as that of any other Western nation].

For more balanced/diverse/unbiased reporting on international affairs, I'll continue to read a mix of RT, RIA Novosti, Xinhua, etc.

One year since my selection in S3 Asia MBA

On 23-May-2011, I was at factory, and around 3 PM [IST], I synchronized my emails on my iPod touch. On one of my email accounts, the top email was from NUS and the subject line started with Congratulations. With a fast heartbeat, I quickly opened it, and was delighted to read that I had been admitted to the S3 Asia MBA program. I can clearly recollect how happy I had felt back then, how I joyfully told my parents and my brother about my selection, how I was surprised at my selection because I had applied at the last hour on the last day of the last deadline, and so on.

Back then I did not know what lay ahead, how I would feel studying at great business schools in Shanghai, Seoul and Singapore - it was happiness about something good coming up ahead.

Without a comb for over 4 months :)

When I think about it now, it's like a wow!. From the morning of 26th August 2011, when I departed for Shanghai from Delhi, to the night of 4th January 2012, when I arrived at Delhi from Singapore, I didn't comb my hair even once :). Actually I forgot to pack a comb in my baggage, and so I just didn't buy one in China :)

Seems like a record :)

List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites I've seen

I strongly support the concept of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I believe that if one visits a place (a city or a country), and that place happens to have one or more World Heritage Sites, one must utilize the opportunity to experience them. In this list, I'm trying to list all the World Heritage Sites that I've ever visited. For the Sites in India, year is not mentioned as in many cases I don't remember the first time I visited a particular Site, and I've probably visited some of these more than once. Of course, it's also possible that I might have visited a few other Sites too but I don't remember them.

Also, this list should include any of the various Wonders of the World that I've visited.

1. Agra Fort [India; year unknown]
2. Qutb Minar and its Monuments, Delhi [India; year unknown]
3. Red Fort Complex [India; year unknown]
4. Taj Mahal [India; year unknown]
5. Fossil Hominid Sites of Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai, and Environs [South Africa; 2009]
6. Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur [Egypt; 2009]
7. uKhahlamba / Drakensberg Park [South Africa; 2010]
8. Cape Floral Region Protected Areas [South Africa; 2010]
9. Mount Huangshan [China; 2011]
10. West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou [China; 2011]
11. Classical Gardens of Suzhou [China; 2011]
12. Imperial Palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing and Shenyang [China; 2012]
13. The Great Wall [China; 2012]
14. Seokguram Grotto and Bulguksa Temple [South Korea; 2012]
15. Changdeokgung Palace Complex [South Korea; 2012]
16. Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes [South Korea; 2012]
17. Mountain Railways of India [India; Feb'20].
1. Specifically, only the "Kalka Shimla Railway".
18. Coming soon...