How the Hell Do I Feel

The Kite Runner, the Confessions of an Advertising Man, the Godfather.

Of reading:

I got into the habit of reading pretty late in my life – second year of my college. Thanks to one lecturer, who, in a moment of frustration said, “Read anything. Guys, let me tell you something. Reading can take you to another world! You will not believe it when I say but, porn is much better when you read it than when you see it.”

I don’t know if that statement offended you. But honestly, this was when I realized that reading could actually be great. I had fallen for the words of a sincere marketer. Unlike the advertisements of modern days, when sex is used to sell products not worth it, my lecturer had used it to perhaps sell the most important thing to his students – Reading. All my success and knowledge, I owe to him.

About the books:

Don’t worry; I’m not going to write reviews for these books. But there is one quote from each book that sticks to my mind along with the concept of the book.

The Kite Runner – A book every person in this world should read. All about friends and how far one should go to make up for a mistake and come out of the guilt. “For you, a thousand times over. I heard my self say. Then I turned and ran.”

The Confessions of an Advertising Man – A book anyone who is distinctly related to advertising must read. Everything you need to know about advertising is in there. “Once a salesman. Always a salesman.”

The Godfather – A book everyone who is power-driven should read. Power is not got by authority but by friendship. “I’m going to make an offer he cannot refuse.”

None of these quotes will make sense unless you’ve read the books. But, if you have, they are the best you can ever get…

These three books have definitely made me a better person. Go ahead and judge me by these books I’ve read!

I’ve been traveling to my office in the same road for almost a year and a half now. I always keep looking up at the king-size hoardings and day after day, my fascination for them has only increased.

Now to the Incident:

One fine morning, I’m on the way to office. I look up from my cab to take a glance at the hoardings, as religiously as I do everyday. In the last couple of weeks, there had been a couple of movie ads that had managed to capture all my attention. Don’t ask me why!

I was in for a shock that day though! Both the movie advertisements were missing. But, instead stood two other ads for products I was never going to forget since that day. This is what I call the ‘After-An-Ad-Effect.’

The wonderful movie ads were replaced by lame ads of Moto Yuva and this TexCity Real Estate. I’m still wondering why I remember these two ads so well. Damn, it just goes to show how much I liked the previous ones!

The explanation:

A lot of us keep traveling on the same roads, for many days/months. It goes without saying that we can’t avoid looking at those huge hoardings on the road side, perhaps for the lack of better things to do, especially at traffic signals or during traffic jams. Of course, I’m assuming that you don’t have good looking/entertaining person traveling with you or in the vehicle standing next to you.

There is this wonderful ad! You like it and you only get to see it once a day and just for a few seconds. It sticks to your mind. You see it the next day and the following day as well… You either get used to it or start liking it. Much worse, sometimes look forward to seeing it the next time. And then, without notice it gets replaced by some other ad.

What Happens Then:

We get so accustomed to look up to see that ad, that we keep doing it at least for the next few days, until we slowly forget it. The human mind takes as much time to forget something, as it took to like it. What happens during this time is the ‘After-An-Ad-Effect.’

If I ever get into research, this would be one of my prime area of focus… Better still, if I get to market a product, I’d take a look at the demography, the kind of ads that have managed to fascinate them, and replace those hoardings with my ads. So much for the lack of creativity!

Incident:

I am on a call and all of a sudden my heart starts to beat fast… My head starts spinning… This is the last thing on the earth I want to hear… “No God! Let this not be true,” I pray silently as I listen.

And Then:

What will happen to me? Why is this happening to me? How will I be happy anymore? A few minutes later, I was not even listening to the conversation. My mind was elsewhere…

I’m at School: I am playing cricket. We need to win this match. It was my first game as a captain. I had to score runs; we had a huge target to chase. I remember my heart beating fast. I prayed to God, “I’ll be the happiest person in this world if we win this match. Please help my team win.” We went on to win the game and I was a happy person…

I’m at College: It is late night and raining heavily. My bike is refusing to start and my head is spinning. I try again and again but the bike just doesn’t start. I have to drop her home safely. I close my eyes and pray, “God, let me drop her home safely and I’ll be the happiest person on earth.” I went back to my room with a smile. I sure was happy…

I’m at Work: I have had a crazy day at work. Somewhere in between, I remember that there is person waiting for my call. I smile. There is something very special when you realize that there is someone just for you in this world. A kind of happiness that’s too hard to express. “God, I want this forever. Don’t take it away at any cost.”

Then, I realize I have some more work. Oh! That last week’s assignment. That presentation has to be created. What was the deadline for my next project? Dad’s health insurance copy has to be sent. I give a deep sigh and jump into it, one at a time.

Oh! The Phone Conversation: I had lost track of what was being said on the phone. I knew I had done this on purpose. I put the phone down half way down the conversation. My worst fear had become a reality and I was not even prepared for it.

I told my self it was a lie. I convinced myself that it was a prank. I just didn’t want to believe it. But, somehow it managed to seep into my heart. Slowly but steadily it started making all the cardio-vascular changes that I hated so much. “God! I can bear with anything, but not this one. I can’t take my head spinning or feeling the heartbeat everywhere in my body. I won’t be happy after this”

A couple of days later: It didn’t strike me then, that for the first time in my life I’ll be praying for someone else’s happiness. That’s when I realized what I had learnt in love. It’s not just about my happiness anymore…

I was seven when I lost my favorite toy. I didn’t have the courage to go and tell it to my dad. Instead, I acted like it was somewhere in my room and I didn’t like playing with it anymore.

I was eleven when I couldn’t find my pencil. I took my sister’s and encrypted my name on it. She got into trouble and had to face all the music at home. I didn’t feel guilty then, but relieved that I had managed to escape.

I was fifteen when I broke my friend’s cricket bat. I couldn’t look at my friends face for I knew that he’d spent months to get permission from his parents to buy the bat. I acted like I had not seen it for a long time and purposely strained my leg during the warm-up session so that I could missed the next few matches.

I was nineteen when I met with my first accident. I blamed it on the other person who was riding with me. I was too ashamed to accept the fact that I had made a mistake and worried if it would hurt others confidence on my riding skills. I told my friends that it was not me who met with the accident but a relative of mine.

Love happened! And I started to change…

I gathered courage that I had thought didn’t even exist in me. Slowly, I learnt to accept the truth and didn’t mind embarrassment.

The next time I lost money, I accepted it in front of everyone in my family. The next time I met with an accident, I called my dad and told him that it was completely my fault. The next time I broke a bat, I walked up to the coach and owned up for it.

When I lost my love; when I couldn’t find her anymore; when she broke my heart; I didn’t know what to do or what to say. All I knew was that it hurt! 

I didn’t know whether to hide it from everyone, replace it with something else, blame it on her, or hurt myself and shy away from life…

But, if I had done all this, it would mean that love never happened in my life, right?

Love had happened and I had changed. I tried hard but couldn’t hide the tears from my eyes. I tried harder, but couldn’t think of anyone else in her place.  I tried even harder, but just couldn’t blame it on her, coz I still loved her.

 I didn’t want to hurt myself again, for I was already hurt! Love will never happen again… But what will happen to my courage? 

Incident: She called me, my childhood sweetheart! It was my birthday and what could be more exciting than listening to the voice of the person who was the first to make my heart beat a little faster than it should! As I listened to her talk, I felt a little nostalgic but I knew it was not the same anymore. Some things in life are never meant to be…

Feeling: Elated! I couldn’t believe that I was actually on this call. She wished me. We spoke for sometime about how things have been in the last few years. It was wonderful listening to her talk. Her smile was beautiful as ever. I remember how I used to associate this smile to an RJ through my school and college days. 

Things had changed. We were mature enough to understand that this was a call of mere respect we had for each other. I’m guessing that this call was more out of courtesy of having known each other and perhaps wanting to finish things of on a nice note.

I knew she was feeling a little awkward. I told about a few incidents in my life to assure her that things had changed and I had moved on. But, deep from within, I really wanted to know if she’d ever liked me. I was gathering courage to put this question across; when she said abruptly that she was getting engaged.

I didn’t ask the question. I didn’t want to.  It wouldn’t make sense anymore. Not that it would have made a big difference if I had got the answer. There are a lot of unanswered questions in life and this will remain one of them…

It had to come down to this one day. I had always known this. But, she’d handled it all so gracefully. She knew that I had liked her during her school days. I never got to know whether she liked me. All she wanted to do with this call is to put a nice end to this first crush I had. To let me know that she’ll be happily settled elsewhere and that I should do the same.

With age comes so much understanding about life. We get to know that we like a lot of things but not everything that we wish comes true. No matter how hard we try, there are certain things that never fall into place. This is exactly one of them. Some things are never meant to be…

So here’s wishing her good luck for a happy future…

Incident

“I was going to call you in a few minutes,” said my cousin. “I am so proud of you. I’ll call you in a while,” I heard myself say as I cut the call. I closed my eyes and smiled. I’d been waiting for this day for a long time.

Feeling

Success! A success of some sorts… My cousin is two years younger than me and one of those genuine people you rarely get to meet these days. We did our graduation in the same college and we were roommates for a year. A lot of people didn’t want it to be that way.  

But life is all about proving people wrong. It’s wonderful if you are the underdog and then you manage to come out in flying colors.

Three years ago, I heard one of my relative say that if my cousin spent a lot of time with me he’d never be as good as he was.  I heard another say that I would spoil him and it was advisable not to let us be roommates. The best of them all was when my mom asked me to find him a better place to stay than the place I was staying. Point being that he was too innocent and I was too spoilt! Ridiculous! This was just unbelievable. In this world, you are nothing until you succeed.

But things change don’t they? 

He had just got into a college for his management studies. He had a lot of points to prove, just as I did, and he did it in great style! This was definitely bound to happen but we had to hold on. We had withstood each and every comment against us and made it big! This is definitely my cousin’s success, but I will dwell in it too.

I remember those days when we had dinner together in the dimly-lit mess. The occasional advises and discussions. I take pride in being the person who encouraged him to bunk his classes and watch the premier shows of a lot of new releases. The everyday walk to the bakery… The tea and bun-butter… The countless magazines we bought in our pursuit of learning English… The days we spent with no money in hand… And yes, the bike ride up to Ooty every alternate weekend.

I guess we shared a lot and deserve to share this as well. A success of some sorts… Yes! I know what I’ll do next. Look at all of them in their faces and say, “there you go, I have proved you all wrong yet again in my life.”

I wonder how much longer we’ll have to keep proving people wrong. Would we ever have anything else to do in our life? 

This morning, a friend asked me why I was so happy. I smiled and said that I didn’t have an answer.  Then I started to wonder why I seemed so happy and why I couldn’t stop smiling?

A couple of weeks back my worst nightmares came true. Or, I thought so. At that moment, I thought I was going through the worst phase of my life…  I took the beating with a huge heart. It was painful and I convinced myself telling that it just can’t get any worse and this will be the last of any such suffering. Actually, I believed it!

Well, I was in for a bigger surprise the following week. Even as I was trying to overcome this incident, another nightmare comes true. Wow! This time I just didn’t know how to react. This was overwhelming and beyond the scope of my mind. What the hell? Two big blows back to back and all this just when I thought everything was going fine.

I smiled. When you meet with an accident the first time, you are in a position to feel the pain. But when you meet with another accident even before you have recovered from the previous one, then you just don’t know where or what the pain is.

I remember reading somewhere that when pain in the body goes beyond a certain threshold, we become unconscious. One of those many beautiful defense mechanisms the body has. I’m guessing it’s the same with the mind. When the pain goes beyond a threshold, we become unconscious to it, for a lot of good reasons.

 I smiled again. All I know is that smile can either be a voluntary expression of happiness or an involuntary expression of anxiety!

I still didn’t have an answer to my smile…

Incident: Five years ago! Don’t know what time of the day. All that I can remember is that one moment (perhaps that moment of realization that I’ve been repenting for since then).  Life has never been the same since then.  
 
“There were lots of people around.  Some of them were crying and others were discussing how good a person my uncle was, when he was alive. I was desperately trying not to let those tears roll out of my eyes. ‘I had to be a man,’ I said to myself, ‘I’m a grown up now and have faced these kind of situations earlier as well.’ I held on.  As sensitive as this may be, this was the first time that I looked into reality in its face. ”
 
Feeling: The fear! It was a strange fear. Something I had never felt before. A sense of helplessness and the feeling that life is perishable, and that’s all there is to it. I should say this: if there is one man whom I’ve admired throughout my life, it’s my dad. My eyes fell on him. I couldn’t help but admire him again.  There he was, strong as he always is, getting the last minute hassles sorted out. 
 
This was the last time he would see his brother. My dad is the youngest in his family and this was the last of siblings he had. I was wondering how he was able to bear through all this. Perhaps, he had no option but then… 
 
‘I’d be like him one day,’ I said to myself. I had always wished to be like him. His energy, vision, lifestyle, maturity, and best of them all, his patience. I smiled in realization that I’ll get nowhere close to what he’s done in his life. ‘What a role model to have.’  I though and continued to admire him. All those days flashed before my eyes… how he would wake me up everyday, how he’d scold me when he found me sleeping instead of studying. Sometimes, I wonder how he trusted me so much. I kept doing things I was never meant to do. 
 
I observed him more closely. I noticed he’d changed a bit. Graying and receding hairline and the broad shoulders drooping just a bit.  The eyes showed a slight submission. Perhaps, he too was trying to keep the tears to himself.  Perhaps, he was not the same anymore and age had caught up with him. The fear set in! 
 
He’s my hero, just like any other super-hero I’d seen on TV as a kid. If they remained the same even today, why did my dad have to go through all this? No God! I didn’t want to see this. I closed my eyes. I could not accept the fact that my father was growing old. I just couldn’t. But this is reality right? We all grow old one day…  We all perish… The truth settled in, but not the fear.  
 
Five years since that day had passed.  I understand the world better and accept the realities. But I’ve never been able to overcome this one.  Somehow, I believe that this was the moment I understood how delicate life was and how important it was to love and care.  What kind of a love is this? A love instilled by understanding the reality or a love just for the fear of the harsh realities of life?

The fear stays… 

Incident:

My friend wants to buy a new mobile. He has a few models in his mind. ‘Not a Sony Ericsson,’ he says, ’and avoid a few models in Nokia as well. My range is 7k-10k.’ This was not the first time I heard him say the sentence. We had already walked in and out of 4 showrooms.  The Hyderabad summer and dust had already taken my agitation level to a new high. So, what next?

Feeling:

Wow! I didn’t know that I was in store, literally, for the best salesman ship ever. ‘Sir,’ replies the salesman, ‘we have some very good models for you. Would you prefer an LG or Samsung Brand?’

Alas! I think I’ve landed in the right shop. In the shops before, in spite of the same sentence been quoted, they showed us Sony and Nokia phones. My hopes go high!

He was not one of the best sales people but he did have some skills to make us patiently sit through all the models that he spoke to us about. And then, the killer move… Boy, I fell for him. If I were to purchase a mobile, I would have paid him then and there. Unfortunately, it was not me who had the decision making power.

‘Samsung E880 is the best model sir,’ he said in a raised voice, ‘and it suits your budget and demands. I think you should buy this mobile.’ He went on to explain why. The mobile looked impressive even though we were just looking at the brochure. Customer convinced!

Last stage in the buying cycle… ‘What’s the best price?’ asks my friend. He gave some random figure. We walked out of the showroom and in to the one nearby to check if he had the same mobile. Pure consumer selfishness! No luck.

So, we make up our mind and walk back in to the showroom. The same salesman walks up to us and smiles. He knows he’s won. ‘We’ll buy it!’ says my friend and I rejoice. My two hours toil will come to and end. I smile back at the salesman.

He walks back into the counter. His smile transforms in to an uneasy look. What’s wrong I start to wonder? Has he given the wrong price quote? Did he forget to mention some important product spec? Was there an inherent fault with the model? Oh! He needn’t worry, I thought. We are beyond all that. All we want to do is buy the mobile and get back home.

That’s when he took us both off-guard and said, ‘Sir, we don’t have that model.” God! Can someone tell me why someone will spend an hour selling a product that is not in inventory? To hell with all the sales theories…

Thinking: I’ve always despised the way a normal blogger is. I don’t want to write book, movie review. It’s just to put all my thoughts and feeling in words. Express what needs to be and share the remarkable events.

Feeling: Gallantry! This is the most remarkable piece of advice I’ve come across in my life. I’m no Rocky or Stallone fan, but it’s he who has taught me what it takes to be successful in my life. Or may be, just reinforced that I’m on the right path… I’ve been taking a lot of hits of late (strictly moral) but now I’m ready to take more and move on in my life coz that’s how wining is done.

Says Rocky Balboa to his son:

“I’d hold you up in my hands and say ‘This kid’s going to be the best kid in this world. This kid’s going to be somebody better than anybody I’d ever know.’ And you grew up good and wonderful. It was great just watching you. Every day was a privilege.”

“Then the time came for you to be your own man and take on the world, you did. But, somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you that you are no good. And, when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow.”

“Let me tell you something you already know, ‘The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tuff you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently, if you let it.”

“You, me, or nobody, will hit as hard as life. It ain’t about how hard you hit, but it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.”

“Now, if you know what you are worth, go out and get what you are worth, but you got to be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying ‘You ain’t what you want to be because of him or her or anybody.’ Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You are better than that.”

Close your eyes and let this truth sink in…