Kedar says..

Let me start by telling you a story that happened a few years ago.. one day, we were all watching TV in our living room with a few family friends. A 2.5 yr old boy was playing on the side. We were watching a Bollywood movie song which was filmed on a beach. There were a few girls in that song, playing beach volleyball in their bikinis.. Suddenly this boy shouts, “Daddyyy!! Why are they wearing diapers?!”…

That, is my son! The subject of my speech today..

I started my life as a worry-free human being.. without a care in the world and without having to care for anyone in the world. And then, it turned upside down! The warning signs were there, it’s just that I happily ignored them! I went from being a free man, to one behind bars, and then to one who is behind bars and chained  - or, in other words, from being a bachelor to a married man to a married man with kids!

None of the incidents or jokes here are third party, because the product in question was made in-house!  A recent Fortune article talks about how the cost of modern children is higher than their returns.. I, sorta agree!! I get annoyed when I think of the number of Thomas Train engines, Monster trucks, Hot Wheel Cards, and Lego Ninjagos

Let me first start by reading a disclaimer about this speech – “All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, (including me – which would be in the living category), is purely coincidental”..!!

Now that this important ritual is over, let me start.. Recently I went to a seminar and that inspired me to use some slides in my speech.. So here is my deck, with just, one slide! It is not blank btw, this is just a usual procedure where a speaker intentionally does not show you the whole slide at once, so that the audience pays attention to him! I thought about this whole seminar activity and came up with a set of reasons as to why people go to seminars.. that’s what I have on this slide here… The point is, I went to a seminar, a 4 day seminar, in Vegas, Caesars Palace, stayed at Venetian, 11th floor, room number 1107, 250 sq feet.. <Pausing.. THINKING..>

I don’t quite remember which seminar it was.. no really, I couldn’t even remember which one it was after I came back! I trust you won’t feel the urge to take my manager into confidence about this confession though! I think, being a member of this club for 1.5 years, I am entitled to at least this much confidentiality within this group! I still don’t remember which seminar it was..

But you know, there are all kinds of seminars these days. I once saw a seminar on Sanitation Engineering. I mean Sanitation Engineering? That branch of Engineering intrigues me immensely! Which college student suddenly starts thinking in his bathroom one day and says this, has to be improved, and becomes a Sanitation Engineer to improve the situation?! So a seminar on that.. wonder how one proudly announces that he is going for such a seminar?!

Anyways, my seminar was some seminar on Software Dev - in Caesar’s Palace, Vegas.. That gave it a, totally different perspective.  Honestly speaking, the location itself was enough to convince me that it was a very good seminar to attend! I mean, if it is in Virginia/Maryland, it normally wouldn’t rank that high in its technical content anyway!  Luckily for me, it was approved and I was on my way to Vegas. I was not just another gambler going to Vegas, I was there, for a technical seminar on Computer Software Development. That sounds quite important, which takes us to the first reason I have up on this slide ..

• To feel and make others feel that you are important. There is a certain aura or attitude oozing out of people who go to seminars – they feel important! You feel as if you are going there to make a business deal, such as buying one hundred dreamliners!
• The next reason I found was to “Network” – which in simple English means meeting people. Of course, you get to hang out with some nice ladies on those booths, who are eager to explain the products to people who are at the most only interested in picking up the free goodies kept on the table.. more about that later though. Networking also involves attending the happy hours.. yes, I am always fascinated by the name given to this event.. So this is the hour when everyone finally gets to be happy! Here people talk about their jobs, their passion, their opinions about a technology.. Now Opinions in my opinion (!), are just byproducts of your biases. But it is interesting to see how passionate people get, when discussing their opinions.
• Another reason that I have been told, is to make use of some of the department budget for training which otherwise would have gone to waste. I like this budget which needs to be spent rather than saved and wasted!
• People go to conferences to collect goodies, freebies.. pens, pads, keychains, USB hubs, stuffed bunnies, little nothings that you can give to your kids when you return. The joy of collecting your 343 thousandth pen! I am always impressed by the number of ways people try to make themselves interested in order to get some goodies from the booths. They listen to presentations, attend demos, ask meaningless questions, leave business cards.. and.. finally, ask if they can grab that pen..!
• Conference is a good excuse to get away from the family and have some time of your own! No more dropping kids to school, Taekwondo practice, soccer practice, piano lessons, doing grocery, or standing outside trial rooms waiting for your wife…
• It is also a great way to explore new places.. without the overhead of spending your own money!
• There are some who go there to present and proudly wear that “Presenter” tag on them throughout the conference! They are the celebs who everyone wants to flock around and have a word with! There is a certain satisfaction in going all the way up to the stage and “discuss” your “concerns” with the presenter, when one hundred other like-minded people are waiting to do the same! Throughout that presentation, you are trying to think of a killer question that can get you at least half an hour of discussion time with the speaker, with 10 other people, trying hard to smile and wait for you to finish!
• Finally, there are those, poor amateurish souls, who go there, thinking, that they will learn something new.. The less said about them, the better! Learn..?

Because, conferences are for important people, or for those who can fake it!

When I came back from my conference, I was put in a difficult position.. People asked me if I talked to James Gosling, Rod Johnson and such, and what opinions they had about this issue or that. Now don’t underestimate me.. I am a seasoned conference attendee.. I started talking about the companies that had booths, because that’s where I was most of the times collecting freebies and “networking” ! I think I managed to impress everyone with that.. because in spite of the rule to not be allowed to go to a conference for two years in succession, I am still on the list this year…..!!

You must be thinking why I am wearing a jacket here in this sweltering summer! I will tell you why, but before that, let me give you some background..

I was never a stage person.  Every time I tried that in School or College, the results were disastrous. I have sung on stage, spoken a few words, received prizes, given a brief thank you speech.. but all that, quite reluctantly. If I had my way, I would have loved to receive my awards in a jungle, or sing a song in my bathroom and transmit it to the world – err, I mean just the audio of it

I used to fantasize being a smarty pants on stage, cracking jokes, talking, connecting with people.. But I never tried to bring that fantasy into reality. Because one step on the stage would bring the cruel reality crashing down upon me! I would go weak in my knees, I would start sweating when everyone else was shivering with cold, and my heartbeats would match those of a Hummingbird!

Over time, I figured out that the only way I could get my fear of public speaking out of me, was by being funny.. I started specializing in humor.. which means I have special demands from my audience.. I expect them to laugh at whatever I say! Or else, I suddenly change my speaking genre to Anger! Now being funny, is a serious business! Shivering and comedy don’t go hand in hand.. and these meeting rooms get really cold after some time.. That’s where the jacket comes in.

And that brings us to the first point here on the slide – and it is to “know your speech requirements. Know the environment, the temperature, the humidity, pollen count, Carbon Monoxide levels.. well, maybe not that.. but you get the point!

One really needs to find his/her own style of public speaking. Once you find it, nothing can stop you.. except this clock of course!”

I remember my first day here.. I was sitting harmlessly in my chair listening to people talk – just like I have done it for years in various places! My minimal expectation from life at that point, was that nobody would find me attractive enough to drag me in front of everyone to speak! But they did! I smiled my way to the podium, but honestly, smile, just happens to be my birth defect.. somehow I just can’t get rid of it from my face! So that wasn’t my confidence, it was rather a nervous smile that I carried from my chair all the way to the podium. I said something that had a tinge of humor.. so people laughed, and I conveniently assumed that they did not laugh at me, but at what I had said.. <pause>

“When you are nervous, use the emotion that you are most comfortable with.“<pause>

Then there was the Ice breaker speech. I had heard some ice breakers before, where they talked about who they were, what they had accomplished and such. And here I was, totally exposing myself by talking about how I had failed at all the things that could have made me famous! But surprisingly, I think I struck some chord there with the audience that day, and they seemed to like the speech.

That’s how I learned my next lesson – to “to be what you are, rather than pretending to be what you are not”

The speeches kept going, and over time, I realized that there was more to this than meets the eye. I realized that “when it comes to public speaking or any public performance, keeping your stomach in the right state is very important“! You need to make sure you are not going on empty stomach, otherwise, your growling stomach will be more audible than you are! At the same time, you should not overstuff yourself either. Or else you will have to burp your way through your speech – which won’t be very pleasant!

My next lesson was – “know thy enemies“.. I fought a lot of speeches like mini-battles and just like in a battle, you have enemies too! Enemies, such as Memorizing the speech, body language, voice,  tone, expressions, having a good eye contact.. Do you feel uncomfortable looking directly at your audience? I did… Every time I looked at someone for more than 2 seconds, my eyes would want to go for a walk! One needs to recognize these enemies and work on them. Besides these technicalities, I have 2 main enemies in Toastmasters.. That clock and the ooh-aah-umm counter! But whenever I see people like Sameer, Rebecca, and others speaking without offending these enemies… <pause>.. I get even more MAD at them! – <pause>.. By “them”, I mean my enemies.. not Sameer or Rebecca!

There are many such things.. I just disclosed some of my trade secrets.. The most important of all is the fact that one needs to understand that a Speech is a DIALOG that you are trying to establish with your audience. If it is not so, it will be met with a lot of yawns!

People ask me what has Toastmasters done for me.. well, I know I am still not the kind of speaker I would want to be. But I have learned to break my silence here. I have rediscovered myself in the process and realized, that I too, have a voice..

[Walk towards the podium with the phone in my hand]
[Bump into something, continue on][just shake hands without paying attention]
[Surprised] Oh, I am sorry..

This, is where the humanity has come! It’s as if, it has become too difficult to make the people smart, so we just decided to make their gadgets smarter and leave them in the hands of dumb people like me and make them look smart in the process!!

But really, just look at us.. while walking, eating, sitting, standing, .. on roads, parks, offices, cars.. each one of us, staring down into these Smart Phones! When we look back on history, I am sure we will call this the ‘Zombie Smartphone Generation’. This is where the “Skynet” takes over by the way – if you know what I mean.

Wives, kids, families.. yes, they are just peripherals now. Really, these phones are coming where no spouse has ever gone before! Bathrooms for one..? As if it’s not enough that we are carrying them in our pockets all the time, eying them over and over and listening to them, talking to them all the time.. They have become our real companions! You know what I think? Pretty soon, if these phones get really smart, they will demand an equal status as your spouse! You know how you fill out those forms where you have to write the name of your spouse? You will have to write the name of your phone here too!!

But here is what I like about phones.. we talk to them, yell at them, throw them in frustration, drop them down or even replace them with a younger model.. but they never answer back!….[pause]…. Ever tried all of this with your wife, and lived to share the experience?!

The smartphone revolution really changed our world. We have more than just a phone to play with now. You have your Youtube in there, the SMS, the News, Stock prices, Photos, Web, Netflix.. not to mention Email..the wallpaper has your family pictures. So you are looking at all this while sitting at the dining table, and your wife is disturbing you with her recipe, your kid is asking you some math problem, the dinner is not letting you type.. Quite unfortunate that the family hasn’t embraced your smart companion yet.

One of the things that amazes me about phones in general, is Texting.. it’s a tiny world out there.. you are trying real hard to punch in one key at a time on that little keyboard.. and then you are correcting the auto-completes and wrong keypresses [act it out]… whatever it is, you don’t stop texting. Texting while eating, texting while in a meeting, while in bed, in the bathroom [act as if you are sitting on the commode!!]… [pause].. or while you are driving.. [act].. that’s illegal now though..

So now the poor cop has to not only see if you are speeding, wearing a belt, or have strapped in your kids or not, but also has to look in the car while you are driving and make sure you don’t have a phone in your hand that’s getting its keys punched in by you!!!

.. Ever had to face angry texting?? So your wife is in a meeting and you just told her you forgot to get what she had told you to get from the mall.. and you get that “What” followed by 5 question marks!! And then a lonnnng texting pause.. Doesn’t that kill you already? I mean how do you fight when you are texting?.. these modern smartphones don’t even have physical keys anymore that you can bang on in anger!

Maybe like Facebook, they should have an Angry button that shakes the other phone violently! I think they need to get to that level of sophistication and smartness!

Well I know some of you are already looking at your phones to see if my time is up.. But this is not the end.. I am going to conclude with another speech on this soon.. Remember, I am not talking about some dumb human being here.. this is Smartphones we are talking about!!

I remember it was a dark chilly evening.. I was lying there under the stars.. a mental struggle still brewing… but I was helpless.. An ambulance siren sounded in the distance and grew louder as it approached.. Within minutes I was being whisked away on a stretcher and the next moment, I was reading the names of hospital wards as I was being carried inside. Finally we stopped in front of a large door.. Through my lifeless eyes, I read the sign there.. it said – “Facebook Addicts”! And then, I was pushed inside, in that darkness… and that’s where my flashback started…

Three years ago, my colleagues introduced me to Facebook.. I had started Twittering just a few months before that.. but this was new. For some time, I stayed away but as it outgrew Twitter, I started frequenting it more.. and that’s where my story starts..

I am sure most of you have heard about Facebook! – unless you are one of the last remaining DNAs on Titanic..! Still living in the year 1910.. edge of the deck with your arms spread apart (with the titanic tune playing in the background)…!

Anyways, this Zuckerberg kid had created something really amazing.. viral as they say! Everybody was on it.. the whole world was beginning to talk through Facebook, and so I started too! Whether I was on vacation, stuck in traffic, frustrated with my job, .. I posted it to Facebook. I shared my deepest secrets with it, poured my heart in front of it..

Basically, I understood dramatization, blowing things out of proportion, making a big deal out of nothing. So when the coffee machine in the office was broken, I called that Apocalyptic! I shared my opinions with Facebook, opinions about everything – right from my pimple to a film star’s dimple, from my  housemaid to the President of United States, from the stone that hit the roof of my house last night, to the comet that plunged into Jupiter..! And in a matter of few months, I became a successful Facebooker!

Facebook gave me uninterrupted boasting and advertising rights! And in return I got some “Like’s” and some Comments. Nobody could “Dislike” me!! And I liked that

I shared my crazy ideas, questions, hallucinations.. I tried to make it entertaining to everyone on my friend list! And after I got my iPhone, I suddenly got immense power in my hands! One day as I woke up in the morning, I wished, beds had robotic arms that could brush your teeth! Voila, thanks to my iPhone, I posted it to Facebook right that instant and all my friends chimed in with their ideas on top of that! It was almost like American Football.. one good post and everybody would pile on..!

Unfortunately I was not the only one with smart comments. One day, a friend of mine said he returned a toaster back to the store because it was too demanding.. its manual said, do not leave it unattended. And he wasn’t ready to make that commitment at this point in his life! And I think he got 50 comments and 20 Like’s on that.. I was jealous, now why didn’t I think of that….!

I remember, Facebook once sent me a message to confirm my relationship with my wife, because she claimed on her profile that she was married to me!! So I had to verify and then click ‘Yes’ to legitimize our marriage in this new ‘marriage registry’! I replied with another post, where I wondered about the possibility of getting multiple claims such as this. I can assure you, this was one of my most successful posts on FB!

Facebook continued to grow.. I saw husbands and wives communicating over Facebook! So instead of calling each other over the phone, they would send a pseudo-public message to each other over the Social network! Hey, even I used to fight that urge to talk to my wife over Facebook, even if she might be in the kitchen upstairs!

Things got so worse that I couldn’t appreciate any type of moment without sharing it with Facebook. I would be sky diving and I would want to Post it from that height, I would be on a roller coaster and I would take out my iPhone to take that picture and post it…. Sometimes my wife would beat me at posting the pictures on Facebook first, and steal the whole Comments show..! That would make me so mad.. It was a rat race.. but most of the times, I was ahead of the game with my iPhone and my dedication.

But, a lot of jealous people were lurking in the shadows…..

…It was a dark winter evening.. I was roaming in a park with my iPhone and, my family..! As usual, I was advertising on Facebook, that I was taking a walk in a park under the starry sky! My wife had given my iPhone a couple of angry stares already..! But I was a die-hard facebooker..

All of a sudden, there were police sirens.. and I knew it, I knew it.. !!.. my wife had called the Anti-Facebook Squad! I started posting frantically.. “Oh no, there are Cops all around me, they have guns.. “, “Somebody, Please, in the name of Facebook.. please help ME!!!.. “, “Please call 911“.. My posts kept going every second.. oh, if only I could take a video of this for Facebook.. God, this iPhone camera… Then there was a popping sound.. “Oh no! I am getting tasered!”..I posted.  I was fast losing my sensation, but my muscles were addicted, they kept posting.. “I think I am dying.. “, “Please Help“.. “Please Help..“… “H. e..   l…   p p p“..  As I hit the ground, my brain was still calculating - Wonder how many comments will I get on this one..

And then there was silence… the same silence that started all this flashback..

…When I got up, the darkness was fading away.. I sat up from my hospital bed.. Out of sheer habit, my hands reached out for my iPhone.. it was nowhere to be seen, they had taken it away from me.. I looked around.. it was a bright sunny day outside.. My wife was sitting next to my bed…. silently punching keys on her phone! ..Posting my latest status… to HER Facebook account…..!!!

…Our Facebook War had just begun….!

From that day onwards, I started building a new killer iPhone app.. one that would talk to a chip installed in your brain using radio waves, to post your thoughts directly to Facebook… This was the birth of “FyberDyne systems”!!! But, Apple’s App store wouldn’t budge.. they blocked the app..

..so the battle continues… even today…

If there is one question I face everyday in my life, it is the “How are you” question.. I have to think about that every single time! I bump into that in the office elevator, in meetings, in grocery stores, in my son’s school, at the hair cuttery, and even in a bathroom.. no, I am not kidding!! And then I have to come up with various kinds of answers! If you ask me, “How are you” is one of the most abused questions of modern times! I am not sure how many people who ask this question are really interested in the answer! Even I am not sure if I am either! I think when two people face each other, they have to say something.. just like 2 Ants..! Have you seen 2 ants bumping into each other and exchanging some words? This is similar.. and this question is one way to address that situation.. !

Everyone has his own way of dealing with this question. Some people just smile or nod.. so basically they understand the need of that other person to address them with this question, but they don’t feel the need to return the favor! Most people fall in the “I am Good, and how are you” category. I think that’s a reasonable category. Some people might say “Not too bad”, which is supposed to be “I am Ok, but not so good”.. Then there is the “Been better” category, which means “things are bad, but not so bad”!!

Of course, it depends on the relationship between the two people. But there are some who really grab the opportunity, no matter who they are talking to. So I was in my office kitchen one day, just getting my first cup of coffee.. This “distant colleague” of mine walks in, so I just threw the usual “How are you” at him hoping to get a short answer… but no, he started telling me how he spent his weekend, how he took his family to see cherry blossom and oooh, the weather was nice, it was sooo wonderful, but how the flowers did not look fresh, how they differed from the ones he saw 25 years ago, how global warming is causing all this, how my drinking coffee from that disposable cup is the culprit for ruining the planet.. and his cherry blossom!!!.. and on and on.. I was standing there, fast losing my appetite for that morning caffeine, hoping to get back to my desk, cursing myself on why I ever asked this question to him in the first place! And I was wondering, what my response could be, next time someone asks me this question that morning…! Yeah, “been better”! ?

This “How are you” can happen anywhere.. I was in AOL at that time, and one day, I was in the office bathroom.. A colleague walks in and is using the urinal next to me.. we had met in the morning, and exchanged some pleasantries already.. but still he throws this question over the privacy wall to me – “hey, how is it going”… huh? Now in the bathroom too?? Didn’t we just talk about it an hour back?! Now what am I supposed to say here? I just ended up giving him the smile+nod treatment!

Most people don’t care what you say to this question, but some do – like this incident that happened on a Monday, as I was walking in, at my workplace. The security guy says “How are you?”.. I wasn’t too happy that morning since it was a Monday.. you know, you are not supposed to feel good on a Monday, if you do, there is something terribly wrong with you! ..so I said “Not too bad”.. I thought two negations should settle the question to an acceptable degree! But no, the guy insists that I should be more positive, and say that I am feeling wonnnnderful! But I refused to say that, because that wasn’t the truth and I did not want to mislead myself into thinking that I was indeed feeling wonderful! But he wouldn’t budge and settle for anything less! Finally, I just said I will see what I can do next time.. but Mondays are Mondays buddy!! ….I must say, this was the only time when whatever I said in response to this question mattered to someone!

But overall, you get so used to this question though, that it almost becomes mechanical.. you start answering even before someone asks you this question sometimes! I have done it – so someone says “Hi” and you reply with a “Hi, I am good” and then realize – oh, he didn’t even ask me how I was doing!! And now, you are NOT doing so good after all!

But we continue with our habit – ask when you don’t want to know, you tell when nobody is really listening.. ([For the Speech] And btw, sorry I did not ask you all, how you were doing this afternoon! So how are you all? ….Well, never mind!

I recently had a lifetime change.. when you talk about lifetime changes, you normally think about getting a job, getting married, having children, buying a house, having an affair, having a divorce.. umm, I think you get the drift I went for a change in my life recently with the same bit of seriousness, as I would for any of the above, and it makes sense that I call it a “Lifetime change” too…

The change was that I dumped M-S Windows (or Miss Windows) and embraced a new stylish girlfriend. Now having spent almost every day of my life, for the last 16 years, in front of different types of computers, I think they too, deserve to claim a piece of my life. So it is appropriate to call this change a lifetime change.

You know, I have ‘dated’ a lot of ‘damsels’ so far.. err, I mean computers.. a weird one called ZX Spectrum back in 1988 that ‘claimed to be a computer’ with a Cassette tape (!), the oldies – PC XTs, the ATs, Honeywell Unix terminals and many other Unix terminals whose names I have forgotten, the IBM mainframe terminals, PC 286s, 386s, 486s, Pentiums xxx, Dual cores… bla bla bla.

And I have seen the Operating Systems that control their behaviors, mood swings, tantrums – the various flavors of Unix’es, MS DOS, IBM Mainframe OSs, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, NT, ME, XP Pro, XP Home, 2000 flavors of Linux’s (!), Windows -2000, -2003, Mac OS-X, Mac Leopard….

So many of them, but I managed to stay loyal to one family throughout this 16 yr journey – the Microsoft family! I have dated many girls from that family, keeping the family loyalty intact for all these years! I have enjoyed the closeness, their popularity, their riches, and at the same time, have suffered at their hands, defended them out in the world, got embarrassed because of them, but still, at the end of the day, I came back to them – in their palace, to their kingdom, back to my in-laws house in Redmond….

I never looked anywhere else.. because  I was so brainwashed by the Microsoft family members! I didn’t have a voice of my own, nor was I allowed to think outside the “Window”! I was comfortable, because it was all too familiar to me – someone blowing their fuse whenever they want, not having anybody to depend on, always living in fear of losing everything you have.. I thought that’s how it is in a love affair – you know, being ready to sacrifice, being ready to give, being forgiving, undemanding.. And I didn’t realize when those love affairs morphed into hate affairs.. I continued on as if I was married to the whole family and as if there were no divorce courts! It was as if, I had to go from one cousin to another…!

So then this day in February, I was in the bathroom, (nothing unusual about that.. I am in my bathroom every day! – looking in the mirror.. you know, the usual stuff, checking if I still look young.. oh, there is a gray hair here, maybe I can pull that out.. and suddenly that inner voice growled at me – (you know, how your inner voice growls at you in your stomach.. ever experienced that? That’s your inner voice..) – so that voice said – “hey buddy, you are not so old.. so you are old but not sooo old.. don’t give up on life. You will find a soulmate if you are committed to making this change.” And I started looking at my options.. Linux was too complicated and couldn’t have been someone to go steady with. The only other option I had been eying all these days was the stylish Mac, the one I had complained about in the past like a fool. I poured my heart out in front of her and she was magnanimous in accepting me.

That day, I finally embraced a bright, slim MacBook Pro and flew away on my vacation to India. Call it my disloyalty to Microsoft family or my mid-life crisis – but that’s how my love affair with the Mac started after so many stale years of living with the Microsoft family.

I had a few flings with the Mac in the past but it was always too clumsy, since there was no commitment from my side. And I used to always complain as to why it did not ‘click right’ (but well, Mac doesn’t have a “right click” on its mouse anyway … But I guess I never looked at her heart, which is made of pure gold – the Unix heart – one that holds steady..

From that day, I began living my new life, accepting things that were minor inconveniences, adapting to the new way of life, new moods, new responses, all the while admiring the beauty of my new girlfriend. And I told myself, nobody is perfect… err.. that sounded familiar!

..anyway, I still live my life, there is still programming, surfing, storing, retrieving, shutting down, starting up, but it is just done in a different way.

After all, life is a way of living rather than the living itself!

—- END OF PART 1 —-

Days passed by, then months and then a couple of years.. One day, I found myself in the same bathroom, in front of the same mirror.. again! And I was questioning my lifetime change all over again………

Cracks had begun to appear here and there within 2 months of starting this new relationship, and it eventually died last week without even reaching its first anniversary! Last week, standing in front of a mirror, I looked straight in my eyes and asked – is this what you really wanted? That you can’t do things you want to do, that everything takes 5 steps when it used to take one or two, that productivity is suffering at the hands of beauty…?

I thought about it real hard, “can I go back to Ms Windows.. and what kind of a welcome will I get?”, “will it be life as usual again or have things changed irreversibly?” I had to try though.. so I knocked on the door of the “Redmond mansion” again..

..there she was.. same attire, same attitude, just the way I had left her. She welcomed me with a “crash”, as if to tell me that she hasn’t changed just because I dumped her once. I expected this, and remained nonchalant.. unperturbed. I just wanted in, and accept my fate with all its fallacies. I had learned my lessons – that all the beauty in the world is in the bias of the infactuated! That nothing is stable or reliable, that beauty does not necessarily mean practicality, that hype seldom matches reality, that awe should sometimes just stay that way and not try to be part of your day-to-day life, and that everything that gets trashed by elites is not always useless.

So I am back.. some people tease me about my choice, some say I didn’t have the guts to handle a glamorous girlfriend… all I can say is at the end of the day, I tried, I dated the hot and happening Mac for a year, but things did not really work out between us. People may laugh at Ms Windows, think it’s stupid and unreliable, but I did go over the fence and played the field… and tell you what, they are all the same!!

Don’t get lured by one or the other, stick with the one you like and live your life!

Mid-life crisis is a term that some of you might already understand.. and for those who don’t, I am an example in front of you. You know, ever since I was born, I was destined to get old. So, mid-life itself wasn’t a surprise. But I didn’t know there will be crisis written all over it!

For a long time, I happily lived in my 20s.. Even when I crossed over into the 30s, I was still doing okay, thinking I am still in my 20s.. Until I moved into the later half of the 30s, and now things really appeared to be moving in a direction that I did not want to go! This is like that feeling of standing on a beach.. Pretty soon the ocean starts pulling you in, along with the sand under your feet! Now with all your might, you are trying to hold your ground. It’s the same feeling..

Scientifically speaking, I don’t really think there is such a thing, disease, or medical condition as Mid-Life Crisis.. But there are some symptoms that you are bound to notice..

It hit me one day when someone took a picture of me in full daylight with my head tilted forward.. don’t remember who it was, otherwise I would’ve strangled him!! And there it was.. a barren spot on my head happily reflecting the sunlight! It was a cruel revelation! I hurried home and stared at myself in the mirror and to my horror, there was another shock.. not all hair on my head had the same color anymore! Some of them had started acquiring the much dreaded gray! From then on, it became a ritual for me – a ritual of uprooting these gray infidels who were happily disclosing my age without my permission!

I started thinking differently.. I thought cutting my hair short, made me look younger. On one hand, I was losing hair by the dozens, I was trying to hold onto every single one in the shower, pleading, begging in front of every falling hair, to not let go of me.. and on the other hand, I was pulling some out because they were ‘misfits’! Hardly helped the situation really..! But you gotta do what you gotta do..!

Then there were the TV commercials for hair restoration.. this is your head before, and this is your head after – after applying this hair growing cream, that is! For them, if it did not work, it was just a matter of refunding the money… but for me, it was a heartbreak! I simply did not have the time for trial and ERROR!

I started visiting all the stores that most of the teenage crowd buys clothes from – American Eagle, Hollister, Abercombie, Forever 21.. hoping to find something there that will rekindle that sense of being young! Whenever I bought something from there, I felt happy..! When I was roaming through the stores looking at all the young crowd, I started thinking about all the stories of young girls falling in love with married old men, and actually started believing them!! It was like my secret wish! Because I was realizing now that none of the girls were looking AT me anymore! They had started looking THROUGH me as if looking in thin air…! At home, my wife was now less suspicious of me! I don’t know if I should feel happy about it – because it wasn’t because I was getting more loyal or she was getting more lenient towards me.. But because she did not think of me as a risk anymore, that anybody would be willing to take anyway!!

I didn’t want to give up.. so I decided to fight back.. I started going to the gym, trying to stay in shape.. started playing Tennis. All the young kids who were waiting outside the tennis court, for me to get out of there, were probably thinking  – “What in the world is this uncle doing here.. why doesn’t he go buy some groceries, instead of occupying this court..?!”.. I just ignored them..

But in all this, I still couldn’t avoid one thing.. my birthdays! They kept coming year after year.. once they were celebrations, now they were a menace.. I really wish my birthday was on 29th February. If you do the calculations, I would still be in school by now! Being the only married kid! But it was not so. So I started lying, stealing a year here and there when asked about my age, or simply tried to avoid the question or just became ambiguous about it. I even removed the year from my Facebook profile..!

And I continued to fight… fight, with all my liar’s might, to stay below 40… because the crisis, had really and finally crept into my mid-life…!

When I stepped out of my bachelorhood, I certainly knew there was something called Grocery shopping.. ‘coz you need milk, you need vegetables, you need soap, toilet tissues.. the list goes on. But before marriage, I was sort of noncommittal towards it. My mom would ask me to get something and I would get it. Marriage on the other hand, brought this commitment much closer to my heart and wallet! Just when I think I can laze around on a rainy Sunday – lying on the sofa,  sipping tea, eating junk food, and such..  my wife tells me to go get some Milk. Now why does milk have this uncanny ability to get over suddenly?! In my childhood, a milkman used to deliver milk at our door. How convenient, isn’t it? But even he used to miss a day or two, and I used to have to get up right in the middle of my early morning sleep to get milk from the store.

Anyways, I remember in my childhood, we did not have supermarkets. There were small grocery shops. One would go there with a list of things written on a piece of paper, and the shopkeeper would go in and get those things for you. You paid him the money and got out of there. At the most, you would buy a candy in addition to that because it was kept at the counter.

Come supermarkets and you started seeing everything stacked up in front of you and you actually started walking through the store. This is a big setup! You started thinking you needed to buy each and everything in the store, even if you just went in there to buy a toothbrush! So as you are going through the aisles, you are thinking – “yeah, I think I do want my commode to smell like a melon, so let me get that liquid that makes it smell like that!”. You go through the freezer section, the bread section, snacks, cookies, coffee, fresh produce, toiletries.. different types of tissues.. you know, toilet tissues, car tissues, scented tissues, bathroom tissues, kids tissues.. one ply, two ply tissues.. with pictures of a bear and his rear! You are standing there and thinking – just what kind of tissue should be entrusted to do the job for me!? You just can’t make up your mind..

Choices.. and too many of them.. they make your life hell!

Supermarkets are truly amazing though.. before they came on the scene, I didn’t know Milk had so much variety! Fat free, 1%, 2%, 3%, vitamin D, organic, soya, half and half.. I never got this name by the way – what is half and half? Half of what? And then you add half of something else and it becomes 1 of some new thing? Anyways, all this variety is out there to confuse you, to trick you into buying something that you don’t really want. Just see the checkout counter.. it has things like lip balms, chocolates, face tissues, batteries, all the way to cameras! It’s as if you come to the checkout counter and go – “oh, I almost forgot, I did want to buy a camera to take pictures of my grocery today!“.. I mean, what is the thought process behind having things like that there..? I once saw a torchlight with nail clippers hanging by the side! Sure, while you are trying to find your way through the dark, why don’t you cut your nails too?!

So you are at the checkout counter, and you purposely did not get more than 10 items, so that you can qualify for that “10 items or less” fast counter.. You might have 5 veggies, bringing the total to 14, but you count them as 1 since it is all vegetables anyway! This is still, in my opinion, an acceptable level of cheating.. But invariably there will be someone who is trying to sneak in with 30 items in this lane.. Now is it so horribly difficult to see that you clearly have way more than 10 items in your cart? This person will completely ignore your angry glances at his/her cart, and manage to say something like “oh, I didn’t realize this was 10 items or less” to the checkout lady and move on!

While you are waiting there patiently, there are these middle-to-old age ladies who refuse to like the technological advances of the 20th and 21st centuries! They will either pull out a stack of coupons, a checkbook or a wad of $1 bills from their oversized purses when paying for their grocery! I always wonder if  these people are just trying to make a statement? Something like – “I am old and I have loads of money.. and I don’t need no stinkin’ card to buy things!?“.. You know what? – we get it, alright?!

Finally you face the person at the counter and throw the usual “How are you?” at him/her. Now this, “How are you” must be one of the most abused questions of modern times! There isn’t another question quite like this one, that gets asked without a real desire for an answer! But it’s okay.. I guess it was born out of a desire to greet someone with more than just a single word like “Hi”..

“Did you find everything okay“? – that’s another one of such questions. Have you ever answered that question with a “No”?! You can’t, because “No” is not a valid option for this question! It’s just like you go to a restaurant, they bring your food and then ask you after some time – “How is everything today?” – you say “It’s great” even if you didn’t like the food!!! So you can’t say “No” to questions like these – have you tried saying – No, I think you guys are cheating, you keep the milk cans that are expiring tomorrow in the front so that people will pick them up instead of the ones that are expiring a week later! Or No, I wanted to ride in those battery powered wheelchairs for the disabled, but your store assistant did not let me!.. Ever tried that? Have you seen those battery powered wheelchairs? Ever wanted to ride in those? I have, not as a handicapped person.. but as a normal healthy person whose feet hurt while his wife is looking at each and every item in the store!!

An alternative way is to go for the new Self checkouts.. They are a great invention, don’t get me wrong.. But you know, I have real privacy issues with those! So the machine keeps announcing what I have purchased – “Weigh your bananas, weigh your red delicious apples, or Enter your donuts..”. Now why is that? Whatever happened to plain old fashioned privacy?! And then you keep something on the side and the machine keeps telling you to “place the item in the bag“, so you keep it in the bag, and then it says “take it out of the bag..“, so you take it out again.. and finally it says “wait for the attendant!“. Now you are trying hard to appear tech-savvy, but now everyone behind you, thinks you are an idiot who can’t even operate this simple machine!

Somehow you pay your way out of all this madness and come out with at least 5 bags of stuff when you should’ve just been carrying a toothbrush! But you just came out of a supermarket! You can’t help it! The whole thing is designed to make a fool out of you! So you gladly oblige and pay for it too…!

I am going to tell you 2 stories today, and I hope to make my point in the process. The first story is of the days when I could openly disclose my age to anybody – when I was in my teens I mean..! It was a fine summer night, when I faced the truth for the very first time.. There on the wall, was the test to my bravery, a test to my being a man.. My father was out of town and I was the only one to face this ultimate challenge..! Now that I think about it, even with my 48 inches of frame at that time, I posed a formidable challenge to my challenge on the wall. But it didn’t feel that way in my mind.

..because, what I was staring at, was a no-nonsense live 5-inch-wall lizard crawling on the wall in front of me..

The women folks (namely my mother and sister) were expecting me to get rid of it.. they were actually looking up to me for a change.. and the lizard, ironically, was looking down upon me..! Man vs animal.. I sensed that rush of adrenaline and somehow remembered the Gunfight at the O.K.Corral, Dual in the Sun, the cowboys, the showdowns, the fast draws, the low slung holsters, you know the cowboys facing each other for a shootout.. [gestures] So who makes the first move.. the lizard or I..? We were armed too – I was armed with a stick and the lizard was armed with his ugly, repulsive self, which was precisely what I was chosen to destroy!

Life looked unfair to me at that point, being a man.. I could not stand aside and be a spectator like my mother or sister. I had to be the sinner, the cruel murderer and also the victim who would’ve to live with that memory throughout the rest of his life and sleep through the nightmares.

There was no choice, there simply wasn’t any choice left for me….. I lived through that moment, the lizard didn’t..

From that day onwards, the man in me has had to step up to the plate and do the honors – or dishonors..! I never got used to it, but I could never get away from it either. The world was cruel.. it made me do things that IT did not want to do. It chose to be timid but did not allow the same luxury to ME. It chose to remain clean, but made ME dirty in the process.. Given a choice, I would’ve walked away from it all.. but the society wouldn’t let me.

Whether it was getting rid of the pests, or going in the dark to see if someone was hiding there, or opening the door if someone knocked in the middle of the night, or tell you what, we had this really old malfunctioning radio and one would get a small electric shock off of it sometimes.. so it was like “can you check if it is giving an electric shock today?…???”, or you know, lifting heavy luggage even though I probably weighed less than 100 pounds that time.. but I had to carry the heavier bag when my father wasn’t around, or letting my sister have the empty seat in a crowded bus even if I might have spent the whole day standing up, or just getting a blanket.. We used to have these family reunions when the number of people sometimes exceeded the number of blankets! I was put on the lower priority list…

on all these occasions, the man in me had to take the back seat.. !

Switch to present times, different house.. Country – USA, My role – head of the family, Situation – mouse spotted inside the house, allegedly holed up in the kitchen pantry, Task – Remove everything from the pantry and look for the mouse, Spectators – Wife and a 5 yr old son who claims to be “super brave”.. No specifications were given for what to do after the mouse is found.. but of course, it was obvious.. I couldn’t have talked him out of coming here or bringing his brethren with him!

By now, the situation is not new to me, the same adrenaline rush, the fear that has been denied an outlet, the fake bravery that gets called into action..  I open the door of the pantry… Now understand this, I have to appear brave not only to my wife but even more so to my son!! I start pulling stuff out from the shelves, one by one.. I know the mouse is hiding somewhere in there, watching me, watching my every move.. from behind some bag of chips.. contemplating when to leap.. Every shelf I clear without the mouse jumping out, makes my face happy but worries my scared mind.. ‘coz it increases the probability of finding it on the NEXT shelf..!

I have my son feeling proud of seeing his father going after the mouse so fearlessly, my wife is admiring my guts as I pull out the things without the slightest bit of ‘visible fear’.. Just as I am getting downright reckless in my search.. something black falls down! Eeeesshh! My heart almost pops out of my mouth, but out of sheer habit, I don’t show it. Because, without anybody noticing, my senses have already made sure that it wasn’t a mouse.. I even manage to give my son and my wife that look of – “Got scared eh?”! … Years of practice.. years of practice has gone into faking this bravado.. Anyway, the search goes on.

Thankfully the mouse has vanished.. or wasn’t there at all. He saved me a clumsy moment where I would’ve been scared and acting brave at the same time..!

Later that night, my wife wakes up around 1 o’clock, wanting some water.. Nobody wants to go down in the dark ‘coz the mouse hasn’t been caught yet. So who gets to go?? ME!! Being the brave man-of-the-house, I have to venture out into the darkness of the kitchen to get some water… I come down.. I don’t turn on the lights, don’t want to disturb the intruder, you know, I don’t want to see you, you don’t want to see me.. let’s just leave it at that.. kind of thing!… So I start tiptoeing across the dark kitchen… not knowing what lies in that darkness………………

and I was thinking..

… yes, that’s the price you pay – for being a man……………