Walk in the woods test

Despite being a strong believer in the fact that psychoanalysis tests are overrated, I still get fascinated when I have to sit through one. So here's one called the 'Walk in the woods' test. Write down the points as I mention and give your imaginations a real kick on the rear.

Imagine that you are walking through with a friend.
(1) Write down the name of the friend.

As you walk through the forest, you come across an animal. (2) What animal is it? Write it down.

You see the animal. The animal looks back at you. (3) what is your reaction at that point of time? How do you respond? Jot it down.

The animal goes away and you walk along and come across a house. (4) How big is the house? (5) What is the house made of? (6) Does the house have a fence?

You walk into the house and you see a dining table. (7) What do you see on and around the table?

You walk through the back door of the house. (8) You see and see a water body behind the house. What is it? (9) You and your friend walk into the water body and return back. How wet do you get?

Let's get ready for some piece of perspectives.

(1) You were walking with a friend through the forest, didn't you? That friend is the most important friend/ person in your life at this point of time.

(2) You came across an animal. The size of the animal is the size of the problems you seem to have at this point.

(3) You look at the animal, the animal looks back at you. The way you respond is the way you respond to your problems.

(4) You then came across a house. The size of the house is an indication of how ambitious you are at this point of time.

(5) The strength of the material with which the house was built is an indication of how confident you feel that you will achieve your ambition now.

(6) The house not having a fence is an indication of an open person who doesn't have a !ot of secrets between him/her and another person.

(7) You walked into the house and saw a dining table. If you didn't imagine people, fruits or dolls, you are unhappy right now.

(8) You walk out of the house and see a water body. The size of it is the size of your sexual prowess now.

(9) How much you get wet is an indication of the sexual desire you have for the person who is walking besides you.

+1 for those who think this is all true. +1 for those who don't think so.

The day has arrived.

0 days to go. Time to go.

The day has arrived. Packed bags, packed hearts, numerous goodbyes and reflections come flowing like an unsuspected avalanche.

When a senior took such a route a few years ago, I was an unsuspecting kid- I didn't have an iota of idea of what would transpire finally. All that came to my mind was the variety of chocolates that I could get my hands on. USA, to me, was represented by Barack Obama's 'Audacity of Hope', the failing football team, the NBA and the overrates American Football.

15 months ago, when 'What is he going to do after BE?' chatter went out loud, the thinking process commenced. I had dismissed US by then thanks to it's exorbitant Investments. I was Singapore-bound, mentally. And I made a rookie mistake- to prepare and write GRE. That's a mistake that would set the balls rolling, much later.

With a plan to work for some years and catch the long flight later, I sat for a few interviews. In the meantime, the GRE score was too compelling to push the deadline for applying to a few more years later. One fine day, I woke up and decided that it was a now or never chance. I had to finish the TOEFL test within a week (it was almost a disaster).

Although a lot of good souls motivated me, pushed me, self-motivation was sometimes reaching dangerous lows. I pulled myself to a consultancy finally. What was the first piece of advice they gave? "You will face some bouts of depression. You have to be prepared for that!"

Depression #1: Looking at the plethora of questions asked in the online application. The questions kept coming and I kept filling. The task of getting Letter of Recommendations on time was a challenge thanks to the schedules that the professors had. The SOPs took itts time coming to fruition.

Depression #2: You have applied. Now you wait for the decisions. You wait for sometime. You check the website daily. You double check daily, just in case. The 'Yes or No' will take time to come and each day passes with bated breath. At some point, you light want to think again if you applied for the right university.

Depression #3: You get the admits. Now you want the i20 (an official form given while you apply for VISA). For that, the university needs an assurance about your financial stability. Needless to say, not everyone is born with a silver spoon and the first piece of self-doubt if you are financially sound to pursue MS creeps in.

Depression #4: You've chosen the university and the course. You might have to apply for a loan. The banks have to avoid sanctioning bad loans (loans that are not repaid). Yet, the process of obtaining it is riddled with paperwork and people. Now, that is a dangerous combination.

Depression #5 and the most significant: You are moving away from your parents, family and friends for some time (long enough to cause longing). You can't taste your mom's thakkali chutney and travel to heaven for a brief moment. The lovely songs she sings while you wake up in the morning are not going to be a constant in your life for a while. You miss getting to see a man who is dedicated to the family like your dad daily. The family and friends you had will be miles away, despite the technology in hand. Let us admit it, Skype and WhatsApp are ways to just convince ourselves that distance is an illusion. The distance is huge. Ouch!

Yet, good things are worth fighting for. A new dawn has just begun. The good days are coming. Everyday that slowly builds up to those good days- the days when your father and mother are going to be so damn proud of you- will be definitely worth it. Miles to go, miles to go before you sleep.

The homemaker conundrum

25 days to go..

Over the past few weeks, I had a chance to meet a few relatives, family friends and others. I came acros what is, perhaps, the last generation of people who have a decent percentage of homemakers. The very concept of having homemakers, the pros, the cons, the stigma and the benefits of it are debatable. The fact that Germany is fast realizing the trend of househusbands unleashed is food for thought. Generally, what does an average homemaker do everyday? ("Does she do anything?", chirps the chauvinist). That's the homemaker conundrum.

One of them, a proud mother of two children whose ages hover near the heavier side of 20's physically and mathematically, has been a homemaker for close to 25 years. With her husband gone to work for long hours, she tells me that having a television was the best thing that happened to her. She casually remarks that she just wants to have the TV left switched on irrespective of her watching it. She calls it her own company and tells me that it gives her a sense of security and calmness that everything is going well. She tells me of various instances where she would slip to sleep while watching TV, some people would see her sleeping and switch off the TV. What happened the minute the TV was switched off? She would immediately get up and lose all sleep.

Last week, I went to meet a family where the homemaker had taken up teaching school kids after they came back home. (For folks not from India, this might sound weird. But this is true! We go to school to learn. After coming back home, we'll go to a 'tuition' to learn what we learned in school.). She started teaching kids because she wanted a way to channelize her strengths for something noble.

What started as a hobby is now a full time work after 16 years. Her son joined a boarding school. What did she get in return? An opportunity to teach the friends from his former school. "I see each kid as my own kid!", she says. Her students know the house in and out, remind her to take food and medicines regularly and get nice gifts for their birthday.  What started as a hobby is a perfect  regimen for her.

What made them choose what they are doing is the puzzle. Let that stay in the Pandora's box for some more time.

The first book

32 days to go..

Circa 2008. 

Summers always start early and end early in Coimbatore. I had just finished one more year clueless of my existence. I chanced upon the book gathering dust somewhere in the nook of the shelf. 'Gora' by Rabindranath Tagore. Rupa Publications.

Thanks to being a poor reader, it took me an entire month to consume the book, consume the emotions and jump into a sea of characters. West Bengal has always been at the forefront of thinking forward compared to the rest of India. The book introduced the concept of soul-searching, self-contradiction and of being resolute to me. Set in the early 1900's, the topic of orthodoxy pitted against progressiveness was dealt with such subtlety. I could jump into the life of Gora, the protagonist and not know if I was truly progressive or truly orthodox. 

Over the years, I have wondered how enchanting it would have been to read the novel in its native language with the Rabindranath Tagore touch. The comparison, sadly, had to end there thanks to my absolute lack of proficiency in Bengali language. I have also come across some jigsaw puzzles from the ocean of journalists of how Tagore had been an absolute hypocrite when it comes to women empowerment. 

But it doesn't matter to me now what he was, as a person. It was in the summer of 2006, when, as a clueless kid, I visited Bangalore and a distant relative of mine offered me two books and told me, "Here, pick a book of your choice! You can have it!" 

I don't remember what was the other book (It had a picture of a train on its cover). My instincts were to take the book which had more pages. I picked Gora, then. To the distant relative whose name I don't remember anymore, thank you for introducing me to the world of books. 

“I've travelled the world twice over,

Met the famous; saints and sinners,

Poets and artists, kings and queens,

Old stars and hopeful beginners,

I've been where no-one's been before,

Learned secrets from writers and cooks

All with one library ticket

To the wonderful world of books.”

- Janice James

The central ambiguity.

33 days to go...

The story.

Once upon a time, there was a business who ran a business conglomerate. He was getting old and wanted to pass on his business acumen to his son and introduce him to the business clientèle. He came up with a plan- to arrange a business party. He told his son about the party and that he can invite a person, exactly one person, of his wish. 

The son chose to invite his friend. This friend was from an economically poor background. /On the day of the party, the son was looking forward to the party and his friend. Fifteen minutes before the party was set to begin, the friend walked in, poorly dressed. The son was startled and asked his friend why he was not in proper attire for the party. The poor friend told him that he had given his suit for laundry but that the laundryman had failed to deliver it on time.

And I break the question to the students- If you were the businessman's son, what will you do at that point? 

Most of them (read as 'Almost all') had an almost similar answer. While one student tells me that he will give the friend a new set suit, another tells me that he will allow him be a part of the party and that his attire doesn't matter. It is at that point that I will introduce my friend, Keyser Soze, to the class and give his answer- if I were the son, I would have asked him to get out of the place. If I were a diplomatic person, I might have done the same in a polite manner. (Oh, diplomacy is just going around in circles and circles. You will still be at the same starting point.)

And then I give them what the 'psychometric test' concludes:

Those who gave the friend a new suit, those who let the friend be a part of the party without bothering about the attire are people who are 'emotionally driven'. The folks who drive the person away from the party are those who are 'goal-driven'- the goal is to obtain familiarity with the clientèle in the business. 

One part of my work as a Verbal/Soft-skills trainer is over. Normally the class is filled with so much energy. The 'psychometric' test ensures that the individual energies are packed into one ensemble. The result is that I gain the attention of the class. 

Over tea with the fellow soft-skills trainers, we discussed the same question and the topic funnels down to a Goal-driven person. Just then, you want to introduce a new variable- Selfishness. 

The same story might have been used by one of the teachers in school to indicate a selfish person- one who is motivated by what he thinks will be beneficial for him. The kid who forgets that you should also jump into the not-so-fitting shoes of others and think about their side of the same story. We proceed to brand that kid as 'selfish'.

As we grow older (and forget what naivety of thought is), as we forget the art of questions, we are conveniently buying the idea of people being 'goal driven persons'. Suddenly, the imaginary appraisal forms in our minds give him the top rating.

Wasn't that kid who refused to offer you the extra pencil he had 'goal-driven' because his 'goal' was to ensure that he finished the exam without any hiccups on the stationery-front? Suddenly the most loathed kid of the school days has become the 'most focused and ambitious person' who will dream and achieve big. Why? The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Speaking about psychometric tests, take this and wonder what you did: 

http://higherperspectives.com/relational-psychology-test/

The Violin (Mis)experiment

86 days to go..

It was during the school days, while watching (yet another) ‘Sachin tribute’ video that I came across some beautiful music. It took me a week and some more days before I found that it was a composition by Ludovico Einaudi. All I could make out from the music was that there was violin involved and that the violin got me involved too. A few years of being high on Pink Floyd and Einaudi ensued. But the attraction for violin never ebbed.

It was during one of the depressed days of the first semester in college when I decided to stop being worried and become awesome. And then it dawned on me, the perfect springboard to that would be Violin. I wanted to be the next Einaudi or maybe at least the next Yuvan Shankar Raja with his copied Irish countryside music. Summoning all my sources (Google), I tried to find the best violin in town that wouldn’t earn a straight ‘no, I’m not buying that for you!’ from dad. After a bit of negotiations when I turned a salesman for violin in front of my dad, when my dad had to listen to all the stories of Ludovico Einaudi, Irish songs, Ilayaraja with a ‘when are you going to stop this lecture’ look, he had two options in hand. Either put up with the salesman-pitch-son or find peace. He chose the latter and decided told me one day, “I’ll get you a violin under certain strict conditions”. Curious to know what they were, I egged him to elaborate. “You have to get proper tutelage. So find a right teacher. Practice at home when you are alone, initially. It will be peaceful”. Unaware of the things he implied, like when I install new software, I agreed to all terms and conditions put forth.

The next issue was buying it on a perfect day. After dad proposed the day of ‘Saraswathi poojai’ as the day I get my hands on ‘OMG! Violin!’ I agreed and we reached a consensus. It is an auspicious day to start anything new, the day when Kindergarten schools would mint money for a ‘noble cause’ and new Yuvan Shankar Rajas will create their first piece of (distasteful) music.

I found a nice teacher although I was not always on the right notes. He welcomed me with a promise to allow me perform at the yearly musical show of the academy. Motivated enough, I used to carry the violin to the classes back and forth like a soldier carries his solemn gun. Two months went by, the horse-hair on the bow gathering dust regularly. The C sharps and F sharps would make me feel guilty before I go to sleep. One day, as the teacher, was trying to help me out with the majors and minors, I had the big picture in front of me- I would never major in the art. Semesters went by, Saraswathi poojais came when the Violin was kept in the forefront during Navarathris (causing huge embarrassment every time someone asked me to play it) but the ‘Violin-touch’ never came.

To make the Violin find some purpose in the concrete dwelling, I lent it to the family’s female Ravi Varma so she can draw it. I hoped she would paint a picture of me holding the violin and in high tones. But the violin had its revenge- she painted the violin with the background of a thick bush- indicating the dust it was gathering day in and day out.

I’ve discovered the truth. Dad had told me, “Practice at home when you are alone, initially. It will be peaceful”. He probably meant his peace. Maybe the teacher, in promising a chance during the music show, forgot to add “If you still keep coming” to his promise. Maybe, I should have symbolically bought a veena instead of violin to earn the goodwill of Goddess Saraswathi. Now, I will probably do a dubsmash with a violin audio and try removing the ‘dubsmash.com’ watermark out of the video.

P.S. Violin for sale. The above statements would go a long way in indicating that it is a ‘new piece of equipment’.

Office times in Bangalore

86 days to go..

November 2014, when I was stringing through the Statement of Purpose to apply for universities, Siemens Industry Software Limited made a quick round of Internship recruitment in the college. I don’t know if it was the lack of choices or luck, I was one of them selected (which I got to know a month later. A month, at that point of time, felt like a lot of time). To get at least an internship, after interviewing with 7 companies and writing numerous first rounds felt good. 

Add to it a 3 month training program in the college to ‘groom’ me to be an intern-recruit in Siemens and weeks of straggling with the final year project and not knowing if I’ll be allowed to go ahead with the intern, there I was, in Bangalore in the first week of March. 

By that time, I had got a few admits from universities and was naturally inclined to tread the software-job without much seriousness (even otherwise, I was lazy). On the first day of the internship, after the boss walked me through the project assigned to me, I wondered how it would be to finish the project and walk away with a spring in the step. The amazement didn’t last long. I was given the task of configuring and introducing a new module into the software- a cakewalk for the techies in the office, a walk on the bed set on fire for me. When I tried to install the software, I bumped into a lot of problems with the computer throwing new cards stating ‘I simply won’t let you get along with me so quickly, dude’ every now and then. By the time I courted the software into submission and figured out that installing a piece of software with license was an ‘Achievement Unlocked’ moment, it was already a month and my team was behind the schedule like North Indian trains during winters. 

That’s when I learnt the power of connections and networking the ‘Ouch, it hurts’ way. Having stayed in office the entire day, I would still be lost for ideas. That’s when some programmers who simply didn’t find reason to go home would oblige to my SOS calls and stay around to help me make some headway. During the times when I was a few hours away from a solution for the project, the ‘Project presentations’ in the college would be rescheduled at the last moment. I would run around like a hare trying to get a train ticket back to Coimbatore and all the momentum would get washed away.

My team reached a dead end at the end of the first month, the half way stage. That’s when we decided to abandon the sinking ship and take a different route. Within 2 weeks, we had one module of the project up and running, thanks to the gracious amounts of help from our mentor and the innumerable trips to the pantry to refill the hot-chocolate cups. I spent a few nights in the office too, pushing myself home after sunrise and catching up on long lost sleep. The software-bull was well and truly tamed by then. 

The last two weeks were spent making mad runs between Coimbatore and Bangalore trying to douse the fire in the final year project and the Internship project. By the time the third review in the company- a conference call review with 16 people on the phone and my PC shared across cities- was over, the college project was over too. When the fire was doused and the haze surrounding it cleared, I had no doubt that I learned a lot in terms of work ethics, what I should do (from others) and what I shouldn’t do (from me) and having ‘that’ corporate air. And the people in charge of the pantry had learnt their lessons too- stacking up a lot more sachets of Hot Chocolate and Lemon Tea.