Sayonara Twenties!

Our Guwahati saga begins!

As I bid adieu to my twenties within the next 2 weeks, it is indeed a strange sensation stepping into my tricenarian years… Somehow, even before my teenage, I could always visualize myself as a twenty something year old, but I could never look past thirty. As I had rightly mentioned in one of my previous articles, it truly does feel like a whole different phase of life, separated by a well-defined barrier. But I guess there is no better place to cross it, than my birthplace itself, Guwahati…! Is it coincidence or providence? Either way, 1991 to 2021… Man, what a journey! Earlier, even ten years seemed to be monumental, but as every passing year forms a lesser and lesser percentage of our total time spent on this planet than the years past, I’m only beginning to slowly assimilate these thirty long chalked up years. 

I’m glad my parents had come over to live with my wife and I for the entirety of my 29^th year, which is the longest I’ve spent with them at a stretch, since having to leave home about eleven years back, for my higher education. And whilst all of us spent some savory time together, let us admit that most families these days do require a sort of post marriage ice-breaker. It is never easy when the paths of two families get intertwined, with potential difference in precedences, expectations and a lot else, things which come to light only after prolonged exposure to one another. However, it is important to reach a level of logical acceptability, albeit with care for each other’s inclinations or aversions to the extent feasible.

I feel blessed to have a terrific family, be it my wife or my parents, or my in-laws. When my maternal grandma was critically ill a few years back and counting her days in a half conscious state, barely able to respond or gesture to anyone, my wifey was the one who had the foresight to convince me to buy air tickets within a day’s notice, for only a couple of hours visit to my hometown, leaving all my official obligations aside, and today I can thankfully say that the smile on my grandma’s face on seeing us, was beyond priceless, which might not have been possible had we arrived any later. Then again, when it was time to get vaccinated against COVID-19, my wifey was the one who convinced by conspiracy theory spinning father to get the dose, something which proved to be of immense importance not only from a health point of view, but also for essential travel and in other avenues later on. The list is endless…

On the other hand, my parents as always have tried their best to be as compassionate and inclusive as possible, despite the dynamic many a times being different from their age old imagery, for which I’m grateful. From our childhood we are used to seeing our parents as pillars of strength, but as we grow up the tables are turned, and although they might still continue at a fever pitch, the fragility of our older generations, be it physical or mental, slowly becomes apparent. Once approaching our thirties, we should be matured enough to accept our role as a heavy-duty hinge trying to ensure that the proverbial door-frame assembly does not fall apart. People tend to have a short memory about the good that is done, while the bad seems to get cemented in history, but that’s not me.

Any way… On the professional front, as far as my present calling at Indian Oil goes, after a blistering start in my initial few years with some brilliant colleagues and unprejudiced top brass, piloting through the quite antithetical widespread reality has gradually become more and more onerous… I’ve seen highly competent all-rounders retiring at average ranks, and relatively bush-league individuals fast-tracked to higher levels in no time at all. Sometimes, getting too involved in this petty game of cat and mouse really doesn’t feel worth it, especially when you have a family to look after, but alas the world doesn’t always bend to our will easily. 

I guess successes and debacles are always part of the voyage, but as our Guwahati saga begins, I have nothing but heartfelt gratitude for all my friends at Panipat for all the fond memoirs, and my well-wishing seniors for their constant guidance and support. On the personal front though, I’m relieved that Guwahati is treating us a lot better than Panipat ever did, with a wide mishmash of places to brighten up our evenings and the weekends. As the Dutch writer, Corrie Ten Boom once said: “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

Wishing everyone a happy and safe Diwali'2021... 

A special thanks to our respected CGM & GM for gracing my farewell at Panipat! Au revoir until we meet again...

Resurgence

After having been posted at Panipat for nearly six long years, I guess it is finally time to move again, thanks to my life’s first official transfer, to a place none other than the gateway of North-East India, Guwahati. To say that this order was a shocker would be an understatement, as so many in our company have tried for the same in vain, Guwahati being one of only two major refinery locations under the Indian Oil banner (the other being Baroda), where you do not have to run to another city for the nearest airport, and the only one out of the two to be situated in the lap of nature.

But these aren’t normal times, are they? Yeah! I’m talking about COVID-19, a pandemic which has again raised its loathsome head in our country, with this wave being far worse than the first, with more than 350,000 new cases being reported daily and no signs of slowing down. Medical systems are on the brink of collapse, with a severe deficit of oxygen being faced across most major hospitals pan India, and Govt. organizations and public sectors diving into the mix, converting industrial grade oxygen to medical grade, and supplying thousands of tonnes of this life saving resource to the nearest cities. The air-force too have been tasked to airlift liquid oxygen tankers and mobile oxygen generation units to locations being overrun by the corona virus. Even the ongoing vaccination process promises to save you only from the severity of the disease rather than to prevent contracting the virus in the first place. These turbulent eddies have a grim outlook indeed! But life must go on as always...

Personally, despite the challenges involved, I’m happy with the anticipation of settling at a new place. Well, not completely new though... Our family might have chosen to settle at Pune for the long term, but my parents grew up in the North-East, with my father hailing from Shillong and my mother from Guwahati itself, making it my ancestral place of sorts. The tales of my great grandfather, Prof. Atul Ch. Dutta, who was the founding father of the Botany Department of Guwahati's 116 years old Cotton University, are legendary. And the memory of my grandparents’ glory days will forever be linked to that titular Assam-style house near Paltan Bazaar, proudly standing to this date, surrounded by concrete highrises. Sad that the tenants to whom we’ve rented the place, could hardly understand its significance to us.

Anyway, although some might call this transfer ill-timed due to present global circumstances, I would say the timing couldn’t have been any better. Not only does it give me an opportunity to trace back my roots, but one must admit that after a certain while spent somewhere other than probably one’s home, one simply outgrows the place, which is exactly how I feel about Panipat now. Other than leisure, although I have put in some of the best work of my career in the past couple of years here, be it the actual assignments or the necessary peripherals, it has unfortunately been the least rewarding, with possible effects of distasteful workplace politics, incompetent audit committees having the nerve to criticize those who perform their role for them, and an unwillingness to provide leaves even when practically unavoidable, causing me to lose the little faith I had in the system. A private firm even with all its follies, would know how to value its assets. Oh, well... Having squeezed every bit of worth out of this place and its surroundings, I guess it is time to gracefully bow out.

Thank you Guwahati Refinery, IOCL for the warm welcome!

Teaching the Mind ‘NOT’ to Think

There is a popular saying which I’m sure most of us have heard by now, that ‘the brain is a GOOD SERVANT, but a TERRIBLE MASTER’, an adage that I’ve laughed off without much thought till date. After all, we are our brains, aren’t we? But I’ve finally begun to appreciate the symbolism behind this axiom, which is actually trying to tell us to avoid cursory irrational thoughts, by which the mind can be plagued from time to time. Remember that old drill where you are not supposed to think about the 'pink elephant'? I bet most of you just did exactly that!

I have beared upon some of the theoretical aspects of this topic in few of my previous articles including ‘Abstraction’, ‘A Different Perspective’ and quite recently in ‘Emotional Equilibrium’. But the question now is how it can be practically inculcated. Although some might talk about meditation as a possible solution, let us be honest that in today’s ultra-busy lifestyle, hours of daily meditation might not always be feasible... So I decided to device a thought experiment!

Imagine you are at your office desk working on an excel sheet, and your mind begins to wander when you want it to focus. Just choose a cell towards the centre of the very file you are working on, highlight it in your favourite colour, and simply concentrate on that highlighted cell with your entire mind. I chose the colour green as it represents nature, and brings with it a certain sense of peace for me. If you still get senseless ephemeral thoughts during this exercise, then imagine a similar ‘green screen’ in your mind as well, and gradually try to increase the duration of your focus. In my case, my first few distractions were at intervals of about 1 minute each and then when I rivetted my eyes harder, the interval begun to increase and gradually went up to almost 5 minutes at a stretch, which I’d say is decent progress.

The objective here is to reach the maximum ceiling of mental perfection allowed by our singular personal circumstances, which in my case couldn't get more nonpareil. After all, each one of us is running an empire in our own right and can’t always afford to think of the past battles it took to get our kingdom established, even if those memories are as winningly fond as mine, or anything else that might creep up once in a while, within the extremities of one's mind.

I’ve kept this one short, but I hope it helps...

***FOCUS***

College Feels Revisited

As my sis-in-law begins her college journey away from home next week at MMU Mullana, a visit to the campus took me back to my own voyage at IIT (BHU) Varanasi which ended five years back. Watching groups of students chatting at the cafeteria reminded me of the lunches my friends and I used to share at VT in the BHU campus back in the day, its dosa being my most favorite till date. And who could forget Chaubey ji’s juice corner or the fresh smell of dahi-jalebi at HG in the weekend mornings or that yummy chole-samose and tea almost every evening at LC, the cobbled walkways being witness to so many of our stories, not to mention those who were here before us as well as those who are yet to adorn these hallowed grounds in the times to come... The small things are the ones that you remember the most, like ‘hocruxes’ holding pieces of you!

The day you start out at college, you step onto a blank canvas, which you can paint as you want. And while some make clever strokes with their brushes, with an overall vision of a final portrait, others flounder around with a blotch here and a streak there… 2020 truly brought down the curtain on a decade full of volatility and changes, as many of our batch-mates get nestled into their lives and tie the knot, while some hopeless dolts hilariously get hitched to their ousted college hand-me-downs, helping them keep up their façade, in a futile attempt to cover up their past fiascos. Oh! Well…  I crossed that finish line a long time back and I’d have to say my 5-year sketch turned out exactly as intended. I guess once a hard-nosed crazy hatter, always a hard-nosed crazy hatter, eh? Haha... It is all about the continuum for my generation now, moving along the creases of our own choosing, for those of us who have been fortunate enough, and trying to make the best of what's left, by others with a relatively sour deal. When one plays the game hard in the big boy's league, the results are likely to be hardcore too!

But, at present this is all about my sis and her journey henceforth… Those final year students at MMU giving my wife and I strange looks as our new faces walked down the department hallways in full confidence, was beyond comical! Little could they have guessed that we were a lot senior even to the last yearites there, albeit from starkly different fields of law and engineering, until obviously we introduced ourselves to the professors of the dental school. Having our lunch at the university mess amongst the deafening clanking of cutlery, which could be heard from half a mile away, was something we had sorely missed. It is funny how time passes…

I wish I get the opportunity to revisit my own college campus some day with my wifey in the near future, as some things just never get old. So much has happened since those golden days, I have almost begun to forget some of the names of the popular spots I used to hang out with my friends at, which is never a good sign. Nonetheless, right now I would just like to congratulate my sis, Shreya, on having made it to this juncture, despite a worldwide pandemic still reeking havoc globally, albeit with a few vaccines on the verge of commercial production here in India. I’m sure her generation will probably be the first to experience regular long term online classes and a lot else, something I would like to hear from my sis herself, over a cup of tea someday.

Alas! I guess the time has finally come for someone else to recite her college tales from here on out…

WISHING YOU THE VERY BEST FOR THIS NEW CHAPTER OF LIFE!!!...