Gauravonomics Diary

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I have a tendency to try to do ten things at the same time, when most others would only attempt three. This means I fail as often as I succeed.

While it may seem from my bio that I have never really failed, the reality is that I have failed far too many times to remember.

The first two decades of my life were littered with failures so serious that my father told me that he was scared that he’ll have to provide for me for life and my girlfriend asked me how I’ll provide for her if we were married (another girlfriend asked me the same question less than two years back).

At my IIM Bangalore interview, I forgot where I was and talked for a full five minutes about why IIM Kolkata was the perfect business school to study marketing.

At Tata Motors, I think my boss was the only person who really liked me. Everyone else only tolerated me because I put in long hours, negotiated ruthlessly, and got things done.

Some of the cool digital marketing initiatives I led at Tata Motors on Indica V2 Xeta and Indica Vista (also see) almost didn’t happen, at least on the first attempt.

I have always described myself as an atheist, but like everything else with me, my atheism has been angst-ridden. I thought of myself as an atheist not because didn’t want to believe in God, but because I wanted to, and couldn’t.

I grew up in a rather religious family. There was a prayer room in my grandparents’ house in Munger and both Ma and Baba prayed for at least an hour every morning. I remember standing outside the prayer room as a small child, waiting for my grandparents to step out and hand me the prasad. Even my parents had a small wooden temple in their house in Patna and my father would fold his hands and stand in front of it for half a minute before leaving for work every morning. When we had visitors, we took them to the big Hanuman temple near the railway station. When we traveled to another city, we visited all the famous temples. We watched Mahabharat and Ramayan on Doordarshan (and I read all the Amar Chitra Katha comics). We celebrated all the Hindu festivals. We cheered when the VHP activists demolished the mosque at Ayodhya.

I’m a big believer in the idea of being your truest self. When your thoughts and actions are aligned with your truest desires and motivations, you become authentic, even WYSIWYG. By bringing your whole self in sync with itself, you unlock the power within you to accomplish what you wish for, become, let’s say, your fullest self.

The only problem with being your truest self is that there are multiple selves within you –

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large—I contain multitudes.)
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

– and your truest self is often not your best self.

Your truest self is the sum total of your past, your best and worst moments, your biggest triumphs and your most abject failures. Your truest self is like a difficult lover; it’s the self that you most love and most loathe, because it’s the self that’s most you, with all your potential and all your imperfections. It’s easy to become a slave of your truest self because it’s easy to forget that even though your truest self is the sum total of your past, it’s only one of your possible future selves.

(First published on 15-02-2008.)

At the beginning of every year, I use a simple test to measure how well I have done in the previous year. I ask myself if the previous year was the best year of my life so far.

I asked myself this question first in 2001, and after that, for five years in a row, the answer was “yes”. Every year, from 2001 to 2005, was the best year of my life! Imagine that! It felt as if everything I wished for was within my reach; all I had to do was to ask for it and it would be mine. It felt as if every possibility was like a low hanging fruit; all I had to do was to raise my arm and pluck it. My life changed in those five years; I was literally transformed into a new man.

Then, the bubble burst. I had two difficult years in a row. Suddenly, nothing was easy anymore. In fact, the harder I tried, the more difficult it became. Every important aspect of life — love, work, money, health — came to a standstill, or, devolved. I felt frustrated at work, didn’t save any money, broke my heart twice, ignored my interests, ate junk food and put on weight.

So, we are not to
See, hear, smell, touch, taste each other;
Not to meet, talk, write anymore.

All communication is to cease,
All contact is to end, from today.
Wonderful! Exactly what we needed!

Only that, without you,
My verse would die,
Not to say, I.

“Can you bear to hear me
Spoken of as someone else’s?”
You ask me.

“Can you see me
With someone else’s arm
Around my waist?”

“Can you think of
Someone else
Touching me, kissing me?”

“Fuck you!”
I shout,
“Stop it! Stop it now!”

“Can you let someone else
Violate my body,”
You continue, “Fuck me?”

“No, no, no, no”
I answer, almost inaudible,
A catch in my throat.

“Neither can I”, you whisper;
The ‘I’ dissolves away,
Drowns in your tears, dies.

Macabre, masochistic memories
Molest, masturbate my mind.

Dastardly demons of doubt
Haunt me, taunt me in my dreams.

Nocturnal, nemesis-casted notions
Snare me, scare me in sleep.

I wake up with a start, wet with sweat,
Your name on my lips…

I

You lie in your mother’s lap, lost in love,
Floundering in flesh and felicity,
Suckle on her nipple.
You little lips
Tease the tender tense tip,
Wage a wanton war against it,
Cause the brown circle to
Cower, melt away,
Cover, camouflage itself in milk.

II

You run out from the bathroom -
Wet, and wearing next to nothing -
To play hide and seek
In the hubbub of a stinking,
Sewage-strewn side-street
With the asexual abandon
Only a child is capable of.
Your boyish breasts peek out
Of your slip with startling regularity.

III

As you sleep next to me -
Your skin soft and serene against mine -
I imagine myself watching you,
Through twenty odd years, as you,
Not aware of it yet, move towards me,
Prepare yourself to become mine.
And then, I turn towards you
And, in calm curve of your cheek,
See a child who has forgotten her sex completely.

Hold me by my waist, you say,
As my hand wanders (wanders?) away
Up to the assertive thrust of your breast
Or down, down, down to the down on your nest.
As my fingers thus encroach
Upon your frame, you reproach:
‘Not here! Not now! Heavens! What haste!’
Chastened, my hand returns to your waist.

Honey, as I hold you here in rhyme,
You, Love incarnate, as an hourglass, hold Time;
You hold my past, present and future;
And this verse is a mere metaphor
For how tantalizingly near we are
And yet, alas! How far! How far!

May a verbal sot, a word-drunk bard -
Mad on you and verse and words -

Say that being with you is bliss
And offer you a verbal kiss?

May he - hesitant, cautious, chary -
On our second anniversary,

Woo you for the second time?
May he hew his heart in rhyme

And metre? May he lay it at your feet
As his modest anniversary gift?

May he thus express his love
And hope that, in your heart, he

Has a place as permanent as
The place you have in his?