Careers & Girlfriends

Sometimes we make the strangest comparisons to situations we face. This comparison may not be one of those strange ones, but I'm forced to believe jobs are just like girlfriends. You must be wondering how I came to this profound conclusion, well the truth is I'm at a crossroad in my career. Not to sound pompous but I regularly get offers to switch, which I usually turn down because I'm happy where I am. But the one I recently got was special, regardless of the financials (which was good but to me has never really been very important) I was sold a dream, a chance to start something big. I was sold a challenge and who turns down a challenge?

Initially it seemed like a very easy decision to make. My mind said “Take it” but as time went by, my heart said “Wait, think about it”. And for quite a while I've been in and out of a decision and still stand undecided with just a day left to decide.

So, as I was lying in bed last night sleepless and undecided, I remembered how I had felt like this a few years back not in any way related to jobs but girlfriends. What I realized is that leaving a job for another is as difficult as leaving someone you've been in a relationship with for someone else. The thing with me is that I've never been the type to just come to work and go home. Since we spend more time at work with colleagues than we do with our family, we might as well make work our second home, learn to love the place and the people. And I've been fortunate enough to work with some of the most beautiful people I know, honest and downright awesome colleagues and team mates.

I remember when I was about to join Mccann MRM it was love at first sight, like when you see a girl and you say “Dammit I want her, and get her”. Where I work now is a different story, I fell in love with the place along the way, and like I said, it feels like home now. It’s like one of those situations where, you get into a relationship not too sure about it, but over a period of time, you start to see the beauty of the person and you fall in love. That’s what the ride has been for me so far.

How do I move forward…which path will I choose…I still don’t know!

What Makes You Beautiful

Ever wondered what makes a woman beautiful? A lot of people use the word beautiful very casually, but not me, I choose to use it more judiciously. I feel for a woman to be called beautiful she needs to have a few qualities. A woman can be attractive, hot, sexy or pretty, but not beautiful.  

For a woman to qualify as beautiful she needs more than just a pretty face maybe not even a pretty face. She needs to have certain things in her character that takes her beyond the rest. A pretty face will make you smile, but a beautiful woman makes you happy. You can miss a pretty face, but a beautiful woman…you cannot live without. A beautiful woman will take the time to notice you, while a pretty face will work over time to get you and many others notice her. A pretty face is easy to notice, you see her, along with all the other strangers (nothing special), but a beautiful woman is noticed only by few and that makes her special. It makes you special too, for seeing something in her that no one else does. 

I do admit that pretty faces are easy to fall for, but in time, a pretty face is never why a relationship lasts, it’s the character of the person, her qualities that you fall in love with and also what makes her beautiful. Which brings us to a quote from my favourite poet John Keats, he famously wrote

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”

And Joseph Addison famously wrote:
“Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.” What Joseph Addison on the other hand meant by beauty here, is the pretty face I was talking about. 

So many young girls work so hard to look beautiful (as they would like to be seen) without knowing that beauty is only skin deep, and beautiful is them as a person, their personality, they way they carry themselves. I recently saw a documentary where Korean girls, go through painful cosmetic surgeries just too make their eyes look bigger. It doesn't stop there, all around the world girls go for breast implant, re-constructive cosmetic surgeries trying to have the perfect, eyes, nose, lips, face, feet etc.  oh and even the perfect ‘V’ (if you know what I mean). Yes there’s a cosmetic surgery even for that part of the female body. Botox, facelift…Where does it stop? I don’t know, and it’s disturbing. If you've seen ‘Here Comes Honey Boo Boo’ you’ll know what I mean. 

 “It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.”

ANNE BRONTE

On the flip side of things, I do remember a very pretty friend of mine crying to me one day. She said her beauty was a curse, because no one ever cared to look at who she was as a person. She cried about how she was tired about boys proposing to her all the time. I felt bad for her for a while till I asked her “What about your boyfriend?”, to which she replied “Oh…I don’t love him, I just keep him around to take me here and there, I want a guy to love me for who I am”.  She’s still single… 

Is that me in the movie Silver Lining Playbook?

I watched The Silver Lining Playbook yesterday, and it felt like I was watching myself on a mirror. At first I thought this dude (Bradley Cooper) is so lame, but as I watched on I began to see how I was just like him (his character in the movie). Well for those who have not seen the movie here’s a short synopsis {Warning Spoiler Alert} The movie is about Pat Solatano who is released into his parents' care after eight months of treatment for undiagnosed bipolar disorder. He comes home from work one day and finds his wife in the shower with another man getting jiggy, he loses his cool and beats the shit out of him, which leads him to being sentenced and treated at the mental hospital. But his recovery seems far from certain, when he stops taking his medication and becomes increasingly obsessed with winning back his estranged wife, from whom he has a restraining order bla bla bla. {Spoiler End}

As we sat there watching and laughing at his crazy antics, I began to see a lot of myself. In my mind I was like, “shit, I said the same thing, did the exact same thing, feel exactly same way” and was equally obsessed with my girlfriend no more. In my mind I knew we were never getting back together, but denial keeps that uninspiring false hope alive. “If I change, be a better person, we can get back together”. That’s what you tell yourself every day, and deep down inside you know that that’s bullshit. And the sad part is that, it keeps you from appreciating new people that come into your life.

I just read a blog (read it) in which the writer compared love to drinking whiskey (how apt lol) and I must say she described it very well. If falling in love is like drinking whiskey then breaking up must be the hangover... there’s no curing it (well there is one and that’s having another glass of whiskey but I don’t recommend it). And just like curing a hangover, moving on is the hardest part, but, I've learned that if you felt that love in ever fibre of your body even for that very short time, you must be grateful to that person for it. Some people go through an entire lifetime happily married with kids never feeling it.

I don’t even know why I'm writing this shitty review/recommendation cum emotional outburst. A lot of people will be reading this and be like “Dammit another emotional blog post!” but come on guys gimme a break, I'm an emotional guy :-D.  Anyway what I really wanted to say is that you should watch the movie. Stellar performance by Bradler Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence and the supporting actors. But I must say the married guy in the movie was so damn depressing…I mean why the fuck did you get married to be so miserable?. And I wonder if it really is that way in real life? All that trouble to be so miserable...

PS. I'M NOT BIPOLAR!

Watch the movie trailer.

A stranger in my own world...

It feels strange to be back in Delhi this time around. I never really missed Aizawl when I come back from the winter holidays, but this time I feel lost. Did I fall in love and leave my heart behind? No. Do I miss my family? No, they’re all here in Delhi for an extended vacation. Friends? Yeah but not enough to make me feel this way. So why do I feel so out of place? I can’t really put my finger on it and say this is why, but something’s not right.

I’m forced to conclude that this might be one of the side effects of growing old. As we grow older the need to belong somewhere or with someone grows with us. And for people like me who've lived their entire life more or less like a vagabond, never belonging to a place, it gets confusing. I was born in Shillong then we moved to Aizawl where I stayed for 7 years, then went back to Shillong, stayed there for 7 years, then moved to Delhi and have been living here since. So where is home for me? I don't know yet and screw you Michael Buble!

They say “home is where the heart is” and I think I can believe that but my heart is right here, doesn't belong to anyone and nobody’s heart belongs to me. So there’s no hope of finding a home in that department anytime soon either. But I often ask myself how in the world did I become so unbearably depressing and I guess it’s time and growing old…but why do I feel so old DAMMIT I'm only 30!

I can honestly say that I’m not the man I used to be emotionally and physically. In fact, I wasn't always this fat and unattractive nor was I always this intimidated by women. There was once a time when I was a slim, smooth talking, confident son of a gun, and like the song said “Girls’ faces formed the forward path, from phony jealousy to memorizing politics of ancient history…” :-p
A broken heart or two can change a man.

Aaahh but gone are the days of magicians and magic potions, I could do with a few potions right now. 

P.s. Screw you too Chris Daughtry!