M4

Last year, I fell into this rabbit hole of fountain pens, quite serendipitously. At about the same time, I had changed jobs and found myself between a rock and a hard place. A lot of things transpired between then and now and while my fountain pens and journal kept me company along with cute cats on Instagram, I couldn't find the time or the space in my mind to share my experiences on the interwebs.  But lately, I realized that I was stressing myself out over things I can't control. And while I fixed a few, there have always been new and very demanding challenges popping up. So, what the hell! Here goes nothing.   Join me as I introduce you to my cherished beginner fountain pen collection, showcasing a range of exceptional writing instruments. Among the many choices available, the Pilot Metropolitan was my very excellent entry point. Its combination of sleek design, reliable performance, and affordability makes it a perfect choice for those new to the world of fountain pe...

  The year is 2021. And we have all been stuck at home for about a year now, due to ‘a global pandemic’- I swear I’ll throw up if I hear this phrase one more time.   I was in a strange place in my life - there have been several false starts and instances where things were finally looking up and well - at work and in personal life- until they weren’t. I had time on my hands and space in my mind under circumstances where both were unbidden for my mental health. I also had some dispensible cash from all the staying-home that I have been doing this past year.  My trusted Google told me that all these could be put to good use in some investments (yeah, no!) or travel (yeah, right!) or to start some collections (yeah?!). The next thing I searched on Google was “what do people collect?”. Yachts, jet planes and cars came up. I wondered who Google thinks I am. So I modified the search to “what are cheap things to collect?” A long list which included stamps, coins, trading cards, c...

“These are dark and unprecedented times,” read all of my emails over the past 3 weeks. And I now sign off my phone calls and meetings with a “stay home, stay safe”, though I know that there’s no way anyone can NOT stay home; after all the police are making sure of that! I for one have been tracking the spread of the virus since it was merely a curiosity in China. That was 7 weeks ago, though it feels like donkeys years. In a sense, I saw this lockdown coming, and so also the ensuing chaos. I made a choice to stay put, fighting the instinctive urge to run home where my parents were. In that sense, I don’t deserve to feel surprised by the turn of events. Nothing changed for me - except for some minor inconveniences in the form of increased chores of cooking and cleaning, and perhaps none of that weekend loitering around town. But I must admit that I have felt overwhelmed more than once in these 6 weeks of isolation. The closest a friend could put in words is to call it “a situa...

“Those are not MY memories,” said the girl when someone asks her how she could bear to come to her ancestral home in Berlin, “after all they’ve done to your family here”. She’s a Jew visiting from Israel. I put my pen down and stared for a whole minute at my “memories” that I was trying to fill in a worn out journal; one that I’ve been struggling to keep up with in the recent past. One that nobody would ever read again- not even myself. I used to share stories on this blog a while ago. I thought they’d make me sound cool and smart, I guess. It’s been over 3 years since I wrote something not on slides and not for work, particularly in this blog. There was a story I started writing, but never saw the light of day, because I didn’t like the climax. Yes, the very climax that I wrote myself. So I printed myself a copy, tore up the last chapter and abandoned the rest of the pages in a dark corner somewhere. These 3 years have been eventful: I had stuck with one job all along, ...

-Not Hamlet. Not Gimlet either. “That moment, I felt like jumping out of that window,” he said. “Why didn’t you?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I am notorious for such out-of-time comments. “Dude,” he said with what sounded like exasperation, “I’m hungry. Besides, that’s gonna happen soon anyways.” The last time we talked was exactly a year ago and I vaguely remember him talking of something not very different. Decembers never did him any good- Poor guy! Last year, he had just been ditched by a girl he loved. This year, he was ditched yet again. By the same girl. So, yeah! Anyways, while I was thus regaled confided in, I was part-amused, part-appalled at his monumental stupidity. I mean, I got burnt only once before I’m awfully cautious every morning with the geyser. Mind you, this was the guy who once told me: “A tragedy is that moment where a hero comes face to face with his true identity…” Of course I later found he nicked the line from Aristotle. ...

“Sorry, I didn’t get your name,” she said with an accent that sounded a little too normal than what is heard in this part of the world. Mentally, I was in the vacant space between two very interesting tasks I had listed for my workday. Physically, I was in a crowded cubicle in a cloistered corridor in a cramped floor of a marketing office. Hey, the world itself is crowded and the planet is cramped, what am I complaining about! I was expecting yet another of the continuous stream of pretentious agency folk that were filing along this corridor over the past couple of days. They had no choice as it was the only path to the coffee machine and I had no choice as there was no other seat vacant on the floor. Sometimes, the voices carried over from the closed meeting room next door, perhaps when someone wanted a quick escape from all the storm in the teacup inside. Strong, confident, assertive and the kind of adjectives that self-help writers attribute to successful orators could very...

I’m a consultant, a ‘con’sultant. One of the group of tens of thousands of people in tens of organizations who claim to be masters in their trade, who claim to know about running companies better than the people who run companies, though many consultants have never run a real company- let alone build one. Well, that’s the charm of it all- you get to tell people how to mind their business! Come on, you can’t deny it’s fun! Ever taught a little kid how to hold a cricket bat? Imagine now that little kid is a Sachin in the making. And imagine the teacher being someone like me whose knowledge of cricket ends with ‘an over has 6 balls, and they use just 1 ball really to bowl all 6 times’. Yeah, that ironic! Now that we got that out of the way, here’s what we do in a simple sentence: “we ‘guide’, ‘mentor’, ‘lead’ the legacy of yesterdays’ great firms to the bright dawn of the tomorrows” (Please don’t tell my boss I put it in 1 sentence, he’d treat anything shorter than a full pres...