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By Kiran, June 7, 2010 11:28 pm

I have a friend, he’s a good guy, normal, fun, trustworthy. But I felt bad for him, for not what he is, but what he does. He’s an accountant. I could never fathom myself in accounting, for I only see accounting as a job where a person trades his time for money. No doubt, I am prejudiced. For accountants and collection agents and plumbers and nannies all provide a valuable service to society, and yet I could never embrace any profession in those lines.

I think I am too used to it, where I can wake up every single day and say to myself, what am I going to create today that is going to help somebody do their job, that is going to awe somebody, that is going to make somebody smile. If I was getting paid amply even to make simple widgets, I would have detested such a profession; for that I thank the gods that have smiled onto me and bestowed me the good fortune of not having to do anything repetitive.

I have seldom had a hard time explaining to my reports how redoing something from scratch somehow helps in the bigger picture. I can’t even comprehend how my accountant friend does the same double accounting year after year without ever complaining. Maybe its just that every person is different, and just like every person seeks a different glee, he obtains fulfillment through different means too. And if it is fulfillment that we are all seeking, I have to wonder, is there a fits-all standard that we can measure against, or is it just each one of us telling ourselves to be content with what we have, for the downside could be a lot more unwelcome.

In either case, I can’t help but smile at my good fortune today. For there is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing that compares, when you can do a job where people will come to you and say, “thanks” or “dude, that rocks”, ever so often, and you can go home and wallow in that warm fuzzy feeling and never have to look back and wonder, “what if I was goddamn accountant?”.

Comments (2)

By Kiran, August 16, 2009 3:47 pm

- Boil Toor Dal
- While the dal is on the stove, feel free to roam around, chat on the phone, watch tv, feed orphans, debate healthcare policy and write an op-ed about police brutality
- Go back to the kitchen to find smoke, steam and bemused roommates who are wondering if it is better to bring the fire extinguisher or call the fire department
- Calm them down, turn off the flames and extract the top 20% of the unburned dal
- Transfer the dal to another vessel, realize that there is a slight pungent after-taste to it
- Scour the kitchen for any masala that would subdue the burn taste, in that process, help yourself to all or most of the following: Jeera, Garlic, Coriander Powder, Coriander Powder, Red Chilli Powder
- While you might not always like your food salty, feel free to do a little juggling with the salt shaker and pour at least half a handful
- At that point, since the taste hasn’t changed much, bring in the bigger guns. Don’t worry about quantities, you already have a hail mary pass at this point, just pour to your heart’s pleasing all of the following: Sambar Powder, Pav Bhaji Masala, Cholay Masala
- Curse yourself for not having enough self-control, put discipline and composure on the top five changes to make in life list. The tasting turns into a disaster and spice is overwhelming; the overpowering masalas’ mixture might start giving you light headache, so keep some cold water nearby.
- At this point, remember what your momma told you there are only two things to put in any indian dish when it gets a little too spicy – Tomato Paste, and Half cup of milk
- Now let it boil for another 10 minutes till the aroma wakes up the neighbors and the people across the street

When your’re done, bask in the glory that is your special dish; take a minute, take a deep breath and stand back and appreciate your masterpiece. Its only once or twice in life that your creative juices spill out in full force, and in those moments, you should have but little apprehension about the consequences.

Before you feed it to your unsuspecting roommates, take a photograph from your phone and post it on your blog. And hence here it is.

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By Kiran, July 30, 2009 10:53 pm

mcme…….

I guess, taken on a scale of everything, nothing – leave alone socialism, would work. The catch lies in finding the balance. Basic necessities should not be part of the equation.

People should not have to compete to get food, healthcare, shelter and the likes. The big inequality of it all lies in the government going out of their way, to save corporations while individuals are being pushed into absolute poverty – on to the roads just because they had to go to the emergency room once. The healthcare plan reform is surprisingly a tougher bill to sell than an 800 Billion ’save the financial sector’ bill or trillions of dollars worth of spending on wars.

In short, the key lies in finding a balance and assuring that certain basic human necessities aren’t left to chance just for the sake of capitalism.

Putting this in perspective of the classroom, everyone in the class has more or less equal access to text books, study material and classroom facilities. Now failing the whole class to teach them a lesson, that sounds more like bad dictatorship!!

kiran…….

A government safety net is hardly socialism; as long as the government is not the sole owner and distributor of any good or service, socialism is the last thing that comes to mind. Of course the wars (which are big mistakes and atrocities in the first place and are therefore inexcusable), and the bailouts (which were a stopgap for presumably avoiding a systemic collapse and a subsequent depression) have nothing to do with anti-socialism or smart policy either. But there are two problems with bigger social service network – one, the cost of implementing such an undertaking and two, the problem of free riding. Even California, which spends over sixty billion dollars on public health, still makes healthcare a prominent issue every election, and every year what is the cost of maintaining the same level of services – cutting back from more important spending on education.

In that respect, I think India sets a somewhat perfect example for the rest of the world – the government would hardly spend on healthcare, food would be always scarce and unemployment benefits is an unheard-of concept, but it did build several thousand new colleges, which are churning out world-class citizens that can stand on their own. On the other hand, the ration system in India is one of the most poorly managed systems in the world with rampant corruption and incredible waste; I say that not because its a bad idea, but because implementing such a large social system for so many millions of people is anything but herculean. Which brings me to the second point that social systems work well in the Denmarks, Swedens and Canadas that have less than a fifth of the populace of the United States and sliver of India’s population. There is something to be said about public programs, that they are a nightmare to manage for large number of constituents. Think just healthcare, if there is a cheaper public option tomorrow, then simply the insurers will defer the unhealthy to the public system. Over time, employers will shift to the public system, which will lead to bankruptcies of the public insurers, and the end of the day the real problem of inflated healthcare costs (which is very achievable through tort reform) will never see light.

At the end of the day, there is much to be debated about public programs, and I most religiously agree to the need to cease the rampant wastage on the wars and focus on welfare of citizens, but there are limitations to public programs and there are misconceptions of what socialism means. What I intend to imply is that public programs inculcate tremendous wastage and a degree of dependence, just from the fact that government is poorly run simply because of substandard incentives. More importantly, there is a desperate need to develop incentive-based systems instead of charity-based systems, because as long as there are freebies, people will rest on their asses. And that includes me.

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By Kiran, July 21, 2009 5:10 pm

After spending six weeks with my dad, I always thought I would have enough material to do an la Dreams of My Father memoir. But really, I find myself coming up with only one major bullet point repeatedly. That, there is a an entire generation of folk, my father being a proud constituent, who are more or less omniscient and will subconsciously strive to extent that trait in themselves at any cost. I talk not just about the knowledge of the generations past or just the ideas over the last few decades and their subsequent outcomes that have generally shaped our society, but the actual underpinnings of the all-important causal relationships between these ideas and actors. While it was sometimes annoying how he would make one or two assumptions, use one or two related references, and almost immediately come up with an explanation for how a certain thing works or why something is the way it is, there was an uncanny and sometimes scary accuracy in his conclusions every single instance. Again, the all important lesson there, was that while it is mostly useful to know a little about everything in our world, connecting the dots in-between and drawing conclusions from such seemingly useless facts and news artifacts is what matters.

I think I ended up learning way more about India, the its political and socio-economic landscape in the last two months than I have learned in ten years of history and civics classes. And in the process of applying similar derivations to life and machinations in the Americas, I thoroughly enjoyed having some interesting albeit sometimes heated debates on every possible topic under the sun – from morals, to crime, to futures markets, to women, to how the plumbing under the sink works, to diagnosing autism, to metro rail systems, to vegetarianism. And as I get ready to say good-bye and restart my blur of a life typically filled with careless exploits and incessant list of mostly useless activities, I get the feel that I will miss the good exchange of ideas with him. And though I will probably never be an omniscient as him, my curiosity in understanding the world has definitely perked, and I thank him for that. They say that a father shows you the path, and a mother holds your hand while you start walking on that path. True.

Comments (3)

By Kiran, June 29, 2009 10:23 am

They say that most people are searchers, but unfortunately they don’t know what they are searching for. We search for that to be great moment, the fulfilling job, the wonderful spouse, the miracle cure, the purpose of being, and sometimes even for the meaning of the soul. Some searches end with victory at the finish line and some searches only beget more searches. Every victory and every loss, every celebration and every tear of despair, every toast and every consolation, don’t just shape our perspective on new quests, but also make up the very essence of who we are.

Sometimes the answer is as simple as three words, sometimes the answer is as complex as our dna, sometimes the answer is vague and metaphorical and sometimes it is straighter than Tell’s arrow. And in that momentary revelation, when the answer materializes itself for all but a flash, its ironic that we seldom realize that we already knew what it was all the way along. And suddenly we grow an appreciation for the question that we turned over and over in our heads, reshaped and reworded and extended  into six other sub-questions. Once again, I find myself retraining my monkey brain to stop worrying about the answers and start enjoying the journey that the question entails. But at the same time, I have of late taken to relishing the answers, waiting for them to take form, and subsequently on those rare auspicious occasions when they do reveal themselves, revel in the however brief euphoria. For after all, we are but mere mortals.

So I say cheers to those few moments in life when we find the one answer makes all those questions irrelevant, when we realize that a whole new future is about to unfold unto us, to those few moments when the most perplexing of problems disentangle into pure colors, to the times when the sense of joy is only overtaken by the desire to express it, and to those fleeting events which make us realize that we are only as happy as the people we love.