Escape from Reality

My friend Rajini got her posting in Chennai ... Oh no not again .. she had already spent 2 years of her PG in Tamil Nadu ... Being from the North, she did'nt find the place very comfortable. The food, the language, the culture, the glaring stares her very-comfortable shorts brought her, eating without a katori, the people and their obsession with flowers, turmeric, powder and gold ...aaah ... it was just too much .. Not again ..

She tried all tricks in the book .. spoke to the HR, feigned illness, told about ailing parents, blah blah.. nothing worked. She finally went and in two weeks she fell critically ill and had to be sent back to her hometown for "complete bed rest for 3 weeks".

Another day i woke up at six ( quite early by our stds) to study for the end term..5 more ppts left... i knew this would be the last time in life i would need to study the subject ( hated it, didnt have an option though) and coaxed myself to study. Just four more hours and i consoled myself saying "you can gift the book away and watch a movie and have biryani once the exam is over". Thus i started off.. and suddenly i heard screeching sounds.. bikes flying off.. only then did i realize that it was quarter to ten and people were rushing off to the exam; i had DOZED off ... and those 5 ppts were staring at me!!

Ashok was fed up with his personal life. He was working in an MNC, a high paying job, a luxurious life.. all was fine but he hated to go home. He simply could not get along with his wife and was planning to file for a divorce. He knew every evening there would be a fight, a half hearted meal and a only silence. The problem was that he was simply too ambitious and did not feel spending time with his lonely wife was important. His take was that he was the bread winner and all that he did was only to ensure a comfortable life for them. Inorder to avoid the fights , he wanted to go home late, work on weekends too. Thus he became a workaholic over worked and things became worse..

All these and more are escape mechanisms, which aid us in getting away from reality. The ultimate objective is Freedom. We do not want to be bound by things we do not like; to escape it, our subconscious adopts the method that works (not necessarily the easiest or best). Sometimes we are not even aware that we would want to escape, it simply comes from the subconscious.

Psychologists give three escape mechanisms

1. Authoritarian:

When it comes to an action to be done out of us, (which we dont like) we would always be happy to pass it on, by either submitting ourselves at others feet or by making people fall at our feet.

For Ex: We pass the blame or decision making to others, so we can simply avoid being blamed later. Erich Fromm says

" There are two ways to approach this. One is to submit to the power of others, becoming passive and compliant. The other is to become an authority yourself, a person who applies structure to others. Either way, you escape your separate identity."

2. Automaton:

Fuse yourself with the society, follow the "norms" and remain hidden. This way no one expects you to take up the responsibility or has any expectations out of you.

"If I look like, talk like, think like, feel like... everyone else in my society, then I disappear into the crowd, and I don't need to acknowledge my freedom or take responsibility. It is the horizontal counterpart to authoritarianism."

3. Destructiveness:

It could be both self or others. Suicides, falling ill like in the first case, crime, etc are the result of such mechanisms.

" if a person's desire to destroy is blocked by circumstances, he or she may redirect it inward."

So in most cases when we find ourselves failing to do something we do not like but is expected of us, we can assume there is a fair probability of an "escape from reality" mechanism involved.

Filler

Its been a very long time that i ve even paid a visit to my own blog. Now i don't want to send out wrong signals that i am held up wid other important work blah blah ....

Just that Twitter gave me an outlet to vent my emotions out instantly . That left me with little opportunity to ponder over issues and some food for my blog.

Hope to come up with something interesting very soon ...

Meanwhile my head is still spinning from the effect of trying to cram too much crap in too little time ....

The life behind us

I still remember the day when my aunt was supposed to return home by 5; but that day , the clock showed 8 and she had still not returned. My uncle who was quick to panic , started to make calls to common friends to check if she was with any of them. Not getting a positive response , he called up relatives and all of us started the search for my aunt , each in a direction . It was 9:30 when we almost gave up the search that she reached home safe and sound.She was delayed by a traffic jam and a tyre burst to the bus she was travelling in .
What an unncessary amount of tension we had gone through. The very next day my uncle got her a cellphone (they cost a bomb those days).

How different life was in those cellphone "less" days. True it is one of the most useful inventions andd we are so hooked to it that one hour of battery down would be capable of giving us the same amount of tension that we had when my aunt went " missing". Today it is difficult to imagine life without a cellphone. Slowly the STD booths ( those blue/ yellow colored ones) that used to occupy every turn in the street are slowly disappearing too.
We are so used to withdrawing money from the atm's that we consider withdrawing money from the bank a banal ritual. We are too lazy to walk down to the kirana shop next lane , so we call him to get a bottle of coke home delivered while we sit cozily and watch a movie. We are so busy working on the Laptops ( chatting )that we fail to notice that our waist size is getting wider in proportion to the screen of the TV/laptop getting thinner. Gone are those days when shopping would be a fun event with the members of the family taking hours to get ready and the children all excited, spend the whole evening walking the streets of the bazaar while the ladies of the house are ever dissatisfied with the variety being shown and the ritual winds by having food outside. Today everything is done at the click of a button online ( we just have to believe that the product is as good as it looks online).
Our life without the elevator in the apartment, our ipods while on a journey, a laptop without the internet connection, with a one hour powercut a day (there used days when this one hour would be the time when neighbours caught up on gossips and gyan, the children played uninterruptedly, grandfathers told stories about the stars in the sky etc ..), would be difficult ot even imagine....
Agreed these new technologies have improved our lives manifold but the fact remains that it has been successful in reducing our creative, socializing and physical abilities...

Can you beat it ???

The thought of working in an organization ,the feel of the status associated with a job,the thought of contributing to your family ( atleast stop being a liability ), getting paid , the first salary, getting your mom a saree with the first salary and the million dollar expression she would give when she sees it, going on to buy that expensive watch you always dreamed of owning,.............
Being a fresher, for me these are only too alluring.... at this stage you are desperate for any job that would come your way ( profile i mean ).You are fresh from college , all out into the world to prove yourself , with oodles of ambition and energy and just about any job seems interesting.
But on thinking further, any job that i take up , say 10 years down the lane would i still have the drive in me to wake up every day afresh with ideas, enthusiastic about going to work et al ... ????
I had this argument with a senior ; saying that for me to be atleast interested in going to the workplace 10 years later ( now if i have a loan to be repaid then i have no other option than to work :-x ) i should atleast get into an interesting /challenging profile ....and he countered it saying every job tends to be monotonous in the long run .. it is upto you how you flavour it up and make it interesting to you. I did not buy his theory flat , but on musing over it , i feel he has a point .. maybe he is right , or may be i still have my point ...
well the point is is there a way to break the monotony ?
Should the job be interesting or the person be creative enough to keep himself alive with passion ?

Zara Hatke ....

I have always admired and watched with awe ( most of the times with my mouth wide open and a smile that always creeps up my face unknowingly ) these wonderful pieces of art (The minds that designed them should be paid tributes ).For a moment i am transported into the world that they've designed and lose track of everything at hand. Be it the latest ZooZoo world or the ever green airtel and Hutch (formerly) ads ... Apart from brilliant scripts and music what is it that makes them click ?
Any amount of flowery words would not be able to do justice to the creative execution of these ads . So i decided to capture those wonderful moments here ,, and let the pictures weave their magic on you .These are some of my favourite ....
1.The Saint Gobain one (Comic quotient)
2.Airtel (Emotional Quotient)
3.Hutch puppy (Emotional Quotient)

4.Hero Honda Splendor (Amazing mix)

5.Vodafone Music Phone (Mast filmy)

6.Fevicol (Evergreen comic)

7. Pulsar Hoodibaba Ad (What a storm it created )

8. And of course the Zoozoos ..

A train of Errors

The Rickshaw did not even halt fully when i find myself jumping out of it and running across the road. I knew i was very late and that the chances of my missing the pick up van and ending up late in office were high .I walk the entire strtch of the overbridge clutching my handbag ,scarf , hanky , mobile (all in one hand!!!) and the ticket in the other hand ( this hand is usually kept free to defend the self from assaults (pushing) of fellow commuters (all of them seem to have been sumo wrestlers ) ). Just towards the end i see the Ticket checker when i realised that i forgot to punch my ticket .Very grudgingly i went back , punched it and ran towards the platform (by this time i too had become a sumo wrestler "in the making" ).Just as i set foot on the platform the train starts ..Bad luck !! Cursing the train i wait for the next train and the wait seems to be everlasting.

Finally a slow train comes crawling and it seems to be on a slow motion sight seeing ride ( My BP shoots and i curse myself this time for boarding this bullock cart).There i am clinging on to some rod sticking out of somewhere, doing a balancing act , standing on one foot .. and here i see two girls happily leaning on me and chatting away to glory . In the midst of this torture , i become spectator to two women picking up a quarrel and hurling at each other the finest of "gaaliyan" just because one stepped over the others foot!!! (here everyone would be happy if they get a place to keep just one foot on the floor and ... ) . Amidst this commotion a little girl comes selling trinkets at throw away prices and i see all the ladies forgetting their balancing act and rush towards the girl (God some breathing space atlast )...By the time i reach Goregaon am drenched in sweat (Havent even reached office ).But even as the train slows down i find myself being pushed out and there i land on the platform. Picking myself up and thanking God for being alive , i walk towards the bus stop.
Realising that i still could make it to the pick up , i start running towards the stop. But just as luck would have it , the pick up leaves in front of my sight , me being late by a few seconds .This time ,cursing the driver,i take an auto and finally reach the office towers , only to realise that i left my access card at home .............
......... And thus i ended up as a fitting finale to the run up of errors , sporting a big visitor sticker (so big just to tell everyone . "hey look at me , i am the one who forgot to get THE access card " )and tagging behind an "escort" the entire day.

Where small is lucrative

The mind is so filled with clutter that it becomes so difficult tomake a simple decision. The decision was to zero down on a topic to write about (Why is it that the most simple of decisions are the toughest to make ? like suddenly somebody asks u tell a joke/ story ... and you are struggling to pull one out of your mental clutter !!! ). Anyways i finally decided to write on one of my passions .. (God now this is really simple .. but again what will i write on when i am done with all my favourites !!! )

Finally the world (automotive ) is waking up to the fact that small can be powerful, beautiful and of course lucrative .It all started with the ambitious project of the Nano and then within a year we have almost all the top players competing to launch their own versions of a car in the small segment.Toyota , which never wanted to step out of the luxury car segment also wants to desperately launch a small car.

Inspite of the recent slump in the automobiles segment , it did not deter these makers from setting to launch their cars in 09- 10 . The segment has become lucrative because of

1. Number wise :A rise in the upper middle class population ( largely due to white collar employees )

2.Buying power wise :The recent pay revision, lucrative salaries (corporate sector )

3. Cars wise :Attractive Variety and style in the new models / versions not compromising on quality

4.Behaviour wise :These new upper class consumers have always dreamt of owning a car ( when they were in the lower middle class ; and jump at an early opportunity to fulfill this dream )

Moving further ,the new launches lined up for the next 10 months are refreshing and attractive . Take a look

1. The JAZZ by Honda

2. The RITZ by Maruti

3. The NANO by Tata

4.The BEETLE by Volkswagen in the small cars segment .