Page3 Stuff

The other day one of my journalist friends wanted me to go and cover one of the page3 parties on behalf of her. She was supposed to go and write about that, but then she had some personal emergency, and she asked me if I could go and just check out.

I went there in my normal jeans and kurta, but then when I went there the place looked kind of out of world. I have never been to such parties before, and everyone was like so polished and  artificial. There was hardly any man who was not in suit, and if at all there was any guy with the jeans, then he was like majorly hep-shep, with long hair and atleast couple of pierceing somewhere on the face. Everything looked so clean from outside, and I did not even talk to anyone, did not even shake hands, wondering if dust from my hands might spoil those nice suits. And ofcourse all women were also very expensively dressed.  There was this wiping of hands with tissue with each and every bite of food that you take, the size of starters were like very small, and waiters running left and right trying to ensure that everyone had atleast something to eat or drink.

The feeling was weird, but it was fun observing people. But then twenty minutes or so I got bored, because things seemed kind of repetitive. I just left wondering if I ever go this rich will I be attending these kind of Page3?

Taking the first step

The other day I was reading Seth Godin, and one thing that he said really struck me.

He said, look at your outbox and see how many mails that you sent out were the replies to incoming mails and how many were self initiatied emails. This could give you an indications of how time do you send in "reaction" as to "action". 

Ofcourse this does  not apply to everyone, but still i found this simple analysis very powerful.

So many times we just end up in life just waiting for something to happen and reacting and not acting. How many times we wait for some other person to start conversation, go over to adjacent cube to start talking instead of letting time go, in a gathering waiting to be forced to come forward to share the experience rather than volunteering, waiting for life to happen instead of making it happen.

Now whenever I reply to email, I have become little concious, wondering if I could have initiated that or should I start some similar conversation with some other person.

Cheers.

Happy Monday.

Tata Jagriti Yatra comes to an end..

11Jan, 8am, as soon as the train landed up in to the Mumbai central the yatra had ended. The journey across India for 18 days, through humidit of trivendrum to chilling cold from Lucknow to Delhi came to the end.

Initially I had thought that I would blog about each and every day of the yatra, but then after the first days things got so hectic that there was no time to blog, and I did not even realize where the 19 days disappeared. 

I am going to blog about the yatra in coming days, about the things I had seen and people whom I met, things that struck me and so on. 

 

Now as I settle down in to my original life style, I cant seem to forget the train. Train had started looking like home,  and somehow I never wanted that thing to end. Telling good bye to everyone that day on mumbai central seemed so difficult, I just felt as if I had know these people for ages, even though 3 weeks back we were strangers. (I just knew 2 people of the 400 people who where there on train)

I learnt so many subtle things during the trip, things which I would not even realize. For one I remember first few days, everyone had their own set of things, tooth pastes, slippers, and so on, and as days went by people started sharing things like tooth pastes, soaps, lunch and dinner plates, chappels, sometimes even towels. 

I learned to sleep on the platform, well there is nothing much to learn there, but then, now I know that i can survive on the platform and use the railway waiting rooms for taking bath. I have never been fussy in life about luxurious but this trip even took things little further. 

Also more than anything, it is just a new refreshing look at life. We just get caught in office/work/gym/class kind environment and sometimes we can never get the chance to look at ourselves properly, and we just fail to appreciate certain things, and there is always a hand to hold,when I  meet different people from marketing,  people do tend to treat me in certain way, and expect certain things and behavior from me because they know I am a tech marketing corporate world.

But in train it was completely different. People from different backgrounds and it is good to talk to people and then try to figure out what kind of person different perceive you as. Like how much better you can speak Hindi and not Hinglish. And then you discover so many things about youself, things that you never noticed or seen before. There are so many things that different people can teach and things and small things that touch you and give you a entirely different perspective to things. 

I have come back all energetic and refreshed, with number of things that I want to do in my life. More importantly I have made great friends some of them I am sure will remain for a long time to come.

Now that I am typing this from my marketing conferences, strange kind of hangover is there, it seems like a very plesant dream.  It was like someone picked me up from your comfortable home/office setting and placed me in carnival with 350 different people, totally different way of life, and then dropped me back all of sudden back to my orginal life with loads of distinct memories, smells, sounds even though now they seem so distant. But then  constant scraps in facebook remind me that it was not a dream.

--

Goli

Related Reads:

Getting the wrong books.

Tata Jagriti Yatra