Shaandaar

We had been planning to meet for a few weeks now. We finally did meet on the day of Dusshara. The earlier plan was to go to Kingdom of Dreams. However, they did not have an afternoon show of Zangoora and so we decided to watch Shaandaar instead. One good thing was that we did not have to collect ticket at the counter. M got the printouts of the tickets (very proactively) and we got in without any trouble.

 

We went upstairs and waited in the lobby. M told me this rather scary story of travelling alone in a bus to visit her sister. It ended well so we can laugh off it now. But this is a story that plays itself on every time a female passenger boards a bus. It makes me sad. The question however is – what am I gonna do about it?

 

That conversation was very interesting and it was abruptly ended by theatre staff telling us that the movie had started.

 

Since having watched this movie, I have read many reviews of it. I see people rating it average or above average and I wonder how much variation human beings show in their perception of things and world. At some level, it makes me hopeful. At another level, it makes me question authenticity of these reviews – especially those by critics.

 

I personally found this movie insulting to its audience.  What was the point of the movie? Before we get to that, here is my summary of the story in the movie. Although, some would argue there was none.

 

There is a wedding that is also a business deal. The bride is cute and fat. The groom is an asshole. The half-sister of the bride is hot and falls in love with the wedding planner who is also hot. Father of the bride is weak. Grandmother of the bride is hated by everyone. Mother of the bride does not leave much impression but is hated anyway. Groom's brother is loud and idiotic and does not die at the end.

 

The only thing good about the movie was that it ended. It was excruciatingly long though. There was a 10 minutes long and completely unnecessary segment where Karan Johar made an appearance. In the world of anime, it is called a filler. The movie is filled with annoying fillers.

 

I cannot help but review a movie with regard to social messages that it delivers; stereotypes that it breaks or reinforces. As is clear with the story of the movie, all characters can be describes by a single adjective. My worst moment was when the groom makes fun of the bride in front of everyone and the father of the bride reacts musically. The groom later apologises (again musically) and is promptly forgiven. These are all cases of actions without repercussions; similar to how both lead actors have insomnia but they look fantastic nonetheless.

 

I had read a review of a Bollywood movie (Queen actually) by a Norwegian national and he expressed his annoyance at repetitiveness of events designed to prove how groom in that movie was an asshole. I thought he had a fair point.

 

What are the stereotypes associated with rick folks? They are insensitive, ignorant, disrespecting of poor and willing to trade emotions for money. How true is that stereotype? I think it is oddly off. I think rich people have the education and grooming to understand importance of appearances. Education alone is enough to give them a better view of the world and mould their behaviour that maintains their richness.


The movie could have scarred me for life but I had the pleasure of M's company. Not to rob her off of any mysterious elements but she does not seem to have a dark side. She is in the category of genuinely nice people.

 

We spoke about sunshine's blog and how the way she responded to a situation was inspirational. We spoke about how private jobs compare with government jobs. How she changed her sleeping cycle to be able to read late at night. Inspirational stuff.

 

As with the last time, shaandaar part of the meeting was that there was no hurry to get somewhere else.

CCS - Part 2

In the last post, you read the part one of curious case of S (CCS). S is trying to plan his career with one major objective of correcting his salary. He has an offer from an organization and wants to decide whether he should negotiate his salary with them or straight away decline the offer. He consults his friends to get their perspective and has a list of pros and cons. 

 

Pros: It will be a change of scene and at a leadership position, S will have a lot of say in guiding vision of the organization. 

 

Cons: The organization is little known. It delivers services that do not align with S's primary interest in developing solution and can cause long working hours.

 

Eventually, S decides to decline the offer.

 

Dear reader, you are in for a treat because I got S to write rest of the story himself. As you would see he is a much better writer than I ever was.

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I am S. This is my search for meaning and satisfying closures.

 

I have heard that one should write a story for their ideal reader. Specifically, they should write it with the intent of making their ideal reader pee in their pant with delight. I write this for you.

 

Let me quickly contextualize my frame of mind in these last few months.

 

In September, last year R left the organization and suggested that I should leave it too. I eventually created my resume and gave a series of interviews to eventually learn that I was not very good at them.

 

I also spoke to many experienced people that I respected from my current and previous organization.

 

I spoke to T and he recommended that I read "What you are really meant to do?" He also mentioned to take interests in activities outside work – joining an NGO maybe.

 

I also spoke to S and he mentioned that he would like to see himself as "head of analytics" kind of role where one is generally good with everything but not particularly good at something. The idea appealed to me.

 

I spoke to T2 and he suggested that I should not try too hard to plan my career and go where people welcome me. He asked me how I felt about my current role and I said that I had found it to be enjoying.

 

A asked me to start creating a list of all the projects that I had done and really work on my story in preparation toward interviews. He also wanted me to start created a list of companies, primarily through research on LinkedIn. He kept on reminding me that my stint in dh has been very fruitful majorly because I was well respected and I had time to think about my priorities and do things that I enjoyed.

 

I did all this because I had time at work. I was not particularly busy. The objective of our team was more or less met and there was no clear future pipeline. I remember the conversation I had with M during the time I decided to join my current team and he had asked me to get clarity on what happens when the work is over. That was a good thought.

 

I briefly mentioned in my last post that I discussed about my offer to my manager to get his views on the matter. One repercussion of that discussion was that I needed to change my team. I was still aligned to my current manager so I continued to sit with my existing team. However, all of my work was to be managed by a new guy now. And boy, was he annoying!

 

This new manager does not believe in the concept of listening. He has few things to say and he will say it in most aggressive way and not bother to see your response. At times, he is downright disrespectful. Most of all, there was complete lack of feedback and I kept myself motivated with whatever I could. I did create new visualizations on Shiny and that was good.

 

In summary, things were not great at office and I was not entirely convinced that it would be worse off if I had joined this other organization. So when I was again contact by them at the end of 3 months, I had more positive feeling towards them. After a lot of negotiations they offered me good money and there was an additional incentive of international travel. Eventually, I expected the offer and resigned from dh.

 

My manager asked if there was anything they could do to still keep me with the company and I told him that I was incredibly bored and I just wanted to leave. I asked him to release me early and he was kind enough to accommodate that without much fuss: I really didn't have much dependency anyway.

 

This decision of leaving dh and joining TS was made by keeping a couple of factors in mind. Money was good and if this decision did not turn out to be a good decision then I could always leave. Also, in my previous dealing with assessment of this offer, I had asked opinions from many people and they only seemed to add noise to already existing state of indecision so I had decided to take this decision on my own. I had all the factors identified through my previous discussions anyway.

 

After resigning, I really felt happy for few days. There was some noise around how this could be a bad decision but I had made a decision and these noises were not able to work up my piece of mind.

 

What happened after that?