11.01.07
Without Limits
…the real purpose of running isn’t to win a race. It is to test the limits of the human heart.
I saw this movie, ‘Without Limits’, on Steve Prefontaine, the famous American Olympic runner, a few years ago and somehow haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since. For the unaware, Pre (as he was popularly called) was a long distance runner who at one point held the American record in every running event from the 2,000 meters to the 10,000 meters. The movie is a treat to watch not because it depicts the life of Pre, the sportsperson, but because it depicts the philosophical view that Pre took to running. Pre said ‘the only way I know how to win a race is to run out front, flat out until I have nothing left. Winning any other way is chicken-shit.’ The movie has some outstanding dialogues between his legendary coach, Bill Bowerman, who later on founded Nike, that capture the essence of the way Pre wanted to run a race – flat out, while Bowerman tried convincing him to pace himself through the race and save his best for the last.
Below are some of Pre’s quotes that I particularly liked from the movie:
- To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
- A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself.
- A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.
- I’m going to work so that it’s a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.
- Someone may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.
- The only good race pace is suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die.
- What I want is to be number one.
- Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, ‘I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.’ It’s more than just a race, it’s a style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.
- How does a kid from Coos Bay, with one leg longer than the other win races? All my life people have been telling me, ‘You’re too small Pre’, ‘You’re not fast enough Pre.’ ‘Give up your foolish dream Steve.’ But they forgot something. I HAVE to win.
Pre died at the age of 24 in a car accident and below is what Bowerman had to say at his funeral:
All my life, man and boy, I’ve operated under the assumption that the main idea in running was to win the race. Naturally, when I became a coach I tried to teach people how to do that. Tried to teach Pre how to do that. Tried like hell to teach Pre to do that. And Pre taught me. Taught me I was wrong. Pre, you see, was troubled by knowing that a mediocre effort can win a race and a magnificent effort can lose one. Winning a race wouldn’t necessarily demand that he give it everything he had from start to finish. He never ran any other way. I couldn’t get him to, and God knows I tried… but… Pre was stubborn on holding himself to a higher standard than victory. ‘A race is a work of art’ is what he said and what he believed and he was out to make it one every step of the way.
Of course he wanted to win. Those who saw Pre compete or who competed against him were never in doubt how much he wanted to win. But how he won mattered to him more. Pre thought I was a hard case. But he finally got it through my head that the real purpose of running isn’t to win a race. It is to test the limits of the human heart. That he did… No one did it more often. No one did it better.
08.28.06
Weekend reading
How I wonder what you are
The endless night
Gazes into my eyes.
My tears will make
A million stars.
Thus writes Kamini Banga in her delicately penned set of poems titled ‘I promise to be a good girl, God’. Kamini Banga wrote these poems over the ten year period when she was battling with breast cancer and its aftermath. In her foreword, she mentions ‘I found writing helped me grieve – something that we are not allowed by our loved ones… I believe grieving is a big healer; it helped me realize what must stay and what I could leave behind.’
Each of the poems has a pain unmistakable in its depth and almost unbearable. The harsh truth expressed in the simplest of phrases, the futile but unavoidable sadness that is an intrinsic nature of such situations hit you and hit you bad. I don’t know who to recommend this book to – not because it’s not good (it’s exceptional) but because it’s so depressing… but still, I’ll say: Read it. It’ll make you feel fortunate for what you have. In any case, poems are meant to be sad and these capture sadness like never before.
08.21.06
Generally speaking,
I haven’t been blogging much off late. And frankly, I don’t have much to say today either. My blogging activity goes up only when I have something to crib about! But these are peaceful days for me. It is one of those rare phases in my life when I don’t have any short term targets to chase while the long term ones still hold and look doable, so life’s good. Hope the phase continues 
.
Meanwhile last month, a dear friend of mine from IITK, Abhishek Chaudhury, took that gigantic step of getting married. While we’ve constantly been in touch, Abhishek’s marriage announcement came as quite a jolt to me. One fine day, he calls up and tells me that he’s got engaged and is getting married in a couple of months. Boss! Kab? Kahan? Kaise? The suddenness of the whole thing being one (to which he had an arbit explanation that I don’t wanna get into here), Abhishek’s marriage announcement was also a reminder of how quickly the last seven years have passed and how much we’ve all grown from those heady days of our first semester at IIT. The ever-smiling and mischievous Abhishek, who once childishly declared “Main bhi bhaaag ke shaadi karoonga” after having watched Saathiya and said that he would go bungee jumping on his honeymoon, was getting married! The images of that childish Abhishek are so deeply embedded in my memories of him that I found it hard to believe he was getting ready to shoulder the responsibility of a family. So last month, I went to Abhishek and Kirti’s marriage ceremony and they make a handsome couple and I wish them the very best that married life has on offer. Knowing Abhishek, there won’t be a dull day in their lives.
Also, sometime back Diwaker tagged me (by the way, he finds this whole tagging business to be quite silly but apparently, that doesn’t stop him from passing on the tag to others when he gets one!) and since I have nothing else to blog about these days, here goes:
I am thinking about…
how to bring some discipline into my life.
I’ve said…
a lot of things that I didn’t really mean 
.
I want to…
be better at my work and find more time to read.
I wish…
life was quieter.
I hear…
a lot of noise and cribbing and gyan. Oh! Just shut up people!
I wonder…
what is the meaning of life? Is there a meaning at all?
I regret…
not having learnt a musical instrument when I was a kid.
I am…
a nice person ! Really!
I dance…
Uh!! Never! I have the worst two left feet in the world!
I sing…
songs that I really love when I’m alone .
I cry…
hardly ever.
I am not always…
as disciplined as I’d like to be.
I make with my hands…
nothing much actually! I’m too lazy for cooking and all.
I write…
quite poorly these days. I think I wasn’t that bad till sometime back.
I confuse…
people’s names all the time.
I need…
someone with me when I’m having a meal.
That’s it from me. Umm… I’m quite bored off this taggy business myself so let me not pass it on to anyone else. But if any of you are interested, have a go…
07.26.06
Play Review: Sammy!
Courage is doing what you believe in.
‘Sammy!’ attempts to depict the transformation of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from an ordinary man to a Mahatma, and in the process delves into the confusion, dilemmas and internal conflicts that this man, often looked upon as the one who lent a moral force to the nation’s freedom struggle, would have faced during his momentous journey.
The first half showing Gandhi in South Africa disappoints though – the disappointment being the attempt to portray him as a simple and humourous man in a barrister suit resulting in the character showing Charlie-Chaplinish mannerisms, cracking jokes and breaking into a freakish smile after every second line that he utters. And it can be quite irritating; after all, one expects to watch something thoughtful and meaningful when it comes to Gandhi, definitely not something comical as it seems during the first half.
For a play to redeem itself from the situation above to the point where one feels ‘Okay, that was good’ is something. ‘Sammy!’ manages to do that with its second half. As the play unfolds, we witness the various exchanges Gandhi has with his own conscience debating the internal dilemmas he has at different stages of his life – the right versus the wrong, the moral versus the immoral. Even as he gets more and more involved in politics, Gandhi never loses sight of his basic principles and morals and throughout draws courage from his convictions and his righteousness. The dialogues Gandhi has with his conscience, his guiding light, are quite interesting and thought provoking. The play also does well in showing a human angle to Gandhi’s otherwise larger than life personality. There is a slight hint towards his guilt and regret as a father. His sadness and the fear of loneliness on his wife’s death makes for an insightful moment – the Mahatma, the father of the masses fearing loneliness.
All the actors, other than probably the lead, Joy Sengupta (with his overacting in the first half), do more than justice to their characters. Neha Dubey, essaying the role of Kasturba Gandhi, is exceptionally good.
In their last conversation, Gandhi’s conscience (with a sense of premonition of his death) asks of him to show courage and Gandhi replies back saying ‘Courage is doing what you believe in’ and smilingly walks away for his evening prayers, only to be assassinated by Nathuram Godse. But by then, he has already done his job and made himself redundant to the Indian political scene. For a shy barrister who was too nervous to be able to speak a word in his first case, Gandhi came far doing what he believed in.
06.15.06
Sheesh!!
Shouldn’t have said it. The moment I said it, I knew I had made a mistake. Sometimes, one says something meaningless which might not be so meaningless for someone else. Worse still, it might hurt the other person. And worst, saying sorry won’t change a thing.
A couple of days ago, I said something really stupid, thinking it’d be taken as a joke. Only it wasn’t. Shucks!
06.10.06
Daffodils – William Wordsworth
I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
…. Beautiful poem, isn’t it?
06.08.06
This noisy world
There’s just too much noise and clutter in the world. People talk so much man, its crazy!! Sometimes, I wish – For a day, everything would simply fall silent! I mean, one day with no one talking, no phones ringing, no traffic sounds, not even the sound of the fan or A/C in your room… nothing but the sound of silence. Just you and your own thoughts for a day – will be really calming for the mind…
05.22.06
Seasons in the Sun
‘Seasons in the Sun’ is one of my old time favourite songs. It had originally been written in French in 1961 under the title of “Le Moribond” (The Dying Man), by Belgian poet-composer Jacques Brel and was later translated into English and recorded by Canadian-born singer Terry Jacks to quickly become the largest-selling album in Canadian history at the time.‘Seasons in the Sun’ is the story of a dying man, bidding farewell to loved ones who have shared his life. Shortly before Terry’s recording came out, Jacques Brel retired, at the peak of his popularity. Fans around the world were stunned, but the composer would give no reason. Finally, the truth was revealed. After a quiet, six-year battle against cancer, Brel succumbed to the disease and died, on October 9, 1978.
Here are the lyrics, some of the most sadly beautiful lines you’ll ever come across:
Goodbye to you, my trusted friend.
We’ve known each other since we’re nine or ten.
Together we climbed hills or trees.
Learned of love and ABC’s,
Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees.
Goodbye my friend, it’s hard to die,
When all the birds are singing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air.
Pretty girls are everywhere.
When you see them I’ll be there.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time.Goodbye, Papa, please pray for me,
I was the black sheep of the family.
You tried to teach me right from wrong.
Too much wine and too much song,
Wonder how I get along.
Goodbye, Papa, it’s hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air.
Little children everywhere.
When you see them I’ll be there.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the wine and the song, like the seasons, have all gone.Goodbye, Michelle, my little one.
You gave me love and helped me find the sun.
And every time that I was down
You would always come around
And get my feet back on the ground.
Goodbye, Michelle, it’s hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air.
With the flowers ev’rywhere.
I wish that we could both be there.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the stars we could reach were just starfish on the beach.
04.07.06
Time for a change and a fresh start
Some time ago, on this blog, I’d cribbed about an exceptionally bad day. I wasn’t enjoying work at office and my motivation levels had been going down. At the time, I had mentioned on this space that apart from the conscious efforts of turning things around my way, a part of me was also hoping for lady luck to smile on me, as she had so many times before. Well, as always, I got lucky again. I recently got the opportunity to work for a startup Private Equity fund and I’m taking it up; In fact, am quite excited about it. Private Equity has been something I’ve wanted to get into for sometime now and I’ve had a certain appeal towards startups since late IIT days so both things coming together is like fucking fantastic (I’m sorry, the phrase just stuck in my mind and it manages to convey the sentiment exactly)!
My stint with DB has been short but I think I’ve learnt more in the last 8-9 months than what I learnt in the two years of my MBA programme. For one, I learnt a lot from my boss. Driven, ambitious, demanding and yet, considerate towards his subordinates’ desires to fulfill their own ambitions, Manoj has been the perfect boss and I am glad that he was my first boss. Although I was just a young trainee trying to find my place in the bank, he gave me the feeling that he trusted my intelligence and valued my opinion, which is probably as much you can ask from a boss (apart from a hefty year-end bonus, of course !) as a trainee. Manoj also managed to strike a rare balance so that I feared his temper and at the same time considered him my mentor and career counselor within the company. I learnt from him how one can always manage to remain down to earth and approachable no matter how senior one becomes. My other learnings in DB were mostly organizational in nature – partly observational and partly experiential – the key one being trying to undertsand how work, responsibilities and recognition flows between people in a workplace setup. DB also introduced me to the good life – living out of hotels and serviced apartments for months, training in London, workshops in Singapore, corporate dinners and the works – Ah, the advantages of working in a huge MNC are no longer mine.
Joining Blue River brings along with it a kind of nervous excitement associated with new places and new experiences… there is the excitement of being a part of the growth story of a startup firm and there is the nervousness arising out of questions such as ‘Will I really be able to do well in the unstructured work environment of a startup? Will I be able to live up to the challenging world of Private Equity?’ But this nervousness is motivating in nature; it has an element of eagerness to it; it pushes me to put in my best and all in all, I feel good about myself at this point; I feel hopeful and on track towards my goals. At this very moment, life is beautiful .
02.06.06
An old friend comes along
Recently, in Bangalore, I met an old friend of mine from school days. We were meeting after six and a half long years. While me and most other classmates of mine had taken up the oft trodden path of engineering and software jobs/MBA, Himanshu had been very clear from an early age about joining the armed forces and had accordingly joined the NDA after school. Meeting him after all these years has been quite a good experience. For one, we had so much to catch up on and our conversation made me realize how different our lives have been since we passed out. I mean his experiences over the last few years have been unlike anything I’ve heard of. It also made me realize how much I have changed from school days – the transformation from a shy boy to a young man, relentlessly and aggressively chasing his ambitions while trying to find a purpose in life on the side, was put into perspective in that one meeting with Himanshu. Secondly, it was great to see that although there were times when we ran out of things to talk and there were silences, we were quite comfortable with the silences till something else came up to talk about. I guess time and distance don’t really affect good friendships much, do they?
