DHAR DHAR

My student life here in London has entered the final phase of its journey. In a couple of days, I will cease to be a student for ever. How do I feel about it? It is hard to describe. Because I am working currently, I have not faced the abrupt end to the student life. It has been a gradual farewell and one with many super sweet, bitter sweet and not-so sweet memories.

I will remember this phase of my life for the varied and interesting learning processes that I have gone through. I once saw an advertisement with the tagline, “ It is not everyday that you do something for the first time in your life.” I will beg to differ because for the last one year, I have been doing just that. I am very sure, all this has changed me- for good or for worse – completely from the inside out. I am sure I am not the person who came to London one sunny September morning with just a suitcase and dreams in his eyes. I am sure, I have changed…

I have made friends and perhaps foes. I have inspired somebody and perhaps disgusted others. I have loved someone and for sure hated others. There are things I want to say – a Thank You here, a Sorry there – to people, to friends, to dear ones, to strangers. I don’t know what I am waiting for, perhaps for the barriers to come down, perhaps for a signal, perhaps for the blue space ship to come… I don’t know… what I know is that I am running out of time.

My student life is almost over…

Everyday I get up and start running. I run and run and run and then run some more. Relentless running. Running to keep up with the World around me. London is great, not an iota of doubt about that, but it is hectic. Coming from a laid back city like Kolkata, where things happen at their own babu-moshai pace, it seems like a whole new World to me – a World where the existence of being has taken a whole new form, a form know as weekend-to-weekend life. You get up one fine dandy Monday morning and get on the bandwagon of life – and when the wheels start spinning, you are thrown into this whirlwind  - your existence hanging by a thread. You never know when you will just loose it.

I spend the first half of the week moaning about the last weekend – how beautiful it was and how sadly I wasted it. The next half of the week is spent in anticipation of the coming weekend – conjuring up grand plans of finishing up that long forsaken task that needed to be done (btw, by this time even the task itself has lost all its hope of ever being finished). Then suddenly the long awaited Friday comes and swear to God, I can’t wait to get out of the grind. The anticipation builds to such an extent that by the time I realise, I have had six pints of Guinness and multiple shots of vodka and I am stumbling back home from the Tube. The hangover lasts for the entire Saturday and when I am proper and fit again to at least begin to start that task, it is almost Sunday.

I don’t know about most of you guys out there, but for me, Sunday is the cleaning cum dish washing cum laundry cum Ironing day. Though on a per hour worked basis, it is up there with Wednesday and Thursday as one of the most productive days of the week, but from a psychological point of view, it is the worst. Consider this, you work your butt off on Wednesday and Thursday, but there on the horizon is the bright light of the coming weekend. Like the rabbit following the carrot on the stick, you get thrashed around, but you don’t mind. The weekend is coming… On Sunday however, it is a completely different ball game. Your task is still in the “about to start phase”, tomorrow is Monday and there is this huge pile of clothes staring at you in the hope of getting Ironed.

Congratulations, in this city of dreams, you have wasted one more weekend like so many others before. There is a new week to start… new promises to keep and new things and plans to conjure. This is my relentless weekly existence. I run and run and run and then run some more. Relentless running. Running to keep up with the World around me.

I should be in bed, but I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about someone. I powered up the computer and crawled out from under my duvet after an hour of lying in the dark not knowing precisely what I feel. There’s a girl, or was a girl. There is a girl, somewhere, bothering me.  She has the most perfect smile. It fills me with warmth. She makes me angry and she makes me sad and she makes me numb and she makes me happy. All at the same time. I’m so glad that I met her. I’m so glad that I’ve known her. I’m not so glad that we don’t talk anymore, or that she feels so bad around me that we probably won’t ever meet again..

I felt it anyway. I don’t know if she really did, or does, or ever could. Something that made me want to be so close to her. Something that made me want to hold her and squeeze her tight. Something that made me want to kiss her. Passionately. Fiercely. God, did I want to kiss her. I have this knowing, so much more than a feeling, an absolute assurance that if her and I were ever together it would be amazing. Mindblowing. I have so much inside that I want to give to her. I’ve never wanted to give that much to anyone. It’s scary. I want her to be happy and I want to be the person that makes her happy but it seems that I can’t. That day, I almost thought that she wanted to kiss me too. I tried to kiss her. She backed away. I tried to get on with things and act as though it was fine and I was stupid and I understood and everything was alright and I was temporarily insane and an idiot for attempting it. In truth a huge part of me immediately fell away like some sort of antarctic chasm caving in.

To get to that point, to push my brain, to pump myself up, to send enough signals through my body to get myself to even attempt something like that with her, with the love that I feel for her, and then to have it thrown-off was perhaps the worst few seconds that my insides have ever had to deal with. Everything was twisted in a knot and it still kind of is. She hasn’t talked to me for two months. I haven’t talked to her. I would never have dreamed of attempting this with anyone else. I feel so strongly towards her. Still. If I look at a picture of her I don’t go to sleep at night. I bang my head on the wall and will myself to get her out of my mind so that I can relax. I think of her at stupid moments. I recognise her facial expressions in other people. I miss her. I have attempted to contact her but all in vain. I’ve decided, I’ll stop now… I don’t want to mess things up for her.

I was browsing through Paulo Coelho’s blog and I came across this short story from his book ‘Fathers, Sons and Grandsons’ called “Seeing Yourself”…

More such stories can be found here...

‘When you look at your companions, try to see yourself,’ said the Japanese teacher Okakura Kakuso.

‘If only we did always see the good things in others,’ replied Kakuso. ‘But the truth is that when we look at another person, we are only looking for defects. We try to discover his wicked side because we want him to be worse than us. We never forgive him when he hurts us because we do not believe that we would ever be forgiven. We manage to wound him with harsh words, declaring that we are telling the truth, when all we are doing is trying to hide it from ourselves. We pretend that we are important so that no one else will see how fragile we are. That is why whenever you judge your brother, be aware that you are the one who is on trial.’

Well… as the title says, I don’t think I am crazy… I might come out as one with all my animated talk, facial contortions and absurd comments but deep down, I believe I am as normal as you are.

I am not very bright or brilliant, and I certainly don’t get many jokes and I say a lot of inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times, but even within all these mess, I try my best not to hurt people. Sometimes, I even go to the extreme of making a big fool of myself just to make people feel comfortable. But, in return, I think I often don’t get the best deals. As they say, my return on investments is always negative. Why is that?

Am I really crazy?

There is something called “Bounded Rationality” which states that perfect decision making by individuals in complex situations is an impossibility. Herbert Simon who coined the term said that man is “intendedly rational, but limited to do so.”

I am one of the victims of bounded rationality and a very badly stuck-one at that. I took some stupid decisions and acted in a more stupid manner to eventually hurt someone who is very dear to me. The emotional turmoil that has started within since then, is almost ripping me apart into pieces. My biggest fear in life is hurting others and this time, a very severe damage has been done.

So, where does bounded rationality come into picture in all of this?

The answer to this question can only be provided in hindsight. When I took my decision, the entire scenario seemed to be an open ended game, with the possibility of the outcome going in many directions provided the assumptions made were correct. But, unfortunately, they were wrong and the outcome was totally different from what I had anticipated. So, in this case, rationality had a role in setting the correct assumptions and due to its boundedness, it failed miserably.

Bounded rationality also led me to act in a very stupid manner afterwards that dimmed any last rays of hope in improving the relationship. How? Though it was all unconscious, after the unwanted outcome came into light, my brain – the weirdest thing that it is – went into ‘overdrive’ damage control mode. But as Simon said, we are bounded in making perfect judgements in complex situations,  and I screwed it all up – bigtime.

That was it… the end of everything… I wish I could foresee all the contingent situations and act accordingly, but to second Simon, when you are in such a situation, the first thing that goes out of the window is “rationality”. Thanks to my new job and other commitments, I’ve very less time to think about it all. This is really helping me in coping up with the situation, but in lazy weekends such as today, when I don’t have much else to do, I sometimes wonder, “what if…”.

Though I have tried to extend this concept to friendship and relationships, bounded rationality is of utmost importance in organisations. It acts like a two edged sword and gives rise to many heuristics and associated biases in managerial decision making that have the power to make an organisation great as well as to topple it.

Bounded Rationality… 

I have so far applied to many jobs and have been rejected from many more… but sometimes, once in a while, something comes up with which you get so emotionally attached that when you get to hear that big SORRY and NO from the other side of the phone, it just simply breaks your heart.

Something similar happened to me yesterday. I attended this assessment centre of one of the Big 4 professional firm’s last Friday and was pretty sure about a positive outcome. But as fate would have it, I got rejected. What hurt me more than the rejection is the feedback which they gave me afterwards. They pointed out that I am not a team player – a fact that is quite opposite to what I have heard over the years. Moreover, all the other feedbacks from the other assessment centres also mentioned ‘team player’ as one of my strengths. I am hurt because either apparently, I did something which I have no clue of or they failed to recognise this strength in me.

Anyway, why was I so emotionally attached to it? coz it was one of my dream companies. I have dreamt of working at that place for ages now and to see that dream shatter in front of my eyes made me doubly sad. But, as they say, everything happens for a reason and always for the greater good. After a very bad assessment centre for another job, I applied to the current job that I am having and made it. So, that failure was a way for a better future. In a similar manner, I believe the higher powers have some other plans for me… something bigger perhaps…

I share my LSE Sidney Webb abode with five other girls and a guy. The guy is from Vietnam, one girl is from Germany, one from Russia, one from Hong Kong and the other two girls are from mainland China.  The tragedy of my flat is that apart from the fleeting ”hello” and the half hearted attempts at small talk in the kitchen, nobody knows each other at all. Aside from the German and the Russian girl, I even have no idea what the names of the other girls are.

The Vietnamese boy calls himself Sky (not his original name though) but speaks horrible English, so any attempt at initiating any thing resembling what we call meaningful conversation is always thawed by the requirement on my part to repeat everything twice. Initially when I first met him, I got totally confused about my accent. He is the person who made me, one of the most active chatterboxes alive, doubt my ability to speak properly. Sky…

The German girl is Christiane. I’ll remember her as the coffee addict and the one having the craziest and the loudest laugh. When she laughs, I can hear it from my bathroom – that is a good three sound proof doors away. As it is the only sound from another flat that is audible from my bathroom, comparing it to something is very difficult but if I try,  it will be something similar to the fire alarm at Sidney Webb. However, having said that, I have to tell you that beneath it all, she has a heart made of gold. A very good person to know, albeit slightly crazy…

The Russian girl, Svetlana, is doing her Phd at the LSE in Economics and Mathematics. She is the the second prettiest nerd I have seen in my life but, that is just it. Her dress sense is almost non-existent. The other day I saw her wearing a fluorescent orange jacket with matching fluorescent orange running shoes and a beige pant. To top it all she was also wearing fluorescent orange ear muffs. That might look hot in some other planet but in Earth, the combination looks horrible. However, she cooks really nice and good looking food and in the eternal hope that someday she will offer some of that to me, I will stop here.

This brings us to the three Chinese girls. One of them is like a ghost whom I have only seen twice during my 7 months stay here. If that assertion is true then I don’t want her to come and haunt me anytime in the future. So, it is better not to talk about her. One of the remaining two (I am not sure which one) is called Wei Wei. I know this because the first time I saw this name in a letter in the mailbox, I was totally awestruck. It’s like naming me Dhar Dhar or Sid Sid.

These two Chinese girls are the youngest and the sweetest in the flat. As a matter of fact, they are the life blood of the flat. They are the ones who play loud music, shout like crazy and cook exotic dishes. Without them, the place would turn into a God forsaken cemetery. God bless them. So, what will I remember them by? Noodles… From the daily analysis of the kitchen garbage bin, I have come to realise that both of them are total noodle freaks. One of them once showed me four different kinds of noodles based just on the diameter of the strands.There is also something called the glass noodle and it is transparent. How amazing is that? Noodles…

We are all from different part of the World, with different pasts and backgrounds. Destiny brought us together at Flat no 704 of Sidney Webb house. Even now, our only meeting place on a day-to-day basis is the kitchen. Now a days, just by the scent in the kitchen, I am able to tell who has cooked food and who hasn’t. That is the connection… and I am pretty sure it is the case with all of us. All this will come to an end soon and we all will go our separate ways, but these smells and personality quirks will always stay with us… suspended in the ether of memories…

What do I fear most in life? The answer would be the consequences of my actions. I live in constant fear of hurting others. From my previous experiences I have learned that I have a monstrous capability to hurt people. Though I never intend to, but there are always things I say, stuff that I do that invariably hurt somebody or the other. So, like a dog who gets conditioned by repeated promises of bones, my brain has learned from repeated mistakes not to say things or mention stuff that might hurt others. But this, I am finding out now is slowly killing me from the inside. I want to say so many things, but due to the psychological conditioning, it is almost impossible for me to utter a single word. The funny thing is that the fear of hurting  which initially lead me to behave this way has now been replaced by a new fear – the fear of bursting out. I have been controlling it for so long now that it might just come out any moment. It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to keep it all in any more. I am dreading the day when the dyke will collapse and everything will just come pouring out. I dread the day…