Thinking Aloud: Kung Fu Pisa

You know how some people appear inhumanly confident? They have this look, that says - "Hmm, I think I'll go cross the English Channel today. Mount Everest can wait another week"

Well, I'm not one of those people.

But it wasn't always so. Going back to my school days, achievement was commonly known in an academic sense. So standing first in class mattered to me, and I did it every time till Class 10. It never came as a big surprise to the other students, or anyone else around me. I looked the type. But I always kept my head down, and didn't exactly soar on cloud nine.

But after that, something changed. Let me cite a couple of instances.

It was Class 10, and I was nearing the dreaded-by-parents boards. I'm in my Maths tuition, and the teacher suddenly says to the guy sitting next to me, "I expect 95+ from you, dear boy. And Kishore, try and score 85."

"Ma'am, why 85? Why not 95+?"

Awkward silence.

The dear boy scored 80, and I got 95.

There are certain feelings we yearn for, deeply. For me, it has always been the feeling of winning. That pure ecstasy a football player feels when he scores a last minute goal. The moment when Andy Dufresne gets Shawshank Redemption. To feel even an iota of that, means absolutely everything to me.

I slackened a bit afterwards, and it was only six years later this feeling was abated slightly by getting placed.

The sole intention behind chasing MBA was CAT. I knew how unpredictable and challenging it was, and said to myself, this is it. You are my Sistine Chapel. The fix for my addiction.

I'm exactly one year into my MBA, and I still get scandalized looks of shock when people ask my percentile, and I say 99.3 . As if it's an unearthly event, and the sun rose from the west.

I didn't even share that on Facebook. Don't get me wrong, I was elated beyond measure. But being the introvert I am, I never exactly celebrated the good times grandly.

Further illustrating this is a day from day 1 of my MBA summer placements. I'm sitting next to a friend, lost in thought. She asks, "What companies are you up for today?"

"Umm, I got placed yesterday."
Shock.
"What! Where? And why are you sitting like this!?"
I give a noncommittal shrug, and say Axis Bank. Notice the word shrug.

Which brings me to the crux of the matter, finally. Axis Bank gives out 4 best project awards every year, and I happened to finish 2nd among 32 interns. And this happens to be one of the rarest personal achievements I cared enough to share on Facebook.

On the first day back to college, the reactions were mixed. While a tiny fraction whole-heartedly congratulated, most of the other wishes had an undertone of bewilderment. Honestly it was exactly like Kung Fu Panda had been declared the Dragon Warrior. In fact even I responded to a few saying, "I don't know how I got it."

There's no hiding it; this got to me. I respond like that because I don't know how to look overconfident, arrogant and mightily pleased with myself. I just don't.

And no victory is ever enough, I'm not exactly alone in feeling like this.

Hit Harder, Agassi's father used to tell him, all the time. There is no climax. There is just the next crest.

Rio Ferdinand said in his autobiography, that Manchester United culturally isn't the madly-celebrating kind. During Sir Alex's reign, he says, the ecstasy of every cup and medal was short-lived. He inculcated this habit in the team too. If today they are champions, tomorrow they will already be plotting the next win.

The greatest Manchester comeback

Deep down, I have always felt the Manchester Red in me. Every success started with a failure, but like Manchester United, like the flowers of spring - I always came back.

Ultimately, now I am left with the epiphany that- not only I will always be a Kung Fu Panda, the quintessential underdog;
I will always be a winner, in my little world.

The Power Of Randomness

In one of my daydreams I've seen myself writing a book with the same title as this post. But like SRK says, kal ho na ho. Forgive me for not having a better quote.

How many times, my friends, have you associated something with luck? An average person would tend to believe atleast five of his friends who've 'made it' in life (whatever the hell that means), have had a fair share of luck.

What is luck, after all? A random event occurring in your favor? I think that's the popular opinion. And here's what I think..

As a kid I used to say I don't believe in luck, and as an adult I often claim I believe in randomness. There's a very subtle difference.

In my opinion, all wisdom starts from accepting that you're highly ignorant. Human beings have always justified ends from means. But nothing we say can be accepted as a timeless truth, where by timeless I imply something that is, always has been, and always will be valid.

Going by that assumption (since calling it truth would lead to a self-contradiction or a paradox), it comes to accepting the fact that, there are a great many things in this universe outside our control.

Mike Tyson once quoted - "Everybody makes plans, until they get punched in the face."

Ask yourself, how many instances can you recall having gone exactly as you planned? 

This, my friends, is called randomness. It is something that happens, seemingly out of place. When it looks to have advantaged someone's predicament, we call it good fortune. Otherwise we call it bad luck.

So luck is ultimately just a perception of the consequences of the occurrence of a random event.

Let me give you an example. I'm sure you've heard of the term negative publicity. Sometimes movies get famous (or infamous in this case) because they happen to hurt religious sentiments of a particular community. This inadvertently sometimes leads to greater anticipation for the crowds, and the movie ends up making more money than it estimated.

Here, before the movie was officially released, this event would've counted as bad luck. They could not foresee a certain scene affecting a certain group of people. But it did. What they cannot foresee, is whether the movie will ultimately be released or not. It is beyond their control. And depending on how this outside factor acts, the reaction to that scene will get labelled as good or bad luck.

If someone gets sent off in a football match, the team is considered disadvantaged, no matter how good the team is. But in some cases the sending off arouses the ten man team to perform even better, and they go on and win the game.

So what I'm trying to say is, there is no count of how many things are actually outside our control, but that does not change the fact that the perception is still upto us. People often use the phrase 'a blessing in disguise.'

"I make my own luck" - Harvey Dent, from The Dark Knight.

All of us tend to think of the immediate consequence of an event, but no one can foresee how something can change our lives forever. We tend to get depressed when the love of our life doesn't reciprocate the feelings. Or when we get rejected in interviews. This brings me to the idea of Hope.

Hope, is the belief that the consequences of the randomness around us, will somehow benefit us in the long run. That no matter how colossally our plans fail, there is something good at the end of it. 

And ironically, it is perfectly okay to hope, because of randomness. 

As a kid, Sidney Sheldon tried to commit suicide when he was 17. His father, having forgotten something (random event), walks back to the apartment and catches him in the act. Or more appropriately, before it. And this is what he tells him. 

'Life is like a novel. It's filled with suspense. You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page.'

I don't know a better line which captures the beauty of randomness. Having read his autobiography, Sidney Sheldon's life from that moment went on to live one of the most possibly enriched and envied lives.

I would like to give the readers the same advice. Many times in life, people will reject you. Events of heartbreaking capacity will happen to you, make no mistake. But imagine the opposite. Imagine things inexplicably swinging in your favor. Imagine all your dreams coming to life.

People or events don't intend to make you or break you. NOBODY can take the power of choice from you. The choice to hope or to dismay.

Embrace the power of randomness. A power that will make you laugh heartily at every unexpected event, man, woman or child who seem to think they decide your future.

A power that you can wield, to live life beyond your wildest dreams.

"Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."

- The Shawshank Redemption.