nihilism makes sense

If you are fond of reading scriptures or sacred books, then one thing will surely make you take notice - the insistence on the transience of all the worldly things, how all things are going to end one day, how nothing is permanent. It is so easy to read them but how many of us have really experienced it? I have been reading books for a long time now and one excerpt from "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" had really jumped out of the book and taken hold of me. It is related to the experience that the protaganist had when he was living a life of seclusion. The undercurrent is that of utter loneliness, of standing on top of a cliff and seeing nothing around, of having no one to talk to or to share things with. I could relate to it but I had never felt that way. I had felt lonely but it was not a despairing kind of loneliness. And I always wondered on how the author might have felt at that moment. Was it depression? Was it desperation to attach himself to something living?
And then while watching the movie "Crouching tiger, hidden dragon", I heard the warrior who had just returned from a session of meditation from the mountains who said the same thing " it was so lonely. I didn't feel blissful. I felt sad, an infinite amount of sadness. i couldn't take it".
Some days back, I had the same experience. I was standing behind the office taking my usual break, when it suddenly hit me. All human beings are so lonely, lost in their lives, in their thoughts but really drifting here and there, not only in physical world but also in thoughts, never being in this moment, learning to live in past memories or in future plans. There is nothing beyond this life. Death is not just a beginning. it is the end. There is nothing like heaven or hell or an eternal life or deliverance or any such bullshit. There is nothing, just a void. nothing to hide behind, nothing to look forward to, nothing really to focus your energy on. At that point, i felt a sadness well inside me and it shook me. I at first thought that I have gone into depression and I tried hard to shake this sadness off me. But I couldn't. My thoughts keep on returning to this feeling. Now I am reading about nihilism. May be the philosophy would make some sense to me.

archer has not lost his touch

It has been a long long time since I blogged. Things were pretty hectic and confusing. AW and gang had shifted to Pune w/o paying salaries to anyone and we all patiently waited for it, though the patience started wearing thin after 20th. On 20th I went to receive VS who went to Axis bank to withdraw a large sum of money and we had to deposit cash in the OBC bank. Easier said than done !!!!. The cashier refused to accept so much cash, we had to go to manager, who talked to cashier who talked to us who talked to AW who talked to manager who again talked to his cashier and after 1 hour they decided to accept the cash !!!!! It was the kind of mess that gets very little press but which is the daily routine for thousands of people who need to get things done in banks or in govt offices. Very sad state of affairs...
I got the latest short stories collection from Archer "Thereby hangs a tale". Some of the stories are very good while others are ok kind. One story where in the receptionist fools a visitor to sleep with her was very very good.
I also watched Toy Story 3 which is a must watch movie. Seriously, the animation movie is one hell of a movie which can be watched by all age groups. There were some scenes in the movie which caused a lump to develop in my throat, it is that good a movie. I have also heard a lot of praise about Inception so I am going to watch it soon.
On the work front, I managed to make 400 bots sit together on different tables and the back office records matched too, which was a huge challenge. Now all the records match, grs entries with real chips delta in t_user which also match with the login session records. I had been meaning to solve this problem since January this year so finally solving it was a huge milestone for me. Now I am targeting 1000 bots to sit together. I hope every thing works out well then.
We have also started our search for a good school for Kush in Pune. One school Symbiosis International School is ready to admit our son but the fees are very very high, 2.2 lakh per child per year. I don't know how many people can really afford that kind of fees. DPS refused to even consider our application. Tomorrow I will talk to St Mary's which has a great reputation and which is a ICSE affiliated school.

change management and Pune office

Our company is shifting to Pune this month end. There had been a lot of rumours flying around for the last 2 months or so about the move to Pune and how it is inevitable. But there was also a lot of secrecy, lot of hush hush so that no one was clear as to what was going to happen. I was only privy to the information that AS had been dispatched to Pune to scout for office space and that he had shortlisted some 2 or 3 of them. But apart from that, I had nothing going for me. If you are familiar with change management program, the first thing that they would tell you is that the vision has to be communicated to all the stakeholders and that each and every employee is a stakeholder. But here the vision was lost. No one knew why the move has to be done. It sounded more and more whimsical. The next step in the change management program lies in the initiatives taken to involve all the employees, to win over the cynics and to fire up the enthusiastic volunteers. But here the only decision that every one had to take was how soon can that person join the Pune office. The next stage in change management program is to monitor the initiatives, to help teams overcome obstacles. At this stage, every success is celebrated and employees are coerced to share the same vision. Right now, the office space has been taken up, 2 teams have moved there and forget celebrations, there is a full fledged war ongoing to kick out some employees, to make things so hard for them that they themselves choose to part ways. The last step in successful change management program is to maintain the vision and to keep on facilitating the various initiatives. Well, for sure, this company doesn't follow the normal processes. As long as AS and AK are there to poison AW's mind, as long as these fools keep on fooling everyone to believe that they are focusing on jobs when they spend all the time on online games and of course in ogling the girls, as long as these fools keep on pushing out good people so that their own inefficiencies and incompetency are not highlighted, this company is going nowhere. So it really doesn't matter :-)
I don't really subscribe to the prevailing sentiment that AW is totally oblivious of the misdemeanours of these fools, that AW himself encourages them to behave in such manner because he wants to create a company in his own image. I really feel that AW is aware of all the hanky panky going on in the company and that he sometimes takes these fools to task also, but he doesn't let them go because these fools serve him as personal valets also and no one wants to lose their servants for their follies, so these fools live another day. From the past few day, I quote some events ---
1) AS was entering office when AW called out to him "arre donkey, idhar aa", leading to a lot of mirth all around
2) Someone complained to AW that AS was actually sleeping during night shifts and AW called AS names which are unprintable here :-)
3) AW gave a dressing down to AS when he overheard him speaking to a new woman employee.
4) AW had stopped AS from going to office for the past 15 days or so and these days were spent in great peace by everyone over here.
5) Even AK was not spared. He has been forbidden from playing out songs loudly from his system. I was sick and tired of listening to Justin Bieber's girlie song "baby baby baby o".