Suresh Chandrasekaran's Blog, page 27

The Art of Trivializing

The first time I came across the use of this great art of trivializing is when I was overawed by someone or the other's achievements and was waxing eloquent about ot. And my friend comes out with, "So what? He also has to put on his trousers one leg at a time."I mean, yeah, there was a moment there when I was nonplussed, wondering if the only achievement worth envying was the ability to hold the

Passing Time

Ever since I quit working, I have been faced with one question which I have been unable to even understand, leave alone answer. I keep getting asked how I manage to pass time.Strangely, in my working days, I seem to have acquired a wholly undeserved reputation of being a workaholic. When that is the farthest from who I really was. It was just that I hated working so much that I used to want to

The need for ladders

You know, there is this strange problem with everything that we are told is priceless. Especially those things which you are supposed to aspire for. It is all fine to say you should try to be good, to be loving etc etc and that a content happiness is the goal worth achieving. But, drat it, the bleeding things are all so nebulous.I mean, ever traveled in a featureless plain to a destination? You

Paired opposites?

Having trained all my life, since birth (My mom used to say I was too lazy to cry, even as a baby, and did even that as little as possible), to idle and having honed my skills to procrastinate since then, I expected to take to the life of a retired person like a fish to water. When I actually quit, though, there was some savor missing in life. To my total surprise, I discovered that work was

Journeys and Destinations

Practically all through my life I have been known as the chap who walks. (No, no the man with the mask and a skin-tight body-suit, that's the GHOST who walks.) It can get tiresome (NOT tiring, tiresome) really, like during those times in Delhi when I used to walk 8 kilometres to office every day. I used to reach office drenched in sweat and, every single day, there would be someone who would ask

Evident truths

People seem to have so many things which are evident truths, so evident that it is only a moron who would question why they are truths. As usual, I never could understand this instinctively and, so, quite obviously my friends and family wondered about when my IQ would make the big leap to double figures. If ever.



I was fine when I was a child. You know the basic evident truths you start out

The law of unreasonableness

The most vexing thing about humanity is that they set up ideals, which they expect only other people to live by, while they themselves feel free to live by any code of conduct that suits them. And, thus, when they, say, tell you that it is good to be a reasonable person, all that it means is that it is good for them that you be a reasonable person.



I mean, come on, have you ever seen a

Handling advice

When it comes to advice on how to handle advice, there is only this one that seems to have been accepted by most of humanity. Even if they had never heard of this quote by Oscar Wilde.





"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."



Mostly, it works that way with advice. 'You should learn to take criticism' will come from the guy

Ascribing motives

One of the most favorite pastimes of humanity is probably this one of ascribing motives to the actions of other people. Pastimes? Not really. In a way, it is a subconscious way of life, a methodology by which we understand the world around us. Invariably wrongly, yes!



Let the philosophers prate that what happens around you and to you is not what causes you to be happy or unhappy; that it is

Authors, Ho!

It has been said by many in my hearing that a lot of people seem to have mistaken the MBA for a Creative Writing degree, going by the number of authors who hail from that educational background. And there those others who murmur that, of course, it is a degree for Creative Communications for, after all, most of management is all about using learned jargon for common-place things. THAT is just