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Mine is, not caving in to rejection. It started out as a muscle which was strengthened by rejections over the years till it finally developed powers of its own. Mainly deflection powers.

There, I see a rejection coming…flick..foom…and it’s gone. Didn’t let it get to me and batter my sense of self-worth.

Rejections come thick and fast in the business world. I’m sure it does in other worlds too but I’ve not my dipped my toes in their pools so I’ll speak for myself.

Capabilities, integrity, ability to go on, persist, integrity, innovate, experience, take on additional responsibilities, integrity…..rarely matter. What matters is …. oh well, you know what I’m saying. So, I figured that I’d take my bag of tricks and move on instead of trying to convince a reluctant management riddled with politics.

Along the way I realized that there’s a lexicon that is used but never in the way it is meant to be used. For instance, capability, actually means, ‘you can get her to take on a lot more as long as you keep telling her how much of a difference she’s making.’

Yeah, sucker, you say. I agree.

Here’s another one, commitment. Loosely translated it means you are true to your role and do the best to ensure that the track it runs on is well-oiled and efficient. But actually, it means, ‘does your boss think that you’re making a difference? Because if that’s not the case then you may as well not be there.’

And why should the boss not think that way? Simple, because you’re not ‘in line with the vision of the company’. Flick…foom…rejection brushed off. I’m ‘in line’ with my vision for myself and that’s important!

Batman and Superman may be saving the world one burning building at a time, but my intention is to keep my sense of self-worth alive and kicking. Because that’s my burning building and if it’s not saved then nothing else is worth saving.

Prahoor/Myonepona – The Sentinel

Deep, deep gaze. Strong neck and shoulders. Hooked, beak like nose. Short and wiry arms that have a steel like grip. Tightly muscled torso and very long legs that can scale walls and jump over obstacles easily. She has a third eye in the middle of her forehead which remains shut most of the time and opens only when she feels a frisson ripple through her. It is her way of sensing a shift in energies in the atmosphere around. Time to attack.

She came into existence because of a curse that shook the earth 10,000 years ago. A giant hole opened up in a distant mountain range and Prahoor sprang forth, her arms lashing the air like wings. The force of her entry flattened the mountain range, however, one glance of her powerful third eye and they were back up, again.

The curse said that the earth had just 500 years left and humanity, 100 years. Prahoor’s entry saved humanity.

She is the Sentinel. She guards humanity and is called upon when a catastrophe is about to be unleashed.

 

First the disclaimer – I’m not promoting this delightfully crazy, charming movie. The poster is for reference only.

It is my firm belief that in every life there comes a Badhai Ho (loosely translated, it means ‘congratulations to you’) moment. This belief is completely unsupported by facts or stats but comes from a place that doctors, psychologists and management gurus have lately been paying a lot of attention to – the gut.

And what is it actually? It means that there will be a time in one’s life when the pendulum swings completely in your favour and the time is ripe and right to make an impact. All you have to do is step into the magic circle and you will be swept along to a place where you have long waited to be in.

Why do I think this is true? The lead actress of this film and the pivot of the story is actress Neena Gupta whose incandescent talent has for decades been under-appreciated. And along comes this film and now…voila, she is smiling down from posters everywhere and her film is breaking records. A fact, that by her own admission, she finds almost surreal.

Granted that just because it happened to her it cannot be the basis of a general rule. But then remember I said that this is a statistically unsupported belief. So make of it what you will. In a world ruled by algorithms and numbers it is nice to be able to believe in something that just is….because being driven by the notion that your best moment is yet to come is far more empowering. We’re all catapulted forward by a need to know that there is a large pot of gold at the end of the rainbow we chase tirelessly. There is….so don’t stop chasing rainbows. Your Badhai Ho moment is probably lying in wait at the next bend.

As a family we’ve in the past been bold wayfarers and finders of opportunities in distant lands with no hesitation in leaving behind complete lives if there happened to be such an event. Like every good story mine too begins in the days of yore. I love that word, yore. Conjures up images of bearded tough men wearing armour and slaying dragons. My family’s dragon slayer was Nityananda Chakrabarti and he was not so much slaying a dragon but fleeing one, the Bengal famine of the 1770s. The district of Birbhum where he lived was caught in it and leaving his home seemed the only solution. The famine which left a scar on the history of Bengal, was the reason why even generations later we continue to call ourselves East Bengal folk.

Nityananda was a rebel. In those days rebels wore the traditional dhoti and their attitude on the lapel of their crisp, white kurtas. His father Pandit Rajeshwar was an orthodox Brahmin who taught Sanskrit in a school. For him it was a calling, not a profession and he wanted his children to follow in his footsteps. And he was both vocal and unequivocal about it. Nityananda respectfully declined and in a show of how strongly he felt against it, learned Persian and some English so that he could converse with the masters – the British East India Company. The result was almost instantaneous, he was appointed Revenue Collector in the hill districts of Chittagong (now in Bangladesh), a British protectorate. It was a position that commanded unquestioned loyalty and tremendous respect, attributes that are extinct in many parts of the world, today.

Chattogram, the Bengali name for Chittagong has been flowing through our veins since then. There is general misty-eyed look that my father and uncles adopt each time the name is mentioned. Considering that they have never lived there, I wonder why. I suppose the answer lies in the many stories told over generations of the rich soil, the ponds full of silvery fish and the clean air of the town of Rangamati where Nityananda had settled.

The benevolent Raja Harish Chandra Roy was Nityananda’s employer and he took notice of the young Revenue Collector’s extraordinary intelligence and capabilities. The Raja was credited with moving his permanent residence to Rangamati from the plains of Chattogram. But for him, Rangamati would not even have found a footnote in the Chakrabarti annals. The young rebel was promoted to the position of Dewan, i.e. Chief Minister by the Raja. These appointments could not be done arbitrarily, the permission of the British administrator was essential and so my illustrious ancestor became an officer of the court.

The British administrator who was responsible for this was Captain Thomas Herbert Lewin, a man of, I’m guessing, excellent intellect since he has published books on the hill tracts and its people.  However, Nityananda did not think so since there were regular clashes between the two men which even resulted in the latter filing a lawsuit against the administrator in the Calcutta High Court. A truly audacious move by a brown man.