Ordinariness and the King of Pop

If we had the requisite amount of fluidity, we would all be flowing on earth, in the easy, liquid motion manner of MJ. We might have been moonwalking, high on some moonshine.

But then we are all rooted to earth by the inexplicable force called ordinariness. Like gravity, it pulls us all down. While we should be soaring or floating on other worlds, thin and lighter than the very air, faster than the very light, freer than the very gods, we are bolted to the ugly reality of our existence. We wake up and go to sleep in the same mind numbing sameness of fashion, in the life sucking predictability of routine. And we degenerate into the indistinguishable, unremarkable, primeval goo called 'the ordinary.'

In any given situation there are the actors, the observers, the props, the principals and the peripherals. In any given situation we have a choice to be any or many of the above. What do we choose?

I am unabashed. I choose to be an observer most of the times. What is the purpose? Can one with a predilection to be an observer be an actor? Or vice versa?

The writer, the imaginator, the creator, the artist is an eternal loser. Their purpose is served in description, in imagination and in art, all a reflection of the world, the actors and the situations they witness.

In a randomised list of some2000 odd songs, of all songs, I get to listen to MJ's song 'Will you be there' first. Considering that I was particularly remembering the genius of dancing, song writing and music making in general, the coincidence is not entirely lost on the author. MJ is there no more. But the genius lives on. He was a defiance of ordinariness that unfortunately descended into weirdness. But the genius will live on.

'In our darkest hour
In my deepest despair
Will you still care
Will you be there
In my trials
And my tribulations

Through our doubts
And frustrations
In my violence
In my turbulence
Through my fear
And my confessions
In my anguish and my pain
Through my joy and my sorrow
In the promise
Of another tomorrow
I'll never let you part
For you're always in my heart.' -Lyrics, Will you be there, Michael Jackson (1993)

When I see this picture, I am at a loss for words. Every picture has a story to tell, so it has been said. What story does this picture tell?

Let us take stock of the stakeholders. It is a standard MBA practice, to identify the players, their motives and recommend actions based on the analysis of the situation. We call the exercise ‘sit anal.’ Sit anal signifies a great constipation of ideas masquerading as analysis and a toilet level attention to hygiene factors like grammar and punctuation.

There is the obvious old man in the frame. Who is he? A moral police, as my comment sought to insinuate. We will see.

There is the invisible authority which proclaims its dominion over the subjects by the edicts it passes with the simple and succinct signature, ‘By Order.’ In deed.

There are the actionable items themselves in question, the couples. Who are the couples?

What is the area? What is prohibited? Why is it prohibited? Who prohibited?

But first the old man. The Old Man is the human presence in my photo. I framed and cropped the photo so that he is to one side of the picture. Very well. What is he doing? In his day to day life, he may be just another Uncle Hangal come to Dadar beach to eye the love struck teenage, middle class nymphs. Or he may have been a component of the couples whose presence is expressly prohibited by the order, in his own heyday. He might have brought his lady love to that very spot, stole a kiss or two under the wan sunlight, promised the moon and more to her if she only let him touch her once, and even kiss her once more. May be he was serious. May be he was under hormonal impulse. May be, even, he was in love. Who knows? He could have been a lover or is a social and cultural values, national traditions upholding vigilante waiting for examples to be made of.

Or he may be a gentle hearted grand dad watching over his kids. Or a man at the end of the rope because he could not get a seat in the Virar fast local. I do not really know. I did not care. Would not care. All that matters for me is that he was present at the right spot, at the right time, doing the right thing, that is, looking forlorn and lost.

Then there is the authority. Who called it an authority? Who gave it an authority? I see the electric signage lighting up at railway stations. They tell the time at which what train is expected to arrive, the destination station, the number of compartments and whether it is a fast or a slow local. And people believe in that electric display. Does belief confer authority? But is it not how religious and spiritual authorities come into being? They sneak in through the unwatched alleys of blind faith. What if the authorities themselves are couples? Who would prohibit their gathering then? It would be a hypocritical authority, like how all authorities tend to be. When is an authority needed? Why is an authority needed?

Saawan

Life is beautiful, in spite of the loneliness, in spite of the lack of soul searching conversations. Life is beautiful in itself when I can see the mid day sun playing hide and seek with flashing white clouds, when the sky is so crystal blue that one longs to gaze into it hopeful of seeing one’s future, when the moody gray clouds make their presence felt with a drizzle. Trifles like oppressive humidity do not matter. Trifles like a lack of someone to show the heart warming interplay of light and shadows do not matter. I saw the sights, on a slow local from Kalyan to Kanjurmarg and I was incredibly happy, after a real long time. I love what I see and what I smell and what I hear and I love what I imagine. I find contentment in myself and peace with my surroundings. There is no sight more lovely than a hillock and a saddle painted in mild browns and thick greens have its complexion accentuated by clear sun light and dark shadows cast by heavy rain clouds. One can forget the madding crowds, the unnecessarily severe humidity, the absolute loneliness and even the ever present hunger. There are elements for my company and they are enough.

I remember the sights from foreign lands and from my travel to places in my country. Nostalgia enhances the colours, saturates the emotions. Perhaps I should have talked more to that Italian girl. Who knows, I would have been on my way to start another political dynasty! Perhaps I should have understood that Singaporean girl and attended her Karaoke session. Who knows, I would have made the Glorious and Exalted Nation, the Supreme Country of People’s Republic of Democratic and Unified Secular, Socialist, Capitalist, Communist and Super, Ultimate Tadepalligudem as modern and efficient as Singapore!

Life is lived between one unfulfilled desire to the next. Life is one excitement of a teased heart to another. And such is life, the sun and the clouds, the trees and the hills, the rivers and the seas, the beloved and other ladies

Water and Spirituality- Thoughts in a Bar Over a Drink

When you strip us all of all layers of fancy clothing, the masks of paints and creams, age defying or at least skin toning, when you burn through all the unnecessary fat and the ego shields, when all appearances are laid bare and every pretence exposed, when we are left in all of our primal nakedness, what would be the unit of commonality binding us all? Would it be the redness of our blood or the whiteness of our bones? Would it be the underlying fears of minor embarrassments or the overarching fear of death? Would it be the milk of kindness and humanity or the poison of love? What is the standard unit for us humans? With what, or whom, have we been benchmarked?

The Holy Bible says we are made in the likeness of God. Not many crore gods, but a god.
Would it matter if we are made in the likeness of another god? Now that is blasphemy according to one religion. It is not, according to another religion.

We are made of water to a large extent. Water, we have been taught as children, takes the shape of its container. The question then arises, what are our containers? Who is our vessel? Are circumstances our containers? Are our parents our containers? Or, even, are our skins our containers? In which case, would it not make us as tight or loose or as white or black or as smooth or cancerous as our skins are? Then our existence would be defined by the thickness or the thinness of our skins. Then, not only beauty but also life would be skin deep. Destiny would lie in dermatology. Such silliness of our thoughts!

We are made of water to a very large extent is what our science books taught us. Yet, we can go for days without food but can not survive without water for long. In other words, we need to consume ourselves in order to live. What a pitiful condition!

Water can be clean or unclean. It can be holy or unholy, because, after all, cleanliness is holiness. No? It is next to godliness. It begs the question, is holiness equal to godliness?

What is holy water that dehydrates my body? What is intoxication that desiccates my soul? If my spirituality is forced to go dry in a draught of lack of spiritual nourishment, what use is any quantity of holy water or bodily juices? What use the intoxication and flesh's passion?

If, and if, are they too a route to salvation? What use my questions? What use my reverie in the sports bar in the midst of throbbing 'music' and mood lighting and couples in amorous and flirtatious mood?

Engineering in Bombay Locals

The Bombay locals are 9 or 12 compartment magnets on rails. They sweep up millions of iron filings from the platforms every three or seven minutes and dislodge them at places they wish to get off. For a boy or a girl of any age, magnets are wondrous things. It is the potential in them, the magnetic potential. The boys and girls are magnetic dipoles, the yin and yang of cosmic energy, mangetic energy if you will.

Traffic on the foot over bridge at Dadar railway station is an incredibly complex example of fluid dynamics. Near the walls of the bridge the liquid velocity is zero, as people either hang onto the railings, waiting for potential soul mates to arrive or are obstructed from moving by the hangers on. Velocity is the highest at the centre. People flow in seven or eight discernible layers in the tube, each layer's flow runs counter to the neighbouring layer's direction. The people layers are miscible. The flow is set in due to the gradient, differences in concentration which in turn is a result of the differences in density at both ends, ie. the western and central lines. There is a major tapping near the booking office and pressure tappings in the form of a parallel, smaller foot over bridge connected to the central foot over bridge.

It is a fool's game. Count the stars as they fall to the ground in a climax of activity hitherto absent from all their life. It is a fool's game, nothing but a fool's game. While the enthusiasm ebbs away, life supplanted by the resignation to life, a life time is spent in denial, in a parallel universe.

The enter key does not work, all inputs are primary. To be passed on to secondary.

While all else fails and falls to the ground, it is the song of hopelessness that soars above middling aspirations in a disconcerting symphony of a series of disappointments.

All life is a quest for meaning, a life time is a search for closure.

Identity is sought, recognition is craved for. Niches are what we seek to carve. We might as well dig a tomb out of the rock faces. And bury the past so that no malevolent spirit pursues, in the dense concrete jungles, the lost soul of a city dweller.

Why such darkness? What cause for this lament?

Was not Bacchus meant to loosen merry tongues?

A beach is an interesting place. Or may be it is the people who come to the beach who make it interesting. In which case, does it matter that the people themselves be interesting?

For the past two months, my routine involved a jog on the beach every morning. Except for a week or so when I woke up just late enough for the sun to rise and assume a position in the sky from where he beat down on all of Chennai mercilessly, even at 6.45 A.M. The purpose of these morning exertions was ostensibly to lose hundreds of kilos of body weight. But what with the convenience of phoning in a pizza and paying for it by meal coupons 'borrowed' from IT engineer sister, the whole song and dance of running on the beach early in the morning in my sexy shorts showing ample, hairy legs came to naught.

I gave up the pretence of running eventually. However, I had to account to the powers that be for the roughly fifty minutes that I was supposed to spend running. So I devised an ingenious way of accounting which should place me plumb in the middle of the pantheon of creative accounting geniuses: sauntering up and down the beach takes up exactly fifty minutes. Once I was introduced to the guilty pleasure of sauntering alone on the beach, I took to it like fish take to the water, which water practically lapped at my feet in the form of improbably airy and delicate white surf.

Cutting onions, Culinary skills, Bindulu

So, what gives?

I am in Chennai, living from one power cut to another, sweating my sweet life out and generally philosophising over a heavy dinner which invariably includes fried fish. Deep-fried fish that was well marinated before it was deep fried. Marinated in a marinade made of secret ingredients thought up by yours lovingly. Piqued the interest there? I know. Let us just say that guavas are not a part of the marinade. Yes, coffee is a part of the secret ingredient marinade.

The upgradation phase of my culinary skills had to be put on hold. Two months at home and I thought I would get all the recipes KTed from mom. Fat chance indeed. Kitchens are conflict zones. When two great cooks have to work in the same confined space, the resulting ego clashes put to shame the fires of the gas-fired stoves and the pressure will be much more than a Prestige pressure cooker can handle. Women are intensely possessive of their space and kitchen (feminists may disagree) is definitely one of their spaces. And my penchant for breaking glass bottles and knocking over vessels and sprinkling salt and coffee powder all over the kitchen floor did not necessarily help my cause either. Let it be said then that instead of rustling up dishes of authentic Andhra cuisine on his own, yours truly has been largely relegated to the very minor and slightly insulting role of (an auxiliary) kitchen helper or, in other words, an onion cutter. Men being like onions (or are ogres like onions?), the incredibly layered, nuanced and textured psyche finds solace in slicing and dicing and cutting and chopping. But there are only so many ways an onion can be cut and the whole ignominy of decreased station is silently suffered, the poignant, tragic tale unraveling before one's eyes, which in turn are filled up by pearls of tears. A bit like crying in the rain, I guess. The heavenly aroma of onions fried till they are golden brown makes up for the tears shed and the perceived slights suffered.

Whatever happened to the kattipeethas of old? Nowadays I see all chopping boards and food processors and Japanese steel knives only. Whatever happened, even, to the bindes? Bindes, not to be confused with the dots of different colours worn on womens' foreheads, of old that are used to store water. Bindes made of different metals. Bindes which when filled with water drawn from the village pond or from the well and well balanced on the heads of women are the very essence of Teluguthanam. Or the accumulated wealth of wisdom that found a way to plug leaks in metal bindulu by applying a lump of wet chinthapandu. Times indeed have changed.

Farewell to the Charade

I went on a ten day trip to the Himalayas, came back sun burnt and graduated from Wimwi. It was needed to cleanse myself of the airs I acquired doing mba-studies.

Only after the plane took off from the Ahmedabad airport and made one gentle, sweeping arc over the city, scorched and shimmering a few hundred feet beneath, did I say good bye.

An event got over.

But frankly I did enjoy certain parts of the diploma program. And none of them are set in the first year. The exchange at a university in Canada was fun, so was the summer internship. 

The Himalayas were a solid wall blocking even the clouds, white as they were, like the snow that capped the peaks. I felt like hurling myself at them, climbing over them and an intense curiosity as to what lay beyond that wall, took hold of me. May be in due time I will see through my own eyes the lands, the backyards of the gods.

I am neutral now that the student part of one's life is done. Ordinarily the feeling one usually associates with such events is either that of elation or at least, of marked relief. I am merely neutral.

I suspect I have lost the faculty of being surprised or being happy. While I walked up to the chief guest of the convocation to receive the post graduate diploma in management, I put on a plastic smile, of course, for the photos, I was entirely devoid of feeling. Was I happy that the two year grind got over? Was I sad that the student life got over? Neither of the feelings were present. I am becoming increasingly difficult for even myself to comprehend.

But I sincerely wished, upon some reflection, the presence of those that should have mattered, at the occasion. For, the degree, encompassing everything beginning with the admission and culminating with the convocation, was primarily the reason and the result, for and of those that should have mattered. I acknowledge the sincere prayers, the fond wishes, the (now) silly dreams- they were at once fulfilled and had become irrelevant, over the course of these two years.

How fast the time flies! How fast the tide of one's life changes!

While two years ago I was sure of what I and my life would be two years later, now, I am entirely clueless. I lost, and I think I am reasonably sure in my assessment, my compass, my direction in life. (Not career-wise, though).

There has been a challenge to my beliefs, my miserable little world I painstakingly constructed out of few sparse beliefs. My belief system had been sorely tested and I am still grappling with questions the answers to which I have no hope of finding in the near future. I am, to put it succinctly, lost.

The fight is still on. And I think I will reorient myself soon. It was a loss nevertheless, a lasting loss.

How could I even imagine, in my most addled state, the turn of events that finds me questioning a lot many things I assumed and believed were incontrovertible truths?

Vacuum

So what does one do post an intense mba education and faced with two months of utter, total, absolute free time sans academic tensions and responsibilities?

It depends. Classic mba answer, but really it depends. Depends on the person I guess. I feel empty. Not the first time I feel empty. But this emptiness is unlike anything else. Days upon days of free time. And no motivation whatsoever to do anything. Tacked by a colourful pin on the notice board right in front of me are little paper notes containing among other things lists of places of historical significance in Ahmedabad I wanted to visit, ideas that I think should be written down before they disappear from my memory, address of a friend in China to whom I promised to write a snail mail some months ago, lines from a wedding invite and my new year resolutions. All the notes in themselves are actionable causes. Sample the note which reads '"Idea #1. Dating/friend matches on I-pod (accessory)." Cryptic as it is, it is inspired by an article I read in the technology section of the NYT. It is not a direct lift off, of course, but a modification of the original idea and which I think has the potential to take off (as in be a financial/popular success). I did not elaborate on the idea. Perhaps I should. It is tacked to the board by a bright, cheerful yellow pin and is at eye level. The note is tantalising in that it only gives so much and nothing else.

I am faced with an enormous vacuum right now. Perhaps this is how it must feel in a limbo. Lose track of time, days and the purpose of life. Leading an existence a notch below that of 'intelligent' human being's. An animal's existence, I was going to say.

Movies, books, music, computer games, chai with friends, dinners with friends, library-nothing seems able to hold my attention. I think I need a game changing mood changer. An engagement with the target audience at an extraordinary level. Ordinary things are no longer engaging. And I need this game changer fast, before I implode from inaction. This is energy that needs an outlet, a force that needs an action.

Colour Pink

I do not have an ipod. I do not own an iphone either. In fact the only 'i' thing I constantly deal with is myself. I-self, I guess. It is not that I am technologically challenged. Far from it, in fact. It is not even that I am unstylish. I am stylish in my own way. ( :-) ). It is just that I did not get i-touched. In marketing parlance that would mean I am not in the target segment for Apple.

Colours are in integral part of our life. My favourite colour is green. I like it subconsciously. I think it stands for life (as in being alive), progress, innovation and prosperity. It signifies a certain fullness and wellness.

Today is Holi. People play with colours on Holi. While it is quite reductionist, I think the concept of Holi is best explained by the word 'colour'. More specifically 'gulaal.'

This time however there seems to be very little of the all pervasive pinkness in the campus. There was enough pinkness last year to warrant a post (Paint it Pink). Perhaps the triggers are all gone. Last year's post was triggered by the sight of a pink dress (was it a chudidar or kurta or what? I do not remember) a certain someone wore. And then I started seeing pink everywhere. On the ears and under the nails of pink-eared management monkeys. On the stairs and in the tunnel. On the walls and in bathroom sinks.

It feels good. It never felt good. They go to tourist sites, fibre plastic mock ups and plaster of paris models. They go to 10th pass models and their meaningless enactments and tribal dances. We seek. We hunt. We do not get distracted. We want to focus on business. We do not want an employhment. We want a deployment of people.

But you must excuse me

But you must excuse me. It is the inhibition. Not the prohibition. It is the exhibition, of emotions, of a certain degree of defiance. It is even the defence, of cherished values, not necessarily shared. No one, nothing can hold us back. The world is a revolving, the skies they are falling. We are free falling. There is no end to this fall.

The stars they are revolving, the solar systems they are awaiting. The pointlessness of life calls, we see no point in not replying. The typing goes on, I am sure sense is made. Crushed glass and few evaporated vapours are the only testimony to spirits that were lifted, to the imagination's tongues that were loosened.

Mail boxes wouldn't allow me to mail my angst. Intelligent questions stem unintelligent answers. The ten thousandth reader finished reading this. Congratulations.

Another Post Now.

Another post now.

I am a travelling salesman. I do not know where I want to be. But right now, all I want to be, is all I want to be. You look at the face in the mirror and see the bloodshot eyes of me. But right now, all I want to be, is all I want to be.

They are lyrics. Of a pointless gult song.

Transposed on to the life of a freshly minted MBA graduate.

Couple of assignments remain, but we can fraud. We frauded our way all through engineering and MBA, what more effort is required to sustain it over the next one week?

February has come to an end. Placements have not. Who cares?

I do. I sense the pathos, the despondency, the dejection. It is mine as much as it is theirs'.

We are all in the same boat, the MBAs, we are in a sinking boat and there are not enough life jackets.

Such is the irony of life.

This, of course, needs to be written. These are writings in the sands of time, to be erased by the winds of change. This, of course is meant to be written. The pain, the hopelessness, the vanity of it all.

What else an apt occasion to pour forth the anguish, the disappointment, the feeling of being let down by your own people. They do not trust me, they do not look beyond the narrow confines of the society, they care not what you feel or what you care for.

What this means is that there is an abandonment, an abundance of insensitivity.

I am incoherent. I do not make much sense. But why should I?

Who understood me? No one. Who made even a semblance of an effort to understand me? No one.

What does this beg for? This begs for an opportunity to get even. To show, that even the fate-raped can fight back. This calls for an effort to set things right, to set the score right.

The skies are falling on me now, I must move away from this hell. The worlds are revolving in my head, I must peg myself to a reference point.

So what if no one would anchor me? I will abhor the reluctance forever. No one would trust me. Who deserves my trust, then? No one.

Few Homegrown Thoughts About Marketing

Solar powered cell phone made of recycled plastic.

Full fledged Flash player for smart phones.

Abraham Lincoln as perceived by different cultures.

Shutting down the internet in its current form and redesigning a whole new internet.
[above quotes are headlines from the NYT]

Sabarmati river front development as an aesthetic and environment benefit to Ahmedabad

Disused railway coaches as temporary shelters for the homeless.

Mobile soup kitchens in cities.

Too many classes in a day.

Too little sleep in a day.

In a day, I get bombarded with ideas, sensations, thoughts and experiences. I get inundated by information. I frequently try to make sense of it all. Sometimes I succeed, most often I do not. I like to connect dots, draw conclusions, even hypothesize. Hypothesizing is a risky business. What if the hypothesis proves wrong? The loss is to the ego and not to the learning process. Ego is the biggest stumbling block to learning. Yet one cannot discard ego. [Or one should but can not, even when one tries.] The efforts involved in learning are all related to taming the ego, everything else follows naturally. It is like identifying the right target segment after assessing and segmenting the market. Positioning still needs to be done but almost half the job is done once the target segment is identified. [Learnings distilled from internship experience, couple of marketing workshops I attended]. Positioning is the right frame of mind.

Writing, again

It is all a culture thing. While newspapers in the US talked about finding affordable dinners at good restaurants for couples out on a date, the Indian newspapers sighed a collective relief that the Valentine's day passed off without an incident. Two very different ways of looking at the same day, eh?

I have had a brainwave of sorts. I think if I remove I from myself, to the extent possible, I will be a more engaging personality.

:) I flatter myself. For an eternal romantic there is no end to dreaming.

Anyway, writing saps the strength out of a man, the same way as eating a heavy meal makes one feel sedate. The source for writing is a sap that gets secreted in the brain, it is the creative juice. When I write, I tap certain amount of that sap. And then I wait till it gets replenished. It is like waiting for the coconut to fill up with water and attain that right degree of sweetness. We never know when the hour comes. If I do not write too often, I feel restless. It is as if all that pent up sap seeks a release.

My Valentine

One image that shall endure is that of children, six or seven years old, playing on the Harvard steps of wimwi. The batch of 1989 is in campus for a reunion. It is their children playing, running about and otherwise doing what all seven year olds do, in the campus. Spring is almost here. Yet another week may be and we will have song birds, new shoots and leaves and clear blue skies. Or another month, if the swallows do not turn up. The kids brought an hour or two of spring themselves to this dreary campus. The brick walls start to suffocate. The faded red, turning almost to a dull brown and grey is lifeless like a failed love.

I want it to rain. Wet the walls, the grass, wash the dust off the leaves, let some moss grow on the bricks, give some colour in general. The dryness reminds me of my own loneliness.

Yesterday was Valentine's day. Not much seems to have changed from what it was in 2006. If anything, the quality of my writing has degraded.

I will find a reason and fast too. I always manage to find a reason/excuse. In this case, my defence is that I have not been writing enough. Well, I have been writing, but not thinking and writing. Not writing from my heart. Whatever.

I was a prolific/ostentatious/irritating letter writer once. I loved writing. I still do, I think. Thoughts are like water. They must flow. Thoughts with a semblance of purpose are ideas. They must be encouraged to flow. Just as water's flow can not be stopped by any force or feature, so can not thoughts' flow be stopped. The stream or flood of thoughts should find a channel or a stream or a dry river bed in order to be productive. The river beds are the inherent talents in a man. I can not paint or draw or sing for the love of my life. Many can. The channels are our conscious efforts to give a structure and a meaning for the flow. Streams are the mystics' characters.

She is a butterfly. I would be heartless if I wanted to confine her to my heart. There is happiness in freedom. So be it.

When eventually the daily baseness of life corrupts the purity of heart (and its vagaries), when the ebb and flow of common emotions engulf the highest point of our existence, that is to love for nothing, there shall be nothing in this world save the disembodied beats of a heart that fluttered once as fast as the wings of a butterfly when she saw a flower she liked fleetingly.

My words, even, are a subtraction from the beauty of that feeling, the body, a burden. So I know, for this one ethereal moment, the meaning of life and I have seen God's face, even if I am blind to it the next instant, I know, within my heart, within the heart of hearts, within my very soul ,that I loved and I loved and never lost.

Today is Friday the 13th. Tomorrow is Saturday the 14th. No sweat. Days pass by, deadlines loom large, assignments pile up. Who said tucchadom is peace? And we have not even started talking of placements.

We are all anxious. These are times of uncertainty. Why are we anxious? To a certain extent by the possibility or the impossibility of placements. But let us not venture there.

My anxiety stems from various sources. It has been a while since I dined out. That is a major tension. It has been a while since I moved out of campus. Another reason to be stressed out. Well, technically speaking the 'while' is less than 24 hours really, but by venturing out of campus I mean not for mundane purposes like Corpo D or job treats but seeing some new place, preferably a place of historic significance, and eating food you like.

But of course Darwin's birthday was not the trigger. The stimulus lay somewhere.

This is how it goes. If God chooses our friends, life partners, parents and our careers, what do we choose for ourselves?

Selection then is really only an imposition.