The end of an era

Wrote this article on 14th April while watching the two big matches that were on TV. 

As I'm writing this, Stephen Curry just hit his 400th 3-point field goal this season. The Bulls' record of 72 wins in a season is finally going to be broken after 20 years. However, that's not what this article is about. Twenty years ago, something else legendary happened - something that Sports Illustrated described as the second best of its kind. I'm talking about the NBA draft. The 1996 NBA draft is considered second best only to the 1984 draft where 'His Airness' Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, John Stockton and Hakeem Olajuwon were drafted. 
As a 90's kid in India, I started watching basketball around the year 2000, and started playing it everyday in school. A lot of people from the '96 draft were already established players by then, while some were still blooming. All my friends were already talking about the killer crossovers by this guy called Iverson and tried to emulate his moves. Some were talking about this guy called Kobe who could score over anyone. I still hadn't found my calling, but it was because of these two guys and the likes of Vince Carter that my initial love for basketball began. Soon, I found myself making jump shots and telling people that I'm going to be the next Kobe Bryant one day. Luckily for me, I realized that passing the basketball was way more fun than shooting it. That's when I saw this guy called Steve Nash, who with his insane passing abilities and unorthodox one legged runners, impressed critics and fans alike. Yet another product of the 1996 draft. He and Jason Kidd changed the way I looked at basketball. I used to wake up early every morning just to watch these guys put on a display of creative magic day after day. You had to choose one of those styles as a kid. You're either a scorer or a passer. You can't choose both. 
I just changed the channel to the other game and saw Kobe hit a 3 against the Jazz in his final game. He now has 35 points. That's what this article is about. It's about how these guys changed my life. As Kobe retires today, I think it's fair to say that the 1996 draft era comes to an end. Iverson retired a few years ago, Nash retired last year and Kobe, today. A lot of players have come and gone. A lot of records broken. These guys came into the league when Jordan was still winning titles and they had huge shoes to fill when he retired. Though Iverson was Draft pick #1, Nash and Kobe were picks #15 and # 13 respectively. I don't know if anyone would have believed that those two would be the best of their class. Though, players like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh came in pretty soon, they were no match for the likes of Kobe, Nash, Iverson and Ray Allen. One thing that stood out about these guys was their crazy work ethic. The number of 3's Allen practiced everyday, the number of hours that the undersized point guard from Canada spent working against his back problems and the number of hours that Kobe spent in the gym, were inspiring for all teenagers in my time. I read somewhere, that despite being the best player in the league, Kobe was the first player to enter practice and the last one to leave. Watching these guys play, helped me survive school and college. Today, I may not be a great basketball player, but the things that I learnt from all of them is what helps me at work and keeps me going in life. 
I hated Kobe and the Lakers as a child. The buzzer beater during game 4 of the 2006 playoffs against the Suns was heartbreaking. I remember being very upset all day. Luckily for us, we won games 5, 6 and 7 and went on to win the series. I remember chanting "Kobe sucks" to all my friends for the entire week after that. The 2007 playoffs was my favourite because we thrashed the Lakers 4-1 with Nash dishing out 23 assists in one of the games. But every single game, these guys brought their 'A' game to the court. Not once did they come in, as the best players in the world, but rather came in as underdogs. At least Nash and the Suns did. Allen and the Supersonics too. I think I have played every installment of the EA sports NBA 2K series. I always played as the Phoenix Suns and used to trade Dirk Nowitzki and Kobe into my team. I would then continue the Nashty and Dir(k)ty partnership in my virtual dreams. I intentionally would bench Kobe and did not let him play any game so that I could humiliate him in my virtual world, and also because if he played for the Lakers, he would score a lot and I would lose to them. 
I'm changing channels now, the Warriors have hit 120 and the Grizzlies are nearing 100. I now know that the Bulls record is surely going to be broken. Meanwhile, Kobe just hit 50. I am completely torn. I don't know which channel to watch. One channel has the past, that most of us choose to cling on to, while the other is telling me how the league is going to be, henceforth. As an NBA fan, it's time to move on. I saw the Warriors record-breaking win, and then changed the channel just in time to watch Kobe hit 60 and walk out of the court with his chest held high. I hated that guy through my childhood but all I'm left with now, is respect. 
It is truly the end of an era. My dad and I were animatedly watching the games. 
Me: Kobe hit 50
Dad: No, he hit 60
Me: I was talking about field goal attempts
#OneLastKobeTaunt #KobeSucks #GoodbyeMamba #GoodbyeChildhood

Dzongri trek- Part 3

Hello. I know I have been very very poor with updating these posts on time, but here is the last and final edition of the Dzongri Trek journals. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed being there (Just kidding, you can't unless you really go there!!)

But yes, before you start reading this final edition, at least skim through the first two parts. 
Part 1: http://bratbigb.blogspot.in/2015/09/dzongri-trek-part-1.html
Part 2: http://bratbigb.blogspot.in/2015/10/dzongri-trek-part-2.html

Day 6

Woke up to light being flashed on my face. Puran tells me the sky is super clear. It's 3:45am. We left at 4:15ish on a super dark, super cold and super steep climb to the peak and the milestone. 45 minutes of huffing and puffing and WE WERE THERE!!!!! What a view. North kabru, south kabru, pandim, .... And the mighty Kanchenjunga. Took a billion pictures, screamed a lot. We had conquered what we came for. If there was rain and even today if we couldn't have seen the view point, I for one would have been very disappointed. I even planned another trip here within the next couple of years in my head. But we did it!!
Here are some breathtaking pics-

That's us at the peak.

Those colourful things that you see at the bottom were our tents in Dzongri. We scaled so high in less than an hour.

The view brought out the selfie bug in all of us.

After going back to the hut in tzongri, we ate some breakfast and quickly packed and started the steep walk back to tshoka. The weather was bad and it rained throughout. 95% of the walk was downhill and taking a look at the terrain I was so proud of myself that I actually climbed this in a day. Anyway, sliding and skidding and constantly slipping down, we reached tshoka before 1 o clock. So much relief. 12 of us sat in a bed and cracked jokes till most of us had stomachaches. We then had dinner where we ate rice with sprouts dal, aloo paneer and soya mushroom subji. I wanted to fall at our cook bhaiyya's feet. They all trekked with us all the way but each of them carried around 30kgs of supplies on them while walking. They also secretly baked a cake for Sanjay because it was his birthday. It was the most delicious cake ever. They made it with the little ingredients that they had. We cut the cake at 11:45 pm just before the day ended and went back to sleep. Tomorrow is the final day of the trek. Back to Yuksom. It is over 16 kms long and took us 2 days to trek from Yuksom to Tshoka. But a lot of it is downhill. Praying for no rains. Let's see how this goes.

Day 7

Last and final day of the trek. We woke up super early and were chit chatting. We were given pancakes and porridge for breakfast. We started walking down. Every step reminded me of human civilization. In the last 7-8 days the only thing that gave me comfort was the faces of these 12 people. But I could do with meeting more people. While walking down, suddenly we became the experts. People going up with their teams ask us how the climate was up there and how long would it take to get there. I gave confident answers as if I lived there all my life. Funny how people randomly expect you to know answers because you are in some position. Too many epiphanies on this trip. I'll spare you the details. I could sense the ending. I ran, I fell down, I picked myself up and ran again. Finally reached the restaurant and drank a bottle of water. Slowly others started getting there too. We hugged, shared victory screams, smiled and laughed that we did it. Our lives were never going to be the same again. 

Most of those smiles have a story. Everyone has their own victory. Someone gave up smoking and wanted to prove that their lungs could take it, someone wanted to push their body to new limits. As for me, I just want to say something to my 7 year old self who used to sit and watch his friends play. He had severe wheezing and asthma problem and his family had to move out of Delhi because of his health condition. Well my dear friend, you have a life time of playing basketball ahead. You will also scale a height of 4300m on foot without wheezing or breathing heavily even once. Life does get better. 

The End

Dzongri trek- Part 2

Hey, before you start reading this, please do read the first part-
http://bratbigb.blogspot.in/2015/09/dzongri-trek-part-1.html

Apologies for such a late post. Meant to post it within 2 days of posting the first one. Will post the third part soon. 
Jumping straight into Day 3 then,

Day 3 started off with heavy rains and our guides told us it wasn't advisable to proceed further. We decided to call it a rest day and did a few mini missions. We chatted a lot, visited a tiny monastery and took like a zillion pictures. That's Sneheel and Ritu looking at the monastery from far away. 

That's the rest of them going on mini missions, trying to do whacky stuff and explore the place further. 

That's the view of the horse stables and the place where all our yaks and zhos stayed.  

Some of us chose to read peacefully and catch up on good sleep. That's me reading over the clouds. 

We made a new line of jokes called #LowAltitudeProblems. Stuff that we considered problems back in Bangalore but are insignificant here. 
Example: Not showering 
Another example: Shitting in the open. 
Another example: A horse farting on your face. Don't want to reveal who was the victim of this. (Hint- His name means horse funnily enough)
Yet another example: Not brushing your teeth but drinking tea and saying that it is an anti oxidant and it will cleanse your mouth
Okay last example: Falling into fresh yak dung, getting up and continuing walking like nothing happened. (Happened to yours truly)
Let's see what day 4 has in store for us.

Day 4

Day 4 was probably the toughest day of trekking for us as the entire route was uphill. It was very slushy and there were creepy insect sounds as well. From Tshoka we went to Phedang within 2 hours and there we had lunch. After lunch we walked till Devaralli which was very steep and there were a few birds here and there. 

The terrain in Devaralli looked like this. I walked this entire 2 and a half hour stretch alone and started asking myself questions about why I was doing this and what was the point to all of this. From Devaralli, the entire stretch was flat and a little downhill too. So I reached Dzongri at 3:45 pm only to find 5 of the quicker ones waiting for me and cheering loudly.
This is our trekker's hut in Dzongri. That's Aswin with Tiger. Tiger is a dog from Goecha La who accompanied us all the way from Sachen. He was always at the head of the pack, often running up and waiting for us. He was our 13th member.  

I had a pounding headache which could have been an indication of altitude sickness. I took some tablets and lied down. One isn't supposed to fall asleep if it's altitude sickness. An hour of lying down and I was fit as a fiddle. Luckily we were staying at the trekker's hut in Tzongri for if we were outside, we would have frozen to death. Everyone's wearing 4-5 layers of clothes. It's 8:00 pm and we are off to sleep. Have a really early start tomorrow. At 3:30 am. Let's see how that goes. Goodnight.

Day 5

We were graced by horrible heavy rains and going to the view point became pointless. Instead we went to Lakshmi pokhari which is a holy lake 4 kms from tzongri. This walk was the toughest for me personally because we were walking in heavy rains. My pants were wet, body was getting heavy and I kept slipping. When we reached the lake, we could see absolutely nothing. Just a small water body. All the mountains were covered in clouds. We ourselves were inside a massive cloud. That's us in heavy rain. 

 I went back into my questioning state where I was asking myself what was the use of sweating so much for 5 days. My whole body was aching and I was very hungry as we got back only by 3 pm. Our cook bhaiyyas tried to lift our spirits with a lot of tea, hot onion pakodas and tasty tomato soup. We even got momos and fried rice for dinner. Most of us were so full, we didn't even eat a lot. Tomorrow morning we get our second shot at the peak. Hoping that the weather is fine. If we don't go to the view point and conquer the peak, it will be very disappointing and it will feel like an incomplete trip. However, the clouds have cleared and we got a clear view of the night sky. For the first time we saw the moon. Dear God, please give us clear sky. I am off to sleep in the sleeping bag in the hut while some of us are sleeping in the biting cold in the tents.

Dzongri Trek- Part 1

Okay so it's 9:40 pm and it's pitch dark and the silence is like when the teacher asks, "so, who all did your homework?" I'm in a sleeping bag in a tiny tent which may or may not have leeches. My tent mate Aswin thinks we may die of suffocation because there is more air in a car tire than this tent. I have decided to pen down my thoughts and create a real picture for those people who have never been on a trek before but boldly said "Dzongri ah? Not everest ah?" to their friends and said let's go. I am obviously talking about me.

Rewind the tape to a month back and we found out that we're going to tzongri which is a peak, 4300 m high in Sikkim. I called my parents for permission and my dad was pretty cool with it. My mom immediately pictured the climax of Lakshya and started asking doubts about how I could be open to being suspended by ropes from a mountain. All that happened and we read up on a lot of blogs and saw a lot of cool pictures and got all psyched about doing the trek. My only preparation was running 5km every morning for about a month or so. Clearly after the first steep climb on tar road itself, that training wore off. Last time I was panting so much was when my principal called my father back when I was in 6th standard. 
So on 18th September we flew to Bagdogra, via Kolkata. That flight journey was so long, I even sat and read Air Indigo's Hello 6E magazine. Here's us at the Bagdogra airport.

Then we got into 2 cars and went on a memorable road trip to yuksom. Every half an hour we asked "Aur kitna time lagega bhaiyya?" Some 16 times and yummy food later, we reached Yuksom. On 19th morning, I woke up to this view.

We were told Yuksom was the first capital of Sikkim. We were also told it's exactly one lane long. We visited the entire town in ten mins. At 9:30 am after yummy breakfast, we were taken to the police station where one of the officers casually told us "Travel in pairs. There maybe bears. At the max they'll kill you." I  quickly went to the bathroom, took a leak and cried. Then began our trek. I am so grateful we had all the equipment. Without the right shoes and the right bags, you could really get into trouble. Here's what our journey looked like in pictures

I'm not kidding, it was exactly like this with ups and downs. I walked right up front, right at the back and in the middle. We were all about 20 mins apart. Most of the journey was alone. Yes, people around you will keep you motivated but you really need to be mentally tough to do stuff like this. It was exactly like temple run except we were sweating like pigs. Slowly we dropped our t-shirts and kept walking. 6 hours later we reached Sachen. Okay so now I'm off to sleep. Hopefully will be able to narrate tomorrow's journey if all's good.

Day 2

Barely any sleep because we were busy warding off leeches. I was terrified and kept checking for leeches on me. Somehow got out of the tent as soon as there was light and we had to brush our teeth in the open and had to take a dump in something we called, "the shit pit". It was just a hole in the ground inside a tiny tent. After we finish our business, we're supposed to fill it up with mud. We even called it "Crap-e-diem" because it would seize all the crap. We again had some good food. Our team consists of 12 of us, 3 guides- Sameer, Puran and Saumya (pronounced shoma), 4 cooks, 6 yaks and 6 horses to carry our big bags and supplies. They didn't anticipate that we would eat so much. Anyway, day 2 was no different from day 1, except it was tougher, the forest was thicker and the view was sexier. It reminded me of stage 4 of Captain Claw, except for the creepy villains. We first went to Bakhim which was close to 3100 m high and Puran gave us biscuits. We gorged on a few packets like lunatics. We were walking inside clouds now. I even made a joke saying that's cloud number 7, that's cloud number 8 and yaaaaaaaaaaaay. 
This is what the view looked like-

Since some of us were a little faster than the rest, Puran told us we could take the short cut. This was like mountain climbing and we were on all fours. We held on to hanging roots and stems and pulled ourselves up. 

That's Sanjay posing on one of the fallen trees. We had to climb all of this in order to use the shortcut. I think there was a landslide that caused this. 
Within an hour of battling steep slopes, we reached Tshoka, our resting point for the day. We chose to sleep in a trekker's hut rather than camp outside because it was raining like crazy. Felt so good to use a toilet. Tomorrow's trek is going to be gruelling because so far we covered 10kms on day 1 and 6kms on day 2. We had to get acclimatized to the cold. Now that we are, we need to walk 16 kms. It's going to take close to 10 hours. See you on the other side.

PS- I am splitting the trek into parts so that it doesn't become too long. I am not editing anything because it'll take away from the authenticity of the journals. 

PPS- Spoiler: Since I am publishing this article it means we returned alive and safe. More posts coming up within a couple of days. They've already been written.
Credits: Only some of these photos are mine. The rest were clicked by everyone else. 

Random realizations- Part 1

Okay I am super excited about this, I don't usually write in first person or something like that, but I have the feeling that this is the start of something big. We had a session in office today that allowed us to talk about our random realizations and I randomly presented something. Hearing others speak about their realizations made me realize that there is so much we know but we do not express because we do not have a platform. That was like a random realization inside a random realization. Randomrealizationception. (Sorry that was my last joke. I promise)

Before you start reading, the idea that I am going to express is something that worked for me. It may or may not work for you. You may have already thought on these lines and you maybe 2 or 3 steps ahead, which means you can get back to me and tell me where exactly on this curve are you?

Okay so here goes. Over the last year, I have worked in a lot of teams and it is really amazing to see how much I have learnt and grown over this time period. It also helped me build teams and work with new people more efficiently. Until recently, I was doing it intuitively without realizing the power of team building. Only when someone mentioned that I could think one level deeper as to what I did that made these teams come closer, did I try to put my thoughts to words.

So the thought is this: "Everyone who belongs to a team/group has a role to play."
Think of your family. There are 4 people say. Everyone has a specific role to play because of which they exist in that group. In my family of 4 people, say 10 years back- My dad played the role of the person who was the leader, my mother played the role of the person who took care of us, my brother played the role of the guy who needed to be cared for and I.. well I played the role of the guy who was noting all this and making mental notes. (Sorry again :P) The best part is that these roles keep changing, and everyone's role around them keeps changing too. Which is perfectly okay.
Go and think of every group that you felt that you belonged to. You played a distinct role in them. There were never 2 attention seekers or 2 funniest people in a group. There was always one person who played their role to perfection. Not dwelling further on this point, let me give you one last example, think of the sitcom FRIENDS. Phoebe was the weird one, Chandler was the funny one, Monica was the leader, Ross was the one who gave everyone information and wanted to be the smartest one, Rachel was the attention seeking one and Joey was well.. Joey. Everyone played distinct roles.
Hope my point is clear. So now when you reverse engineer this, you can think of how to build teams around this idea. A good team is one where everyone is playing some role or the other. Not just Job Description wise but even nature wise. Everyone has some specialty that they bring to the table. Think about it again. Take a moment. Think of the teams where you felt weird or you felt you did not fit in, It is because you felt you couldn't contribute anything to it or gain anything from it.

So now that you have the realization and the idea about what I think of groups, here's what worked for me. Maybe it'll help you too. So there are two kinds of groups. 1- New groups/teams and 2- Already established groups/friends circles/teams.
Let us start with the first kind of group/circle. In an ideal environment, people will quickly adjust and realize what role they play and gel with each other (without their knowledge. That's my favourite part!!!) As a leader, if you feel that someone is an outcast, you now know where you can help them. That way it will help them figure out new skills and roles and it will help them blend in.
Similarly in an already established group, team or friends circle, the quicker you make them realize the scope for them to be a part of the group, the quicker they blend in.

So that is the idea. Sorry for the pedestrian language. I wrote this article in under 20 minutes by penning down my thoughts. Here's what I want from you. Tell me if this helped. Not as an ideology necessarily but as something that that made you think. If it gave you an "aha" moment, then I am really glad. I would love to write a part 2 and take it to the next step and probably even customize it for a few situations to help you build teams better, but for that I need to know if this helped.
Thank you for reading.

Strain

"Get out of my sight you creep!!!", she screamed. Here I was, sitting in the railway station waiting room while she screamt (Wait. Is it screamed?) Yeah so she was screaming at what looked like some dude who asked her out or something. She picked up her black bag and came and sat opposite me. My hand automatically went to my bag and I put my arm into the strap. (Read http://bratbigb.blogspot.in/2014/04/love-is-blind.html for reasons)
"What?", she barked. Only then did I realise that she was staring at me staring at her. "No no sorry, I just remembered an incident", I told her. "Does it look like I care?", she asked. I was shocked at how rude she was, but I could understand her situation. "Sorry", I said, and went back to my Rubik's cube. "Is that a Rubik's cube?", she spoke up after two minutes. I silently nodded without looking up. "I'm sorry about that. I shouldn't have snapped at you.", she said. "It's okay. Lots of weirdos around", I told her. She smiled awkwardly. "Wow! Did you just solve it?", she asked. "Yup. It's easy.", I bragged. "Can you please teach me? I am Gita by the way", she introduced herself. I was reminded of my last encounter with a pretty girl and I chuckled. "Is there a problem?, she asked visibly irritated. I said "I am very sorry. I was reminded of this incident." "Tell me about it. Now I am curious.", she said.
So I told her the entire story. She laughed so loud, a couple of people turned to look at us. I was starting to like her. "Stop it you idiot", I told myself. "Stop what?", she asked. Only then I realized that I had spoken out loud. "I have this tendency to do stupid things", I said. "Stupid things like what?", she asked. "Let us not go there", I said. "Turn that face once clockwise", I said, trying to change the topic back to the Rubik's cube. Ten minutes later we had solved it and there was so much satisfaction on her face. I could see it.
"You don't have to clutch your bag so tight, you know?" she playfully asked. I sheepishly put it down and smiled. I was about to let her know how I felt about her when she stood up and said "Thank you for the cubing lesson. I am off." Never did I feel more constipated in the sense that so much had to come out but nothing did. She walked out and walked away. I missed her already. I took a sudden decision to chase her and get her phone number at least. I ran outside the waiting room and I could see her far away. I suddenly realized that my train was about to leave. I heard the engine horn. It was telling me to make a choice. I decided to run in the direction that would define me for the rest of my life. I started running. I picked up speed. I was running unbelievably fast like never before. I almost caught up and for the last 20 years, this is where I wake up.
So I have been having this dream for so many years now. It has something to do with a train. There are so many versions of it. Today it was the girl. One time I had gone to buy idli and my train started. But I always end at this point where I have to choose between the train and something else. I wake up from the dream just when I start running.
---The (abrupt) end---

Sorry if you had too many hopes from the story. I have hopes too. Hopes of finding out what I am chasing in life.

Outception

He kept looking at his watch. He didn't want to seem restless but he really wanted to leave. It was just 2:30 in the afternoon. He didn't want anybody to suspect him so he just took a few deep breaths and decided to kill time. He knew he couldn't leave before 6:00 pm without risking getting caught. He tried chatting with his colleagues. They were talking about some dude's wedding in the office. He didn't seem to care. He really had to go. He couldn't focus on what they were saying. He looked at his watch. 2:35 pm. "Damn it!!", he cursed under his breath. "Only 5 minutes?? Are you kidding me?", he thought.
He decided to sing some songs but he was useless with lyrics. So he hummed the tune of an entire album containing seven songs. He checked his watch again. 2:45 pm. This time he pounded his fist on the table and 3 people looked in his direction. Nobody understood how important it was for him to leave. He had to save the world. He was Clark Kent. Nobody knew he was Superman. He just wanted to undo the top two buttons of his shirt and magically make his spectacles disappear and just fly out of his office. On impulse, he decided to take off. He flew out of the building but the freakin revolving door hit him on the head and he fell down with a thud. He got whacked on the head. "Fallen asleep on our desk again, have we?", asked his teammate. "Who was it today? Batman or Wonder Woman?" Or was it Spiderman like the other day? I remember you mumbling "No Mary Jane. Don't go to Harry."", and he burst out laughing. He had fallen asleep at his desk as usual and he was glad that his boss didn't catch him. He checked the time. 3:00 pm. He swore out loud. What was wrong with the world, he wondered. The last half an hour felt like the first five minutes of a Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie. That was the last time he had experienced so much torture. He decided to go take a tea break but it was just 3:05 pm. He went alone, drank tea, took a long walk and eventually returned some 45 minutes later only to find out that the time was just 3:20 pm. He tried to hold his breath and commit suicide but he failed some 20 seconds later. There he was, suffering in his office, while there was important stuff to be done. He picked up his bag and stealthily slipped out. A black cat crossed his path just outside the office. He cursed out loud and tried to cross the road when a loud horn startled him. He noticed the lorry when it was just a few feet away. Before he could react, BAAAAM! "Dude you really should stop sleeping in office.", his other teammate said. "Why were you swearing in your sleep by the way?", she asked.

Caught napping by two different people on the same day, he thought to himself. 3:45 pm. He really wanted to rip his intestines out in boredom and anger. "We could call it banger or angdom", he thought inside his head and immediately felt that he would gladly prefer the Sanjay Leela Bhansali torture also now. "You know what? Chuck everything. Let superman die. Let Mary Jane go to Harry Osborne. Let the world explode into tiny billion pieces and poke Bhansali in the eye. Let Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam be rated number 1 on IMDB. I just don't care!!!", his inner voice screamed out. "I am going to write a story", he thought to himself. He picked up his pen and notepad and began writing-
"He kept looking at his watch. He didn't want to seem restless but he really wanted to leave. It was just 2:30 in the afternoon. He didn't want anybody to suspect him so he just took a few deep breaths and decided to kill time....