Challenges

I've increasingly become prone to posting things on this blog that I think are relevant "thoughts" or events.
I haven't actually used it as a journal off late... a place for musings...to spill the thoughts that abound inside one's brain, much like Dumbledore's Pensieve in the Goblet of Fire.

The Challenges I face..lets talk about them....applying your mind and body and overcoming the sheer frustration you feel at every moment...clenching your teeth in chagrin but yet continuing to apply yourself to better your last effort.

My challenges:

• Golf: 6 AM every day and I begin to apply my mind and body...my entire being is dedicated to that little white speck and making it float as smoothly and straight and far as I possibly can. Here though I have a good coach though he is prone to sudden bouts of cussing when I top or duff a ball ( today was much better, yesterday was a disaster)
  
• Spanish: I'm constantly listening to spanish music and going over my notes and dictionary; practising my grammar over and over again. Again an incredible challenge...especially when its done at 9 PM when your head begins to bob involuntarily and your eyes seem to draw down of their own volition
• The Guitar: I think this is my biggest and most inpsiring challenge yet. Nothing...not cricket, not AIESEC nothing comes close to the challenge this poses to me every day. The beauty here is that there is no one to teach me, no one to tell me that you need to hold the plec. in this way or get your hand position in that way. Everything I need to know about the basics are explained to me in the most expert way by Nikhil every weekend. The challenge is to get it right...practise practise practise....up & down, up & down the frets....incredible....no amount of intellect can help you here...no amount of guidance can be of use...there is no technique which one can adopt for better results...there are no books one can read to become an expert...no sites on the internet I can visit which will help me move from C > G > Am and back again to C :-) Wow. I used to believe that shedding a few pounds was challening...boy was I wrong. This is a challenge. Pure and unadulterated.
  
• Algebra, Mensuration & factor theorems: Yes...I had mentioned in one of my earlier entries that I am looking to "refresh" my knowledge of mathematics and this effort is proving to be stimulating and needless to say the most difficult. Being out of touch with one of the cornerstones for any aspiring management candidate is a digression not easily forgiven by the subject itself. Its been 5 years since I went back to the basics of management mathematics and I think its been 5 years too many. I'm currently on the incredibly exciting subject of linear & quadratic equations but will spare my blog the details of the travesty I wage upon the subject.
• And the biggest of them all...
  
• Reintegration: As funny as it may sound to many, being back in India AND living with parents is not a smooth transition from almost 3 years of being a nomad. Although the atmosphere at home is fine and the time with family is precious it can get cloying at times...all my Indian brothers & sisters will know what I mean. But that aside I find myself distracted & disturbed by many events and realities that I see and that are a part and parcel of life in India: the poverty, the incessant & nonchalant display of a lack of any civil sense, the bungling autocrats, bureaucrats, politicians and administrators...from government to civil society to sports. I find everything tinged with a sense of apathy; of being swept up in their own problems and material needs. It seems the number of people wanting to create change are so few as to be almost inconsequential. I seem to scream inwardly to myself that this isn't who I am. This society I live in...this society which I grew up in and learnt everything in, is not who I want to be. I dont feel a sense of belonging anymore here. I often wonder if my ideals in returning to India are too far fetched but then I'm just another quitter right? However what I am increasingly become sure of is that my identity and what it was before I left Bangalore in May 2002, my identity has changed forever. I don't know if that's positive or not but I'll console myself with the fact that my passion for creating change remains intact although I think I need another salmon with me swimming upstream.....will it happen...? We'll have to wait.

These then are the challenges. Is there room for more...? There always is....there always is.