Hard to get

I find that I was in error when I thought of the respect accorded to being hard to please as some sort of isolated reaction. ("So, what else is new?" you say, I know, having assumed that, if I say something, it has to be erroneous. I cannot always be answering you hecklers.) I have now realized that it is only a subset of a more generic condition. That which is easy to get has no value and people chase after what is hard to get and, thus, a compliment from an 'easy to please' person has no value since it is not hard to get.

Let me first define what I mean by 'hard to get' before I get into specifics - otherwise you may end up bombarding me with online and offline options that make things easy to get anything (though, hitherto, I have mainly seen ads that make selling things easy) with appropriate footnotes indicating various financing options that will tell me what my EMI will be but will conveniently remain silent on how long I would have to continue paying them.

Where was I? Ah! The definition of 'hard to get'. I do not merely mean things that will require you to cross the seven seas and climb seven mountains; brave the efforts of genies and demons to stop you; pass through fire and plunge into active volcanoes before you can find them. Nay, in fact, I do not even talk of such things. I only talk of the more mundane things that will chain you to your desk, wailing for freedom, while you work on earning enough to pay that confetti shower of bills that shall inevitably land at your doorstep every month. Or those things, which will cost you so much in effort and stress that, when you eventually do get what you slaved for, you may not have any time or energy to do anything with them.

A thing that is 'hard to get' is worth far more than anything that you may think you want. If you are guaranteed a decent living, what would you prefer - a six bedroom independent villa, household help, a dependable power supply from your own gen-set, a sparkling river by the house, clean air and a huge garden OR a one bedroom flat on the sixtieth floor, no household help, erratic power and water supply, smog-ridden air and a couple of wilting potted plants? A no-brainer! The latter, of course! Why? Well - the one-bedroom flat would probably cost you a few crores since sixty floor buildings are likely to be in the heart of a city whereas a six-bedroom villa would probably come cheap since it would be in the heart of the hinterland. And, if the latter is so easy to get, it must be value-less.

I had read a SF story long back about a future time where the protagonist lives in a huge house with all the luxuries and only one day of work permitted to him. He dreams longingly of the day when he would rise so high in Society as to be able to afford a single bedroom non-service flat and six days of work! The future projected by that author seems to be today's reality. The successful people of today are the ones who work 24x7 - as opposed to the 'losers' who only work a five day week of eight hours each. As for the living accommodation, check the previous paragraph.

So, there we all go, playing a giant game of monopoly and collecting all the items, which we can possibly collect, that Society has decreed hard to get. And, if someone asks you about it, the following conversation will probably ensue.

"What are you rushing to get?"

"This hard-to-get-thing"

"Do you really want it?"

"Of course I do"

"Why?"

"Because it is hard to get"

And off you go to pledge the next five years of your life to get a SUV, which will take you an hour of crawling and a lot of curse-power to maneuver through the half kilometer of narrow roads that separate your house from the main road, once each in the morning and the evening. The less said about what happens after you reach the main road the better.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that what is hard to get is the only worthwhile thing to pursue. An intra-city forest a few kilometers away from your house is so much trash when you can spend half a month's earnings on a weekend getaway. As they say, "Ghar ki murgi, dal barabar" i.e a gourmet meal at home is nothing more than another hamburger whereas a hamburger in a five-star hotel is a gourmet meal.

SO - all you guys eagerly reading my lips for pearls of wisdom - if you want respect, play hard to get. Don't blame me, though, if no-one strives to get you. It is not given to everyone to walk that thin line between playing hard enough to get so the getting seems worthwhile and playing too hard to get.

AND, no, my being single has got nothing to do with having failed to walk that line!

Easy to please

The main problem with me is that I am a slow learner. (You know of more such problems with me? You can keep the list, I do not want it). By the time I learn any lesson I am either too set in my ways or it is too late in life to apply it. Like, say, learning the best pick-up lines when you are hardly able to get yourself up from bed without help, leave alone getting anything else up. So, I am left with trying to pass on the lessons to others while there is still time for them to benefit from them.

Whenever I used to be a guest at someone else's place, I invariably either found the food good or pretended it was. As long as it was edible, I really was satisfied and could actually say good things about it. If it seemed more like the sort of thing that would have pigs turning away in disdain, I still managed to say a "Hmmm" in a suitably positive tone in reply to the customary, "How did you like the food?"

Do you think this got me liked and respected by my hosts? Not that I could notice. I got the reputation of being 'easy to please' AND, if you people have not realized it, THAT is the reputation that classifies you just below the pet dog in terms of respect. There was this cousin of mine who used to say,"The curry requires a nano-gram more of salt; the sambhar had a milliliter more of sourness and the curd was too sweet." The hosts used to hang on to his words and take solace in the fact that the water, at least, met his exacting standards.

The net result of this was that when I hove to on the horizon the hosts used to say, "Ah! Suresh! No problem. He will eat anything". If I stand up at the end of the meal and give a heartfelt lecture praising the cooking, the hosts just said the equivalent of "So what else is new?" and changed the subject. When my cousin comes over, they are all atwitter - with the hostess hovering around him and looking with a mix of eagerness and apprehension to await his comments. If, perchance, he mentioned that the rasam was perfect on that day, the hostess used to proudly mention it to all and sundry multiple times for the next year or so.

Ergo, in any social interaction - as guest, boss, whatever - if you want respect, please do not get labeled 'easy to please'. If you are normally critical, the one time you do not criticize is the time that the recipient will proudly talk of to the rest of the world. If you praise normally, then your praise will be so much water off a duck's back. And THAT respect will be so accorded despite the fact that the expertise you have in the concerned subject would be as high as the ignorance that the 'hard-to-please' chap has.

The problem, though, is in getting the reputation of being 'easy to please' in the first place. Once you have it, you are doomed. If, for some reason including a vain attempt to gain some respect, you utter a critical comment once, you may rest assured that THAT will be the end of that relationship. (There is an apocryphal story about this. A beggar was used to being served food at one house every day and driven off from the other. On one day, the ungenerous household gave him alms and the generous household had to refuse. To which he is supposed to have said, "When even the goddess who never gave alms has given it today, what happened to the demon who was giving every day?")

If you intend making a switch from being the one to becoming the other, please be careful. It is, of course, a fact that an appearance of being finicky automatically endows you with a reputation for expertise in the subject matter and, therefore, makes the recipient treasure your compliments when you do deign to give them. It is not really necessary to be an expert. BUT, please do not think that throwing the dish in disdain with comments like, "Even a dog will not eat this" will endear you to your hosts. Also, it is necessary to keep the mystique of expertise intact by knowing enough not to make egregiously incorrect comments. If you end up saying, "It looks like you have put in salt instead of sugar" while eating an upma and taking it for Kesari, it is unlikely that your hosts will fall all over themselves in the future to get a good word out of you on their food.

If I have waxed eloquent on this subject only based on food, it is only because each man speaks of that which interests him the most. The appellation 'easy to please' is as much of a problem in all other areas of social interaction as in food - a fact that I know to my cost but way too late for me to do anything about it.

There is one further cautionary message that I need to add. There was this boss of mine who was a nitpicking editor of English in all letter and notes that went to him. Needless to say, most of my office took pride in saying things like, "You know! I sent a draft letter yesterday and it came back without a single correction" with a look that expected the instant bestowing of a Bharat Ratna for the achievement. So far, so good and no need for caution, right?

The problem here, as usual, was your truly. I am an unduly generous person in some ways (You have not seen any evidence of it? I cannot answer for you lack of observational skills. If you do not have microscopic vision, am I to blame for it?). Seeing my boss so obviously at a loss for how to while away his time that he was even making six sentence corrections on a single sentence letter on the lines of "Enclosed please find...", I decided to ensure that he did not get bored in office. So, I just put up all the draft letters from my subordinates. without bothering to edit the English, thereby ensuring that he had enough to correct and I was saved the effort. A perfect win-win situation. In the normal course, I should have been the apple of his eye. Strange though that he never really thought of me as the brother he never had. It is the degeneracy of the times that people never really show gratitude when it is due.

Where was I? Ah! If you do switch to the 'hard to please' mold, you may find some mavericks like me who would rather not trouble themselves unduly for the uncertain and dubious pleasure of some day getting a compliment from you. That, however, would only be the exception that, purportedly, proves the rule.

So, please do not make the mistake that I made. Never be easy to please. That way lies disrespect!

Labels

In the very early days of schooling, I also had the illusion that I was a budding Raphael. As a mere start to higher achievements in Art, I showed my drawing to my school teacher and proudly awaited her gape-mouthed admiration.

"That is a very nice..mmm.. crow?", she said doubtfully.

"THAT was a cow, miss" I said indignantly. (Those were the days when the teacher was a miss no matter whether she was a Mrs or a Ms in real life)

"If only you had labeled it, I could have recognized it."

Later in life, I realized that this problem of labels is more acute when it comes to human beings. I mean, you cannot just look at a guy and identify if he is a banker, a lawyer, a doctor or a vagabond. (I certainly do not intend wandering into esoteric areas like his honesty, his courage, his capacity for affection and the like) Well, you could not but for the fact that we have invented labels for them so that we can conveniently identify the lot.

Pin-striped suits, ties and coats even in sweltering heat? Banker or top corporate honcho! White coat and stethoscope - doctor! A shapeless black gown - lawyer! Scruffy looks and oddly assorted clothes - Me..err...vagabond! Labels are so handy. Without them it would be tough to know who is who and behave accordingly.

The problem, though, is that people fail to use the appropriate labels, especially in social circumstances rendering things as difficult as for my school teacher. Doctors prefer prodding around well-cooked flesh of chicken with their forks instead of prodding around diseased human flesh when they come to parties. (Particularly when they cannot bill the owner of that flesh? I did not say that!) A white coat would so occupy them with the latter that the former would become impossible. A black gown would probably have a lawyer stranded in lonely splendor, maybe because people are too afraid of being sued for slander the next day for bibulous mutterings. So, everyone and his uncle dresses up like a corporate honcho/Banker (except the vagabond, who cannot afford to, but then the vagabond is unlikely to be invited to such jamborees anyway) making it difficult to identify them.

It is here that the world has simplified things these days. Instead of working your way through the mazes of professions, it has made it simple by merely seeking that you identify and appropriately kowtow to relative success. SO, the more expensive the dress, the accessories, the car and the conversation ('When I was in Zurich last night' instead of  'When I was in Forum Mall last night') the more respect is due to the person. Finis!

The entire corporate world is, therefore, geared to getting its products recognized as the appropriate label for the person! All you have to do is to get your product recognized as THE label to identify a class of person and you have achieved Marketing Nirvana.

See - the world RUNS on labels! So, I cannot fault my school teacher for bemoaning the lack of one.

Being on the move

There, apparently, are those people who are never happy unless they are on the move. Literally, as in hopping buses, trains and flights and going to exotic places and feeling the day wasted if they woke up to the same landscape that they saw the previous morning. Or, figuratively, as in constantly moving up the corporate ladder or moving out if the moving up does not work - a promotion a year is acceptable to them but once a month would be more like what they would love. The former like never sleeping in the same bed more than a night and the latter find sitting in the same seat more than a year stifling.

I did start out saying 'apparently' but, then, I thought of myself as belonging to that ilk (both ilks, I am nothing if not ambitious if only in my dreams)  when I as a lot younger than I am now (and had a lot more hair, though that is not germane to the issue. It is not like I am a kind of Samson and my ambitions were shed with my hair). Life, though, taught me a few lessons that ended up in my shedding a few illusions (if you say 'very few', I shall look on your pitiful ignorance with derision. You really have no clue how many I started out with - why, at that age, I even thought that the only difference between Rajnikant and me was that he spoke too fast).

Where was I? Ah! I was saying I had shed a few illusions. You see, I found that a lot of things in life are wonderful to dream about. You think of traveling and there is the idea of gliding blissfully through a lovely countryside (and, perhaps, a couple of swooning girls along who are taken by your poetic appreciation of the beauties of Nature). There are no bone-rattling bad roads, no crowds of stinking arm-pits and, above all, no motion sickness. (And, if there are any swooning girls at all in your vicinity, the reason for their swooning would probably be you, yes, but it probably would be your motion sickness and not your poetry that would be causing the swooning).

As for being on the move figuratively, that is even worse. I mean, in your illusions you probably thought that the grace of your presence and scintillating conversation would propel you up the corporate ladder as though you were jet-assisted - at least, I did. In reality, I discovered that you either had to work - and for more hours than you thought that the day had (I know they claim that there are some 24 hours to a day but, till I started working, it was only hearsay evidence. I had only been awake and, thus, seen only some 12 of them) OR, worse still, look around to see who did and lay claims to what he did OR, ideally, both. Whichever way you sliced it, this corporate ladder climbing was nauseating to me. Anyway, I really do not enjoy heights - it gives me vertigo - so why bother to climb ladders? (Sour grapes? Not at all. The problem with you guys is that you have learnt a couple of things and like showing them off even when it is not at all correct).

So, there you have me. I love traveling with an Atlas in the safe confines of my bed and enjoy stories of how other people climb corporate ladders. Someone once said, "Adventures are unpleasant things that happen to other people" and, THAT, about sums up my idea of being on the move.

Pity, therefore, that this year has started off with such a lot of traveling. Three trips in the first month and one more to start February off? Hmm! I really hope the year buckles down and starts behaving itself going forth or I may have to tick it off in no uncertain terms. Why, I may even call it "Annus Horribilis" and it will not know where to hide its face.