WORK IS WORSHIP

– The players who survive — indeed, the ones who thrive — realize that a love of the game is not enough, that being a professional entails honing one’s craft day after day –

 

Bed in Bierut/Delhi

 

Mehul’s House in 2009

looks a lot like it did last year …

 

Calm Down

 

Don’t Slleep

 

My President Is Black

 

Crumbling

There has been a pause. The world kept swirling, but it did not feel like that. Instead, the markets bottomed out.

 

to be continued.

 

Iron Butterfly

 

 

jeremy scott 

 

My God, It’s Full Of Stars

 

 

 

 

 

 

Letter To A Young Economist

Truth be told, I’ve been feeling different lately

Like fuck money

And the dollar is the devils baby

– That New Clipse Joint

 

Sir,

  Your letter found me in a state of conflict, which is perhaps infinite, or merely pronounced by my geographic position. It was a week of riding shotgun in the yellow M3, $20 USD Cappellini with good tomatoes and black olives sauce, sitting on a banquet with 50 Cent on the speakers watching the new Indian middle class spill Moet and do their best imitation of the club scene from CSI: Miami. And globalization became crystal clear – we are all trying to get rich or die trying.

  All of it made me wonder about the IPO’s on life; somewhere along the way the auctioning off of a years worth of hours became valued somewhere under 40K. In attempt to rationalize the seeming absurdity of this price point I have entered a greater philosophical debate. Perhaps calling it a philosophical debate overstates what it is in fact, but what it is in fact, should it not be framed in the above terms, comes to sound as a slackers’ mantra. What I am speaking of here is freedom.

  On the same sort of obtuse enumerations that are used to price a years’ worth of life, I have come to the table with a price on freedom: $50 million USD. It is a number that is as arbitrary as it is useful; at that point we are in the upper echelons of the tax brackets, put away half for the purpose of dynastic legacy, and the other half allows the movement of the whim, the sureness in security.

  And then that salary, that is not what it is about – it is wealth creation. It is the ownership of the marginal profits, and all the rest. And so by the light of Fridays morning I crossed the train tracks, past men squatting by fires warming themselves against this cruel cold wave, past the rickety bicycles parked while their owners piss against the crumbling wall. I walked across this train track on my way home, in the dawns light and could only manage to think about the fact that last night was good, but also, last night was played out.

  When my Blackberry buzzed across the desk on Friday afternoon and it was an invitation to the foothills of the Himalayas; I immediately accepted.

Rishikish is a town made famous by the Beatles, one of them was buried there or something; it is kind of a commoditized facsimile of Hindu spirituality there on the banks of the Ganges. It is a good place though because it is holy, and widely accepted as so, and if there is no greater truth than commonly accepted social practices, then being there is in fact, Holy.

  On the banks of the Ganges I drank a ginger spiced tea and asked the holy man who was coming back from his morning cleansing about his life. What happened that made him give it up, was he happy, did he yearn for more than going places and seeing things and praying; and then I asked if he was free. At this he paused and tilted his face towards the strengthening morning sun, he smiled and said ‘Baba is free.’ And then wealth creation and private equity deal flows and all the rest, which at one point had seemed somewhat intellectually stimulating, faded like a candle floating down Mother Ganges.

I realize triteness of these revelations, but these platitudes are well worn for a reason, be it that they are true, or that the feeling of being trapped is so pervasive that to renounce wage labor, or even more plainly labor, is the only reasonable course of action. On a boat ride coming back from the white sand beaches that dot here and there between rocky outcliffs, I saw a white girl. Her head was shaved, her robes were orange, and her lotus position perfectly erect. And when I saw her, my first thought? The overwhelming guilt she feels for the comforts of her middle class upbringing has led her here; it was a wrong thought to have, but the one I had anyway.  

Balance exists. The Buddhists talk about the middle way all the time, though I cannot say much about understanding it as such. Go to Madrid, drop a seed in your pretty girl, max out your credit card balling in Euros; and then work at a tapas joint, or join the domestic infrastructure fund at an I-bank. Somewhere there is a balance, right?

Please let me know when you have figured it out.