GvSparx

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I completed my MA Clinical Psychology. It is a picture of my convocation. Whenever I used to tell people about pursuing it, I got a response that followed a standard template - "Wow" followed by "but why?".

I would then find myself scrambling for an answer that sounded acceptable -
- It would help me become a better leader in my career
- It would help me write better poems
- I want to pursue academic research in the future

Sometimes, I would make a joke.
- I want to read the minds of hot ladies who find me cute.
- When the economy goes into recession and you go to depression, I will come to rescue ...and charge you a hefty fee.
- I have an engineering degree to pay bills. So, I want a degree that doesn't pay bills. Variety!

(I said make a joke, not necessarily a funny one.)

None of those is a real answer. They are either untrue or at best just manifestations of a bigger cause which I find difficult to explain to people. The real cause lies in powerful words like kindness, empathy, understanding, empowering, helping, treating, solving which we dismiss as emotional talk.

(And reading minds of hot ladies who find me cute)

I have seen companies treat employees like vending machines where you put in money to get a product. I have come to know about people who committed suicide in the same society I lived in. I have seen people live-in toxic relationships, families, jobs, schools, colleges. Won't deny, sometimes that person has been me. I learned through the course that most people don't realize that they are in a ditch. We believe the life we live is the reality of the entire world. We feel that's how the world operates. Insight doesn't come naturally. We need someone else to give us a bird's eye view of our lives. I am not saying you are a damsel in distress and only a Superman can save you. But some point in our lives we all are. Taking help doesn't hurt. When the Superman is succumbing to Kryptonite, you could be the Wonder Woman that saves him.

Amazon CEO Jezz Bezos could not sustain his marriage. Elon Musk once said he would "rather stick a fork in my hand than write about my personal life". We all are in our own respective ditches. The only way we all can come out is when we simply help each other.

I again made it sound like a profit-loss situation to make it more appealing. The real reason is much simpler.

It is good to be nice to each other.

(It is even better to be informed and educated about how to be nice.)

I was staring into the brutal gush of river Parvati. The volume of water traveling under my feet was incredible. I had a sense of utter powerlessness. I could just fall and in a second be reduced to nothing. How ridiculously easy! Imagine in one moment, all your grades, bank balance, relationships, passions, dreams would be reduced to an absolute zero. You would cease to exist. People you know would talk about you but they won't be able to hear you, feel your presence or touch you. That was not the dominating thought though. It just felt someone was getting inside my head and pushing out everything that was inside. The noise of the gush was deafening. There was so much in my head about things I have been doing, people I was traveling with, the itinerary for the day, routine life challenges etc. It just crushed everything. At that moment, it was just the gushing water with the deafening sound flowing through my head.

Following is the conversation between the two of us.

Parvati River, Himachal Pradesh

Hey you!

Man with stars on shoulders,
no stick in hand,
who walks like a carnage,
leaves impression on the land

I have heard stories of your valor
from the clouds darkening your way,
equally nasty rumors
from the stones you kicked away

I know you are listening to me,
I have a mesmerizing voice
I just like to say that
I know you don't have a choice

I caress your head
between my two palms
I hear your achievements
I hear your qualms

Billions of sounds wrecking your head,
brimming your eye with some shade of red
Humans didn't, I say this holding your hand
My sober love, I understand

The lush, I brush
The rush, I hush
Every sound, I crush
Surrender to my gush

Come closer my love,
let me touch your feet
I am biting cold,
less than you have seen

No cloth, no cover
can guard you from me
Skin be the boundary
between you and me

Submerge legs, dick, torso,
let me caress every inch
I assure to relieve
the eyes you squint

I am insanely passionate,
wilder than you think
You're between my legs
I gorge you in a blink

We come together,
content to the core
One never ending kiss,
breathe no more!

Find Gaurav_ki_baat on instagram for more travel experiences and poetry.

The review might be biased because I have a soft corner, soft edges and soft volume for pizza. I had a cute crush on this cute girl. We had been talking for a while but didn't hangout ever. One day I forgot the keys of my flat at office. So, I had to wait till my flatmate arrived. So I called this girl and asked if you would like to go to domino's with me. She obliged. Years later, suddenly it came to our conversation and she says, "you are smooth". Surprised me asked, "Of course. Thank you. Could you elaborate with an example?" She responds, "people find parties where both are invited, go to common hangouts, house parties. You call on a date like a boss!". I argued for 30 minutes, "I called you on a pizza not a date. Pizza is pizza. Pizza is pious. Pizza need not be a date. Wait, nothing bad about a pizza date though".

Random Call: Sir, in association with ________ we would like to invite you to a wine tasting session. Would you like to...

Posted by Gaurav Arora on Saturday, December 19, 2015

(Ya, my name is no longer GvSparx because of Facebook's new policy)

Domino's sent us a cheesy invite to be a part of their bliss in sharing their two latest products - Double Cheese Crunch pizza and Custard Bliss dessert. It ended up being far more eventful than talking about two products. People love athletes biting their medals, entertainers lifting up oscars, getting their tongues onto delicate pizzas. Everyone does. Is that all? Nothing succeeds like success. Wins are boring, if you ask me. Perfection is almost repulsive. The roundness of earth, the letters in your handwriting, twins, nothing is perfect. Practise makes a man perfect. You sensed it right. There could be a million wrongs before one perfect comes out. I love reading the papers torn for that final poem. Her "yes" won't be exciting if there were no noes(don't try this, ladies). Remember the spider that climbed and fell 16 times before it reached the top? Failures make success delicious.

So before a pizza comes out on your table, do you wonder what all goes behind the curtains? Data Scientists/Decision Scientists! Prepare yourself for a datagasm. Before any dish is rolled out to a complete market, it goes through following filters:

It has to be tasty
Very tasty
It should be quick to prepare. (so that people don't ask if you are making a pizza or growing crops)
It should be space efficient (cranes and bulldozers are not usually appreciated at pizzerias, kids might ask for a ride you see)
Even if it is operationally viable, it cannot hit the table till it is proven to be commercially viable
Does it cannibalize? (It should not make people eat people) The new pizza should not eat into sales of old pizza. If it does, it should improve the bottom line
It goes through a test control method. Test and control stores are identified. The test store is very similar to its test store. So when you introduce a new pizza in a test store. You can compare how it augments sales in comparison to control store. If it shows a statistically significant increase in sales it might be added to menu.
It should be consistent to have it, take-away and delivery.
It should be consistent across all stores (very tricky)
It must touch your heart

I managed to complete the count to 10(yay). Before we headed to taste, Mr. Murugan Narayanaswamy Senior Vice President Marketing at Domino's Pizza walked us through the Domino's India journey. How the marketing campaigns changed - "hungry kya", "yeh hai rishton ka time", "yeh hai rishton ki home delivery"? How the assortment changed from high end pizzas to sub-50 bucks items? How free delivery brought a huge inflection in the history of Domino's pizza? It was enriching particularly for me, because coming from a decision science a.k.a. Business Analysis environment, I relish when eateries take data driven decisions. When marketing has a clear callouts like "Hey we deliver pizza in 30 minutes" or "we serve a pizza for 50 bucks", the end consumer responds. It could be positive or negative but you at least have given escape velocity from the planet full of generics. I learned that Domino's did that big time.

For the first time I walked into a domino's kitchen while in conversation with Chef Narendra Singh Jaravta, Head Chef at Domino’s Pizza. We learned from him how each individual in the kitchen goes through rigourous training. In order to ensure that each pizza has correct volume of toppings, every morning chefs calibrate their handfuls to different quantities. It reminded me of the movie Aankhen (2002) Paresh Rawal, Akshay Kumar, Arjun Rampal walked with feet tied with a rope of specific length to ensure consistency in step distance. But everything can't be quantified in cooking. So I asked,"Do preparation methods change with kitchens across the country with such enormous difference in temperature, altitude, humidity etc.?". He responds, "it does, chefs are good enough to take care of that".

Finally coming to the review of the three course meal. Zingy parcel veg is certainly a delight. Your tongue senses two textures one of the crispy crust the other of the tender cheese embracing pieces of paneer. It does not need any dips or ketchup. It is fabulous. Then came the amalgamation of thin crust and cheese crust, Double Cheese Crunch pizza.

I am much bigger fan of cheese crust than thin ones. So my review is biased in that regard. This pizza is like an oreo biscuit or an ice-cream sandwich. It has molten cheese between two thin crusts. I loved the cheese no doubt. The crust could have been crispier and flakier. Toppings are customizable like any other domino's pizza, so your pallette is the limit.

Finally, Custard Bliss dessert is an amalgamation of pizza crust and hot custard, more like those gooey donuts. Eating the crust was hard work. I am not a fan of donuts but the kid inside me still liked the custard filling. Sprinkled with finely powdered cardamom sugar, it is only as sweet as it should be. Go ahead and give these a try these #dominosdelights and let me know what do you feel.

Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a learning process in which an innate response to a potent stimulus comes to be elicited in response to a previously neutral stimulus; this is achieved by repeated pairings of the neutral stimulus with the potent. God!

This smart guy Ivan Pavlov rang a bell(conditional stimulus) in front of his dog before giving him food(unconditional stimulus). He repeated this over and over again. And one day he rang the bell but didn't present the food, the dog still salivated.

I strongly believe that is the case with most of our superstitions and rituals. We know what is to be done but don't really know why it is to be done. Multiple events need to happen in conjunction for a response. Since we only know one of those(the conditional stimulus) we end up salivating like the dog without the food.

You have an emotional self and a rational self. Their intersection is called the wise self. Our emotions and rationales are both biased due to excessive conditioning. We are capable of making correct decisions if only we feed our minds with the required information. We all need to ask more questions to make informed decisions.

I have written this poem not just against the practice of not letting women into temples while they are on their periods. I am writing this commenting at the practice of jumping to answers without knowing the question, calling things right and wrong without listening to opinions, accepting and rejecting rituals without asking the reasons. Indian culture has been the most liberated cultures. People who feel Indian culture is closed and skipped the idea of evolution, need to visit ancient temples of Hampi to understand the roots we actually believe in. You see warriors, dancers, musicians, animals, women, and Gods on the same wall. It struck me first as an anomaly. It wasn't. Anomaly was the conditioning of my mind. Gods and followers, humans and animals, men and women, complete each other. And together, we complete the universe. Indian culture not only accepts and understands that fact but celebrates and announces at its core, on the walls of temples. It's never too late to revisit the lost fundamentals.

Script: Roman देवनागरी

माँ आई कमरे में बिना दस्तक कर,
फेरा हाथ बेटी के मस्तक पर।
कहा आज तू सब काम त्यज,
कान्हा को भी मन ही में भज।

हज़ारों साल हो गए उस बात को,
प्रणाम आज के विज्ञान को।
नाचती कूदती चूमती अर्श को,
लाड़ली चली कान्हा के दर्श को।

पर समाज का सनातन धर्म से अजब मतभेज,
देवी का देवालय में प्रवेश निशेध।
गोपियाँ इंतज़ार में पत्थर हो गई,
कान्हा बिन मंदिर महज़ ईमारत हो गई।

"क्या" सबको है पता,
"क्यूँ" किसी ने पूछा नहीं।
देवी को दूर कर, पत्थर को पूजकर,
पुजारी आज पूछता है...

"क्यूँ" उसे कुछ मिला नहीं?

Beautiful Devi's Sculpture at the entrance of Achyutaraya Temple in Hampi

Achyutaraya Temple, Hampi

A practice qualifies to be universally correct neither by its tenure nor its followers.

The world needs to know, understand and question.

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GvSparx

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Why did I do MA Clinical Psychology after B.Tech.?

Freedom as per a millennial | 99 years of Jallianwala Bagh

How does it feel seeing Himalayan waters at terrifying speed?

I can't believe a stranger did this for me

What to do when bored? - Poem

Do you see yourself? | Poem

Domino's Cheese Crunch pizza and Custard Bliss review

Dogs and Women: Not allowed

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