Ravings of a Nomadic Mind

It’s fascinating to see a human being self destruct; especially when you are looking in the mirror and the person you see self destruct is you. It becomes an obsession, you stare and stare, feeling that there has to be something you need to do something, you have to do but you can not move a muscle. For the life of you, you become a spectator in your own funeral procession. Burnout was a new word, every one was going through it, high profile executives in every field were going through it. At 25 he was one, most people went thru it after they finished their MBAs and have worked for a few years helping multinational corporations go places and then they have a spectacular blowout, He burnt out in the middle of his MBA there were days when he was afraid to sleep in the night and times when looking in the mirror was painful. Diagnosed with clinical depression he had blown a potentially rewarding education and career with nothing to look forward to.

His family was distraught and his friends were disappointed, and there were days when he wanted to kill him self, but even there he was caught between the argument that it was very cowardly or very brave taking his own life. Some days he thought it would be brave of him giving up his life, and shield his family and loved ones from the trauma his life had become. On other days it felt cowardly because it was taking the easy way out and living the rest of the world to deal with the ordeal. Anti depressants weren’t much help either, because for them to work the stress would have to go away and for some reason it came up in every conversation, secondly it drained the life from a person and there was no energy to do any thing.

Life gets complicated from time to time. Today he heard the two people he loves the most argue about money. They were people he gave examples of when asked what the ideal marriage should be like. Today they argued over the amount of money they were spending over each other, the current argument was the fallout of another one that as usual had started over his burnout or failure and spilled over into their personal lives, he had poisoned the love between two of the people he cared for the most. Love that gave hope to them and carried them through enough trouble to make most couples look mediocre and now a stupid little metal breakdown looked to tear them apart. Life never did play fair.

The funny thing is he never wished he could rewind life, or redo it all over again, but some times it just feels like it would just be better with a pause button or better yet, push a button and erase your entire past. The past is like an inebriated ghost who wouldn’t let me sleep and neither would it let me put it to rest. He would work himself to into exhaustion so that he could get a few precious hours of sleep, but since he had over heard the argument between them he couldn’t sleep it had been two days he would lie awake at nights and sit in front of the television like a zombie. He had been trying to patch together the pieces of his life for the last few years and it was ridiculous how every thing he had done against so much opposition and heartache could be undone by a silly argument between two people. Relationships can be one person’s strength and their biggest weakness as well.

Spread your wings

Jump off a cliff

Cause until we try

We are never going to fly

Just like Icarus did

Of course he flew too high

And died

But how do we know

How high is too high

How far is too far

How fast is too fast

Cause until we do

We wont get there

Its true we cant win them all

But first we have to try

As the sands of time flee

I stare into the eyes of destiny

Fate tempts me to sit and rest

Destiny dares me to stand and be

I am tired, I am sleepy

Rest looks tempting as can be

The sands of time are

Scattered with the brave and hard souls

Resting till eternity

No I will not die

Fade away silently

I take the next step

So that one day I can stand and be – stand and be

When I was on jury duty recently, I got to say something I never thought possible. The judge was asking us about our suitability to serve, not wanting to share the particulars of one of my answers; I meekly stuck my hand into the air and asked, “Your Honor, may I approach the bench?” “Approach” he said. I approached feeling puffed up and important.

The next day I recounted my thrill to a friend Geoff, who happened to have served with US Special Forces in Vietnam. He shared my excitement, “its like the first time I got to say ‘Cover Me’”. This put my rhetorical moment in perspective.

Along the years, however I did get to utter a few other big lines. I’ve said, on my knees “Will you marry me?” A few years later I said until I was hoarse, “It’s a girl!” I’ve said, from the top of a ship’s mast after crossing an ocean “Land Ho!” Melodramatic, I admit, but it sounded better than “Yo Spain!”

A friend of mine tells me a story about a magistrate in Scotland. When the town drunk was hauled in before him for the umpteenth time, the magistrate looked down at him and said, “It’s the sentence of the court that you be taken from here to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until you are dead”

The drunk fainted. As they were reviving him, the bailiff looked up quizzically at the judge, the judge shrugged and said, “I’ve just always wanted to say that.”

I know exactly how he felt.

Christopher Buckley

Well my parents and every one I’m related to, except for one of my uncle, is Mallu, but I am a fraud Mallu, I mean I was born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. So I’m pretty good with languages, I mean, before I was three I was replying to queries from all my relatives in English or Hindi. They would shoot stuff at me in Malayalam, and I would understand what they were saying and reply back in the languages I was comfortable in. The same went for my neighbors they would shoot stuff at me in marwari and id try and twist my tongue around it and it all came out gibberish. So before I was three I was teaching people new languages and making my own language every second day. I was that good.

Any way my point about languages is this, people change, that’s constant. But the thing is as people and things change tolerance levels narrow, and keep narrowing. Zee Café shows “Mind Your Language”, an old British comedy about immigrants’ learning to speak in English, its pretty hilarious, I used to watch it as a kid and so I enjoy watching it now too. There is an Indian lady, in a sari and a big bun, a Sardar, a Muslim, all with south east Asian accents and mannerisms, them there is a Mao spewing red handbook carrying Chinese girl, two Romeos, one Greek and the other Italian two steaming hot females from Italy and France, the Japanese is serious and extremely polite, and the Russian female looks like she is the warden of a prison. It feeds your stereotyped appetite and it’s funny and hilarious in parts. The Indian impressions are true to home remind me of my aunts and cousins abroad.

But dare if you try and make some thing like that today. You children would learn to spell the words “Law Suit” and “Racism” before they say “dada” or “Mama”. I was watching a Russell Peters DVD, he is a stand up comic of Indian origin from Canada, and he specializes in racist jokes. Well and people pay so that they can sit in the auditorium and he will ask you where are you from and make jokes about you and your country, he doesn’t spare any one Indians, south east Asians, Chinese, whites, everyone is fair target. But try and make the same joke around your office water cooler and you would probably end up taking a sanitization seminar in the best case scenario, or get fired in the worst.

The classic movie Casablanca ends with Bogart’s character telling his friend the police chief “you Know Louie this could be the start of a beautiful friendship”. Put in a line like that in the most chick flickest of chick flick’s today and it would be called gay especially if it’s two men walking into the sunrise. Its not racism I guess, because as far as I am concerned racism is the hatred of one type of people completely and utterly. But is calling a black guy, black, racist? He is black, calling him the politically correct term African American or a brown dude Indian American is stupid, it implies that even though he is American by citizen ship they are not entirely secure in their identity as Americans they want another label to segregate them. We create these politically acceptable labels to describe our selves and end up segregating our selves. The funny part is, we do tend to do stupid stuff we as a community segregate our selves and stereotype ourselves, Indian will talk a particular way, so will Chinese, so will British and so will Americans. The Scots or the Germans are no better nor are the blacks, we try to differentiate ourselves in the way we dress, talk, eat food and even in the way we walk but will leap into flying rages if some one points it out to us. The British create the image of the mindless, beer chugging hooligans, the Germans of humorless, technical stars. The Americans will pretend to be bourbon chugging hot dog eating obese football fans, but dare any one poke fun at them.

The case is similar in India no matter how much we educate each other, the Tamil will loath to speak any other language, even if they know them. Malayalee’s, have the most complicated political intrigues going on even if its managing a simple church group, Bengalis will spew over vowelated English words while discoursing on the finer points of Marx, Lenin and Mao still if some one points that out you would probably be shot at. I am not saying that there is not racism, branding every Bihari a thief is probably bad and or calling every Australian, murderer at that is not good either, but for a moment don’t we think we are dragging it too far, today people take offence at being called “Monkey”, but “Son of a bitch!” or “bastard!” becomes an admiration. We do weave twisted webs and then we cry when we cant step out of them.

Oh my latest attempt at learning a language was at Kannada, my friends used to tell me that listening to any south Indian language was like hearing stones rattling in match box and I, being exposed to Malayalam and Tamil, felt defensive and irritated. But the moment I landed in Karnataka I realized that eating rock candy or rolling dice in a plastic container was a bad idea, the people around me might think I was swearing at them. It is really odd how a language comes across to some one else when they don’t understand the nuances of it. The word for hanging in Malayalam and sleeping in Tamil is the same, so when I heard some one tell me that they were going to sleep in Tamil for the first time I asked why was he compelled to hang himself and where was he going to do that? Good that I did that and got a clarification, my second instinct was to go get the police, boy that would have been an uncomfortable conversation, had I done that. I hope you get what I mean. The world would be a lot better place if people laughed at them selves a little more and stopped taking offense a little less.

Broken Dreams, broken hearts,

Walking in the shadows, looking for love,

Missing the freedom of needing you,

When I want to.

Wishing that the nightmares go away and

My dreams come true, if tomorrow comes true

Someone I had been very good friends with in school died on 30^th March and it made me sad, and reminded me again that life can be a very disloyal companion, but It's not the people it's the moments. This is dedicated to him. There are a few people who have made my life worthwhile and worth living.

1. Cycling to school in the rain.
2. Running in the rain, oh and football in the rain too.Dancing in the rain. I was never good at dancing but in the rain who notices
3. Chicken Run with leena,
   
4. The old house we lived in had a small depression, which when filled with water would create a pool about three feet deep. I and my sisters used it as a pool, some of the best days of my life.
5. Returning home from school racing against each other through the railway colony stunting on our bicycles.
6. NLU campus lawns, one April morning, parathas from Chamunda and two liters of Pepsi and some very teary and funny goodbyes.
7. A case of beer, Kaylana lake and my best school buddies.
8. Dinner on top of Merangarh Fort with the boys.
9. Jaswanthada some friends and a big bag of Popcorn and peanuts.
10. Driving through southern Rajasthan in the middle of the night with Daughtry belting on the CD player with my cute cousin and brother curled up in the back seat of the Accord.
11. Aunt's Gajar ka Halwa on a winter evening.
12. Rainy night with my sisters and mom's plate of pakoras.
13. The first time I saw Top Gun, a pimply teenager's epitome of raging male hormones and superheroes all rolled into one.
14. The first time I saw Pretty Woman and fell in love with Julia Roberts.
15. Chai at three in the morning at Chamunda.
16. Lots of Cold Drink, two in the night, Lost Boys and an abandoned bus stop.
17. Deeps and I, a pre historic archeological dig site, and an Indian summer sunset.
18. Second year freshers on NLU campus.
19. Performing to Dr. Albans "its my life" in the Tenth grade at the School Anniversary, dressed as pirates.
20. High School romances.
21. District Football matches against BJS High School. We got kicked more than the ball.
22. Shopping on the Colaba cause way with Deepti, every time. Oh and the ferry ride too
23. Riding to Osian with friends.
24. Hunting for Booze on the 15^th of August, 2006 from 2am in the morning to 7am with my two best buddies and not finding any.
25. New year 2006 With Moose, Breeda, Claire and Shaheen.
26. New year2007 with Vineet, MK and later with Mini.
27. Driving down from Delhi to Jaipur, in a big Innova
28. Midnight chats across continents with Sunshine, Doctor and Melody.
29. Maggie with mad Vikki, in the middle of the night.
30. School fairs with my sister when we were all in school, and my most immediate worry was who to con for my next ice cream.
31. One Monsoon season, it rained Fishes, real fishes no kidding, and we caught them and put them in bottles and made an aquarium.
32. Summer Holidays in Kerala all of them.
33. Midnight dinner for four at Velankanni beach and fresh sea food.
34. Sleeping under the stars, with my cousins on the beach behind my aunts house.
35. DJing at a Anil's Birthday party.
36. First Year Graduation Picnic.
37. Shweta's Birthdays, all of them.
38. Shopping with Shavi, on C Road.
39. Putting Aditya and Elishya to Sleep.
40. There are lots and lots of memories that should have gone on this list, and the ones that are there are not in any specific order, but they were the ones that will tell those people who made them possible how much these memories meant to me. thanx a lot guys, Nilanshus death made me realise after a long time that life could be very fickle so i dont want to go with out saying thanx
    
41. Deepti, Sakshi, mudassir, Raj, Shweta, Stuti, bhishm, anuj, shival, vineet, aditi, pushpa, kavita, deepti c, vineeta, moose, Shvaeta, surya, leena thanx a ton guys
    

Today I was talking to a good friend of mine, the funny thing was that we had always met on business first and later when we started to get to know each other, we met after work too and she is a very pretty lady and always dressed very professionally, hair always in a very conservative bun, shirts always light or pastel shades, and trousers with or without jackets. Well a few days back she had to go to a local club on a semi work do, and since she didn’t know any one there she asked if I would be willing to escort her. I said yes as I rarely have any thing interesting to do on weekends and I loved her company, so spending time with her was a good idea, I arranged to pick her up and when I arrived at her apartment complex, I saw she was waiting in the porch of her building for me. I was stunned, she had a short flared denim skirt that fell to just above her knee and was wearing a tank top that just met the skirt around her waist and a short denim jacket, I was speechless well I always thought she was this severe and very conservative lady, she took in my look, looked at me very quizzically, arranged her self very demurely on my bike took the extra lid that I keep for the pillion, strapped it on and said “lets go, we can talk later”

Well as I said earlier that I love spending time with her and we have real animated conversations, so I had a fun night, the guests from her company's Bangkok office and the colleagues that had accompanied us were fun company and the night was a success. We met for brake fast two days later, and she was looking at me with this funny little smile, so I asked her what was wrong. She said there was nothing wrong its just that she was wondering what I was thinking about when I was picking her up for the party the other night. I was embarrassed and I thought she thought that I was leering at her, well I wasn’t, it was more of a gawking look really. Any way back to the topic, I said it was just that I had never really seen her dress like that, and even though she always looked good that night she looked stunning. She just blushed and said that it was not that big a deal, she liked to dress up like any other girl and it was only that fact that if she dressed up for work no one took her seriously they thought she was pretty but dumb and if and when she dressed up people thought she got every thing she did at work was because she was using her looks.

Weird right, why does even so long after women have invaded the work place and even after so many women have gone to the very top of corporate structure they are seriously so stereotyped, and worse still men are still seen as testosterone driven Neanderthals. My friend is real good at her job, and no I am not saying this because I am her friend or because she is pretty I am saying this because we met because of work and I got to like her because she is good at her work oh and she is smart too. Women need to do so much extra to be proven equal to men and then after all that they have to give up dreams of a family, and every thing else and then hide who they are just because they want to be appreciated for what they achieve. Its sadder still that men are still thought of as horny toads. That we objectify every women and treat them as inferior. It is a testament to the immaturity of us humans as a species, more than our petty differences and all other short comings that we cant see women as equals.

I had to travel in an emergency and couldn’t find flight tickets, any way my city airport was shut down so it was going to be a round about trip for me any way, so here I was sitting at Bangalore railway station with a ticket that said 21 in the waiting list and no chance of getting my ticket confirmed so I was hunting for a TT who could help get me get a seat, so as I was looking for him I met other two guys with the same travails and we three set forward with our common goals. When we found the man I question he told us there was no chance we could find seats before the train left and so we were to board the last most compartment and try our luck any way, the guy with me told the TT that he was willing to pay for the ticket as he was not feeling well, but the TT just shook him off and said there wasn’t a chance that we could get what we wanted, later as we were sitting on the luggage the very same guy confessed to me that he felt bad trying to bribe the TT but it was the way of things and that we had to do it. I was taken aback, yes, bribery is a way of life and yes people do it blatantly in our country, but remorse at a later point for me was new. I questioned him, and he said it was true that it was a way of life and he had resorted to it more times than he cared to admit.

The point here is a lot of other fellow country men or women question the various practices of the system and lament and bitch about it in their comforts of their rooms, all these armchair warriors wouldn’t think twice before bribing a government official or taking bribes themselves when some one offered it. Again true a lot of these very people wouldn’t mind bribing others but would hesitate to take one, not because they were clear but because they were unwilling to bear the consequences if they were caught, as some one once said “Locks were invented to keep the honest, honest, the dishonest will always find a way”. I don’t know what I would have done or which category I fall in because I have never been offered a bribe or asked for one, but I would never willingly offer to bribe some one, but I will be the first to admit that no matter what my attitude it would hardly make a dent in the system, we need to build a value and ethics system that doesn’t exist, we bring up Indian culture and values to defend, against modernization, against every change basically, we even use it to defend rapist saying that the women brought it upon them selves by wearing western clothes, so what I want to know is where does bribery fall in with Indian cultural values. Times Of India Started a Lead India Campaign the Crux of the campaign was to “DO” it lead with the statement that we were all armchair warriors and would give one Indian the chance to get off that armchair and do some thing about it. Do we need such a campaign for over a billion of us to do some thing or can’t we just get up off on our own and say “no, I will not do that”. I won’t take bribe no matter how much it hurt me and I won’t give a bribe even if it means that I have to travel for 48 hours sitting in the gallery. I know I can and I did.

The train arrived in Pune and a lot of people got off and a few got on the TT came around and told me there was a seat available and I could have it if I wanted as I was the next in line, I was going to answer in the affirmative, when he pointed to a couple of girls who were lower down the order and said or if I didn’t need or could manage then he would give the same seat to the two girls, so I bowed out and let them have the seat, the guy I was sitting with said that Women have it easy and they get everything for them done very easily. This is another aspect of gender bias that we never really tackle I mean, ok women get stuff more easily than men, I might have given them my seat even if the TT had allotted it to me, so what we tend to see the benefits there gender gets them and not the harassment, women are not give equal pay, most women are forced to give up careers and education to be home makers and be totally dependent on some one else for every Rupee they spend. They get picked on by every street side Romeo and still they persevere and go on with their lives, well it pissed me off, go get a sex change operation if you feel so left out.

Oh I Hate eating on trains especially if I am traveling alone, I mean I hate when I am eating and the people try to peek at what you are eating, children gawk at stuff that their parents would prohibit them from, so I generally offer to share what ever I am having with the others around me, but these days with so many incidences of conmen duping people by first drugging them, people look at you as if you are one of those conmen. When we were young we used to travel a lot on trains in summers going to Kerala or other holidays and we had other people traveling with us, the children would share toys they brought and families would share food and three days or more would just disappear like that, the journey was actually looked forward to, now its just a bunch of suspicious people traveling together because they have no choice. Its sad really.

If you are not prepared to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen

Ok I was recently talking to a friend of mine about relationships and related stuff and it set me thinking. There was the usual progression, I suppose, Hopeless first love, this and that over the years, unrequited mad crushes. OK well hopeless first love was when i was thirteen, she was a classmate of mine but i was a clumsy, introverted oaf, more adept at football, and scurrying around on the basketball court than telling her how I felt about her. Well i kept staring at her for the next four years and well never told her how i felt. Don't get me wrong, i mean my best friend was a girl, heck my frist friend was a girl, she was my Godfather's daughter and we talked about every thing but when it came to my "hopeless first love" i was born dumb and mute. her name was Surabhi.

We made it to the Tenth standard some how, we studied together, we as in my best friend and me, her name was Sarah. We played on the band together, we played mixed doubles on the badminton squad, and some where along the way we noticed that we were indispensable to each other. When we were in play school we went to a "Fancy Dress party", dressed as a North Indian Bride and Groom. We protected each other from every thing and for some reason we were together all the time, one thing lead to another and we were a couple, it was the most amazing year, I guess, for the first time I understood the chemistry between my parents. we slogged together we were at each others games we practised Dr. Zhivago and Nanha Munna Rahi Hun with each other and she taught me civics and economics i taught her science and my sister taught us both math. We were young and curious and we were eager too, one thing lead to another and we both blamed ourselves for what happened next and stopped talking to each other. I left on an infamous holiday with my friends and she left town when her dad got transfered and then i took a dive of a cliff or half way up off a cliff which ever way you want to see it. it took us two years of recovery and guilt to realise it wasn't such a bad deal and by then she was in love with another childhood friend and as these things go I was the best man at her wedding. that was "you are the most idiotic person on the planet to let her go love". She is top notch geneticist and I had the honor of being her daughters Godfather.

Two years of high school went by uneventfull Sarah had left but there were others most notably Surabhi and a few others. we were busy charting our careers and i was busy playing "boys code of honor" and still never told her that i liked her because my friend liked her and we three spent some memorable times together. life went on exams came and went and we went our separate ways. graduation was not much difference, except there were friends i had known all my life and i could trust with my eyes closed and we blew into the small college like an tornado, we could do nothing wrong and if some thing did go wrong it was some else's fault, always. There, literally I ran into a tall shy Amazon. 5'11" to my 5'6" and a face that could could be rated at a 100 milli Helens and a confidence that could be found with a micro scope. we were a sight to see, life was funny for a time and we grew into better friends and more comfortable with each other. I would like to believe the college and our company had a good effect, as she bloomed into the girl she could be confident, lively and mischievous but there was this evil witch and u know how things go in nightmares. well it wasn't that bad but we drifted apart she was "this" and her name was Ritu.

"That" was Ankita smart inteligent and I fought with her on the first day of college, and in the final year we started talking and we became close. we spent many hours cuddled up on my sofa or hers, watching all the girly movies she picked. oh and she came from a very conservative Jain family s you can guess how that ended, i had places to go and things to do and she could never tell her parents that she was serious about what was going on, waht happened in college stayed in college and never came back to bite you. she looked real pretty at her wedding too.

There was Vandana in the middle some where of all that she is still a good friend but the entire time we went out for all of three months, every time i took my bike out for long rides or went climbing she would drive my mom and my friends up the wall worrying about me, or she would be on the ground shouting be carefull every ten minutes while i had more important things to do hanging off a cliff, for some reason that lasted three months only. I wonder why ? umm oh i guess it was better for her blood pressure and every one else's sanity, oh she and my best friend from school now and army captain make a good looking couple too.

Then there was the "unrequited mad crushes" first day of PG orientation, we had a difference of opinion, well it was mostly that she formed one, an opinion that is, before she knew someone and passed a judgment and I had an opinion about such people we lasted well about six months , when work load and creepy friends and family traditions proved too much and that was that. she is a friend and with Sarah a peg against which all prospectives are measured and well that should tell you some thing. Her name was Sakshi

The "Disaster" was named Siji, friends we had been friends for ages and some how things seemed to go right for us, the night before her birthday i had a big accident. i called her dutifully and wished her and drowned my self in a ton of pain killers, at three in the night when the meds started wearing off my phone had 23 missed calls, from her. she said there was some thing wrong and I wasnt telling her, and she was so worried she couldnt sleep, this when she was in a altogether different city at that time. We shared some thing, two years down the line my life started going to peices and in the middle of all that she called me and told me that she was worried my spinal injury would affect our relationship in the future and that was the end of that. that was the "Disaster".

Then there were the summer romances, and as some one said "Summer romances begin for all kinds of reasons, but when all is said and done, they have one thing in common. They're shooting stars, a spectacular moment of light in the heavens, fleeting glimpse of eternity, and in a flash they're gone." and so it was the same with me they were blooms of splashing color when my life was Grey they were fireworks on moonless nights and they were women of exceptional talents, they arrived when life was missing some thing they gave life color and moved on or stayed back as friends and but they made a difference to who i am, there was oh and all of them were doctors, one a Doctorate student and two medical Doctors one a student of my Aunt in Bombay and the other a Russian educated but a dear friend. that was Surabhi, Arpita and Megha.

I don't know why i wrote all this, but it does bring back memories some good some bitter most of them where gorgeous bursts of color, and so here it is. These women made me who i am today and except for one all have been and are good friends, they helped me make myself today what i am. they all gone on to do or are doing what they were meant to do, as i said they were the people who filled color into the outlines of my life. some drew in pastel shades and some in splashy hurting colors, but well on wards beyond to life at its best.'

“Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes… it’s a triumph.”

"I go little insane every night in the darkness so that i can start every day just a little more sane"

I was Reading this book recently and these two quotes jumped out at me till i was reading them over and over again. These are from a science Fiction book Called Mirror Dance.

"You have won a twisted, broken poor knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. but its a broken world out there, that we were born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. at least I wont tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine them, and blast them to the sky. I will break down the doors of hell, and bring up the dead. "

“Real destiny takes everything—the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure—and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can’t give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I’ve come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it.”

In a Fight, Its not the size of the dog that matters, its the size of the fight in the dog.

Veens Tagged me so here goes

The rules of the game are:

---write 10 things u hate about the opposite sex

---at the end of the tag, tag 5 random bloggers to take up the Tag

Perfect lives are made of imperfect starts. it is up to us to take those peices and put them together and make the masterpiece our lives our. some succeed some fail. but then thats life.