Festivals...

Well again a thought that came to my mind just a few days back. I was talking to my manager to grant me leave as I was planning to go home for Deepawali. The entire plan was done and then it struck me I was going home for “Deepawali”. I put that in quotes because it didn’t occur to me even after the entire plan was finalized.

There used to be the days in my childhood when I used to look forward towards festivals like Deepawali and Holi. And when I say festivals trust me they used to be festivals. There used to be sincere planning on my part what all I will do, how many crackers I need to buy, what varieties, etc. Each cracker I burnt gave me an ounce of happiness.

And today I don’t even feel that its deepawali. The thought that has occupied my mind for the last twenty days has been the fact that I will see my family after a six month period. That is the festival for me as on date.  The warmth that I get in their company, food cooked by mom, the late discussions with my dad, all these combined actually form the concept of nothing less than a festival for me.

Such has been the change in our life during the chase for so called success that even the simplest of things are a luxury and I guess it will be the same for a lot of those who will read this if not all. The festival nowadays is nothing more than a couple of official leaves which combined with two or three applied ones gives you a chance to go back to people you love the most and just can’t be with.  

And yes I am truly happy that there is a festival because the definition might change but the concept of being with your loved ones remains same. :)

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Change or Reincarnation

As we move forward with the ticking of clock the surroundings around us keep changing. We go new places, meet new people, etc. No matter how strong a person is, a new environment will definitely raise some goose bumps. The apprehensions developed by being in new environment are rather natural since change is something which no one likes given the fact, ‘whenever you open a door you have to close one atleast”.

Going to a new place we always have a certain level of fear about how well we can fit to the new conditions. Whether the new place will be as good or better than the current one, whether the people around us will be as appreciative as the current circle. But as we say every threat is also an opportunity in some way.

There are lots of things which we might have not liked in our present and want to change. However we cant because sometimes the perceptions are too strong. Or sometimes we actually did something which might have resulted in a condition which was undesired. In some way we are unable to correct it given the present set of conditions.

Then wouldn't a new place, a new set people, a new culture,etc gives us a chance to undergo a reincarnation. Is it not a chance to correct all the mistakes we might have made in past.

Doesn’t that mean CHANGE actually is an opportunity to REINCARNATE without actually dying!!

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The Break Up

 

Well lot of people might have written about love.. let me give a try to the post condition of most of the love affairs of contemporary world :P

This is actually partially inspired by a movie called ‘CashBack’ and partially by my encounters with life in various forms. You actually end up getting there after a very glossy period of intimacy with the opposite gender followed by a lot of heated conversations.

After breaking up you start contemplating what actually went wrong with the relation. Well trust me most of the reasons are as trivial as not picking up a call. However, the moment for realizing that would already have passed. Lets not get into it since many of them might be controversial.

 After the break up, you can have a lot of sleepless nights (depends on how foolish you were during the relationship to open up all the doors of the insecure portion of life). You suddenly realise that you have atleast eight hours more in a day which you cant figure out how to spend. You can do most things which you couldn’t while in relation for the paucity of time and sometimes even redo them. But naaaaa.. its better to lie down and fluctuate between reality and imagination.. How you wanted it to be and how is it now..

You start noticing sounds which most normal people wont like ticking of a clock at night or falling of water droplets far away.. The hormone monsters whom you fed while in the relation are there still hounding you.. Suddenly you realize that you can on without sleep for days ..(a positive: you are now fit for Investment Banking)..  

And one day the emotions get transformed into frustration which is actually a boon since now you atleast give it a try to live instead of breathing.. Does it mean you have moved on.. Well dont really know that :)

To close it I will put my favourite quote:

Zindagi mohtaj nahin manzilon ki

Waqt har manzil dikha deta hai

Marta nahin  kisi se juda hoke koi

Waqt har kisi ko jeena sikha deta hai..

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Hope

Hope is a word heard pretty often in our daily life. When things are going right it is one emotion that might keep you running even though the end might be pretty apparent to us. When everyone around us tells us its not going to happen, hope is what motivates us to give it another try. In other words it is the emotion that keeps us motivated when all the chips are down. It is the single sentiment that might or might not have a reason behind it. I guess its special in that way.

However, when you bank on hope you surely risk more pain. The amount of suffering your inner self undergoes after failing depends on the effort being put in to achieve that goal. With hope the extra effort we put in with that ‘try one more time attitude’ surely portrays a false image of winning in our mind. More often you see that picture based on hope, more illusioned you become from reality. Sometimes it becomes so powerful that even the effort being put in goes down.

You have hope and you might be a fighter or fool. On the other hand if you don’t have it, you might be practical or pessimist. As one of my buddies said “All these are just sweeping statements”. Hope in short for me is the greatest strength and biggest weakness of humans.

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Just Run..... A Random Thought

There used to be times when I just ran for the sake of running. The reminisces of childhood still refresh the days when I just ran to enjoy it. Alone on a roof with no one needed to run along. It was not for any reason, goal or fear but it was an activity that made me enjoy the freshness of air, the drops of rain, spectacle of birds above in the sky. As I ran, it was one activity which didn’t have any hidden motives behind it.

With the new phases of life things changed. They haven’t changed for good but they certainly have. Every day I got up after those formative years, things I learnt at school, college, etc made me run after something. These were defined as goals in most booklets and I was told achievement of these so called ‘goals’ will help me gain that extra bit of happiness.

But as I kept running after them I never achieved the so called extra bite of happiness. If it did give something it has to be the reasons to run more. These reasons comprised of both the ‘chambers of a sand glass’ as time passed by. The emptiness of one chamber portraying reasons to ‘run from’ and the other filled chamber representing the new reasons to ‘run after’.

It never brought any satisfaction or happiness to be particular. Instead it just brought sadness and a need for struggle every moment of life. I just want to go back to those formative years where i can close my eyes or look up towards the sky and enjoy the free run without any fear of impediments making me fall. Somewhere in this cycle of events of various life phases I lost the sheer joy of running. Just long to run once again for no reason at all... Just run..

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Story of "KayP ke Jawan Launde"

Well it is not just the name of the group that is just funny at the first sight.There are lot of things that the group does that became a reason to bring a smile to most of the faces in the audience time and again (the pic is a proof for it).

The name was coined in a boring class of sports management though it was just "Jawan Launde" at that instant. However we had to go down and modify it for some reasons which I will disclose later.The sheer motivation to instigate this creativity came from the boring teaching methodology adapted by the Prof . I certainly have to give him credit to surpass my expectations by leaps and bounds in terms of his inventiveness to make the class a boredom and that too when you had 20 sports enthusiasts attending the class.Therefore the students took upon the onus of making atleast the last day a little interesting. The occasion was to organize sports events in groups and trust me when you put some big bakars(blabbers) like Dude(AKA Kaushik),Snaky(AKA Nagendra),KayP(AKA Keshav) and myself, you are in for some real creativity and enthusiasm.At that moment the group decided to come up with something that catches the ears of audience on hearing and there and then was coined term that became legendary "Jawan Launde". Trust me whether it was choice of sports (tug of war), team name or the breaking of rope during the incident we enjoyed everything.

The group however is not limited to that sports management class itself anymore. Trust me during an MBA you will find lot of people who are good at Bakar and Sports given the 360 degree evaluations that panelists do during the interview process and since united effort is our class USP we expanded in no time. The group gained popularity with the birthday of our very own Chomu Swamy (AKA Saumya). The extreme creativity of Chummi(AKA Sumit Rana) combined with the marketing skills of Silky(AKA Kd AKA Sumit Kedia though i doubt he remembers his real name) and Major (AKA Charra AKA Anurag Joshi) made the event a successful marketing campaign for the auspicious club.Did I forget to mention that both our marketing incharges are Fin Geeks?ROFL.

As for the name modification we had a very creative member among us "KayP". We decided to give him due credit for his witty effort to come up with a name that gained popularity faster than speed of lighting and hence it was renamed after him "KayP ke Jawan Launde".

As for the current status wait for any sport event or birthday you can hear one of the two chants "Go Jawan Launde" or the legen... wait for it... dary one "Ab to chappal bhi maafi mangegi".

Cheers to the group!!

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Success & Failure

Success and Failure are two sides of a coin..
But of course success is assumed as a sign of everything going fine !!
So whenever we aim for anything..
Our ultimate goal will always be achieving !!

Though trying hard for anything is good..
The real question is how long one should !!
May be it is the test of patience..
But for how long does it really makes sense!!

May be we should try to achieve anything..
Until a certain threshold is exceeding !!
And even if success doesn't come your way..
Then for peace of mind per say..
We should accept our failure..
For we never knew whether success was the real cure !!

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Inspiration from Ashes

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to sit down and pour your words of wisdom on the so very famous subject “Smoking is injurious to health”. Well let me give the other side of the coin (which of course for most of us doesn’t exist).

A simple cigarette can give you far more insights on the philosophy of life than any random book. Each and every cigarette is a prototype of life. As it burns, I can imagine myself burning myself in a scenario which I never desired. The lighting of the cigarette is similar to the zeal we had during our teenage to achieve something in life. Each puff burns out a part of cigarette. It marks out a remarkable similarity between the modern lives we live. The tensions of daily routines take away a certain level of liveliness from our body leaving behind a skeleton at the end of the day which is equivalent to ash since its of no further use. And as the bud left at the end of the cigarette struggles to keep itself kindled it reminds me of an old person struggling down the line in life just to be able to fulfil his daily basic routine.

However, all said and done the smoke that rises from the cigarette is an inspiration. As you struggle through life try to be the smoke that rises upwards always leaving the crowd behind. Don’t be the ash that remains behind. Struggle to enjoy and achieve something. And when the time will come for the bud stage we will at least leave the fragrance behind which will remind people of the things we achieved.   

Be the smoke and not the ashes....

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SongStones of Life

Well this is something that occurred to me some days back while I was listening to some old songs. Life is a series of crests and troughs though the amplitude of vibration varies from person to person. One day you might be extremely blissful and other day a little gloomy.

However a major incident in any phase of our life generally creates a spike in the graph of life. When we achieve something great, that incident occupies our thought process for a considerable amount of time. Happiness is reflected in any and everything we do for that particular period. Similarly when something horrific happens like failure to achieve something, loss of something or someone we love, etc the sky of life seems cloudy and we can’t find a silver lining for a certain duration of time. Murkiness is portrayed in each of the tasks taken up by us during that period.

Just like everything else we do during that period, any song that we repeatedly here during that period gets embedded in our sub conscious mind with a particular image.
Something like the day we cleared a major competition we were extremely jubilant. We just wanted to dance around everywhere expressing our blissfulness. The famous dance numbers of that particular period was played repeatedly for a continuous period of at least ten days till the excitement of the achievement faded away.

Similarly when we lost someone close to heart like a pet or a failed relationship, it takes some time to come out of the after effects. During such a phase u generally don’t like doing anything. However, when the shock subsides to give way to sadness, most of us like sitting alone and listening to certain type of music. The song that we listen to most during that period marks out a sad moment in our subconscious.

Apart from the extremes the general phases of our lives like the school days (can be further subdivided into classes), our graduation (subdivided into years), etc also have certain songs which were either pretty famous during that time or were listened to pretty often. They don’t mark a particular spike in our life but certainly represent a different phase in our life.

After years when all these incidents have happened and you sit alone listening to these songs alone in a room, you start feeling nostalgic of that period. The feeling might be a happy or a sad one that comes along with it or if nothing at all it will just bring a smile to your face. All such songs are not just lyrics composed to some specific tune but these are songs on which we danced as directed by the tunes of life during that period.

These I call “Songstones of our Life”.

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Grass is always greener on the other side

Last week while walking on the road with one of my colleagues I, said to myself that why not enjoy some of the roadside food stuff of Delhi, which of course is one of the best in the country. We moved towards a roadside juice stall discussing how much money these guys must be making since they didn’t have to pay any rent nor were they paying any taxes for the money they make. Apart from this they also charge exorbitantly high prices depending on their wish. However that day I witnessed something that made me realize how wrong I was in framing my opinion without knowing the intricacies of their little business......Read More

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Destiny

The way we came onto this earth,
How much we are worth,
Our family our culture,
Nothing was decided by us!!...Read More

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Heart and Mind - The battle inside us!!!!

Heart is like a bird which wants to fly beyond the sky ,
But our mind is the one that guides it like a spy !!!...Read more

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Blame Games

The human mind is one of the most complex things that exist in the present age. It has got billions of neurons hinged together working at a tremendous pace. However, its up to us to make proper use of it. We can use it like a ‘battering ram’ and keep banging incessantly against our obstacles until it breaks it down. On the other hand we can use it to emulate a ‘river’ that carefully avoids the impediments in its way and continues flowing finding the easiest way out....Read more

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