Its all within us

Let the blue around you not diminish your smile

Whoever said: Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is mystery, Today is a gift, therefore it is called present- must love surprises. But don’t we all live a bit of us in yesterday, a lot of us in tomorrow, thereby giving less credit to today- our ‘present’. We go through the motions of our day sometimes feeling life is a heavy weight- when bogged down by past, sometimes chirping happily- in anticipation of tomorrow, but rarely living in the moment. That is the zen way of living and one may argue that only the most evolved among us may have that competence of living, truly, in the moment. I ask what is wrong in living in the past or in anticipation of future, if it keeps us happy and, more importantly, hopeful? And I also ask this with a caveat: Does man have the potency of first, distinguishing what makes him happy and sad and second, choosing to keep only positive and happy (past or future) memories within while living in the present?

Memory is a dark place. I lay claim to this but with utmost care to say not ‘good’, not ‘bad’, but ‘dark’. For example, in your head, go down the memory lane, your happiest best moments that you can recall right now. Your birthdays? Your going to college? Landing a job? First pay check? They may be any or none of these. Now, relive them. Do you remember living those moments in their pure form, when only that moment was the title of your living? Most probably, you’d say yes. Now come closer and remember the last time you were happy. At a friend’s party, at your office when a colleague was extra nice to you, when you ate something fantastically delicious. Repeat the exercise. Relive that moment. NOW do you also relive that moment with only the header? Mostly, no. Whichever your latest happy memory, you’re most likely to attach a string of other thoughts to it. Like- a friend’s party. You will also recall how one friend was being obnoxious of you, how your dress wasn’t the right size, how your feet hurt in those heels, how bad the hangover was the next day etc. etc. Now, do a temporal exercise and put this moment in a box. Reopen it in a month or two. When you do, you are most likely to have forgotten all the bad stuff. So, what mostly remains... is that you had a happy memory of a friend’s party. Similarly, this works for bad memories. Sad news is, today, we tend to experience... nay... record... bad memories more than good ones. We see more red than green. We read more about accidents and deaths than awards and achievements. So, what are we feeding ourselves?

In the long-run, we are piling lots and lots of bad memories, removing the peripheral good stuff and heading into the next day with the cumulative burden of the past. Is that healthy? Hell, no! It does not even make sense.

Next time when you have some moments to spare, try this. Go for a walk and start smiling. If going out for walk is not feasible, sit back, close your eyes, and just smile. Let it be an effort if it is at the beginning. Science has proven that a smile, even if artificially induced, is a stress-buster. I swear we can all use that most importantly because it doesn’t have side-effects, with-drawl symptoms or malignant addictive capacity. So, once you start smiling, your bad memories will be washed over by happy ones and you will be surprised to realize by the time you have completed a round or opened your eyes, the artificial smile becomes a natural one. That is how powerful and beautiful this small thing is. It is a lot more potent than we give it credit for.

Whoever said: A smile costs nothing but gives much... was a wise being.

Surviving the inevitable

This is called degeneration of mind. The feeling is accentuated by the simple act of reading and re-reading the blog that I all over again fell in love with. Its my pride. And yet, its degenerating. And I am letting it go to rot.

There are a zillion things which revel to me daily, every waking moment, and sometimes sleeping too. Yet I sleep on them, kill them. Then there are days like today when I lament why did I lose all those precious moments to trivial stuff when I could be writing away to glory.

Years ago, and for a very long time, I would sulk over finding my passion. I’d ask myself this question “what would I want to do during the last minute of my life, when the last breath is anxious to leave me.” And I had no answer to that. Or worse, I would think “I would want to spend that last breath in the arms of my love.” Bullshit.

No one cares if I die. The family is obliged to care and be sad, but just enough. Besides those few, there is no one on this planet who would wish I were not dead... I were not dying, if somehow they could bring back life to me.

 

                                                   Surviving... and how! Its the ink and tea chronicles!

But today, I know I want to die reading. I want to die writing. Writing not about death, but- ironically- about life. That despite everything, it was a good run.

Enough about dying. I want to live. And I want to talk about living.

Why do we live? And the answer cannot be because we are born, and once that minor detail is taken care of, you have no option but to keep at it. That’s too transactional. And, if not anything else, I am not a person of transactions.

Why do we see life as a third person? When we are its creator. Life is because we are. We are life. Then why separate it from our being?

This and many disparate thoughts have been, not troubling, but poking me for sometime now. I am reminded of college exam time when everything would suddenly start appearing pointless, when I would be on the verge of giving it all up, seeking meaning in life, wanting only the bigger picture without realizing that a picture, however small or big, is created with a zillion single strokes. Why would I then want to do away with the strokes and still want my bigger picture? Silly me.

Today, I am 25. And I am no different than when I was 20. Happily, my heart hasn’t stopped beating. Sadly, my brains have diminished as my heart has grown. Today, I seek everything and see everything in the bigger picture frame, often by-passing the smaller details. I wouldn’t care less if I lost all money, or lost my job, or lost a person. It will make me sad for insanely unhuman amount of time and then I’d be back to living once again. Again, bullshit.

The mind is just too cluttered to write something meaningful. I fear I’d do injustice to the rest five hundred million thoughts if I write about one particular. So where do I begin?

No where, says the mind. Its deceitful I tell you. Whoever said that heart makes you do irrational thing was probably thinking from their ass. Mind manipulates. Mind calculates. Mind searches for logic and reasoning. While heart innocently believes. Heart accepts. Heart forgives.

So what is so wrong in following your heart when you don’t like what your brain makes you do?

People on this planet sure do use their brains all the time. I ask... why? To get some more recognition? Or power? Or money? Or sex? Or status? Only a hollow being would want to be on a perennial want for more. They are the ones who manipulate earth. World war happens because of people like them. The bad news, u ask me? ALL men (I use it generically, referring to people from all genders) use their brains. That’s what they do best. And that’s how they do worst.

This thought is now giving me a head-ache. I don’t usually have head-aches. I told you, I use heart. Heart doesn’t give you head-aches. It gives you heart-burns. I am awesome at sustaining and surviving heart-burns. But not head-aches. I go crazy when I get one. I don’t usually have head-aches.
Right, I already wrote that.
 

Beginning of an End...

So how do I feel at the end of (over) 3 months?
Brain is too complicated to answer that.
Heart is too excited to answer that.

So i turn to the place with memory galore- the Photographs...
And then, its not just past (over) 3 months, but years that pleasantly roll by me. And I realise that a hearty laugh, a twinkle in the eye, a 'posey' pose is not a work of art, infact far from it.
But today, when I look at these photos- in almost disbelief at actually having once lived them- I realise I treasure them more than the most precious work of art.

After a fruitful hour of photo-gaping, I realise life has, more or less, been a serendipitous ride. It has been kind to me. It has been an accomplice in all the adventures.
And now, as I am about to embark upon another adventure, I only have one wish... that life be as it has unchangingly been... full of wonderful co-incidences!

So, at the end of (over) 3 months:
I feel blessed to have such a happy life full with amazing people.
I feel hopeful that the trend of happiness continues
And...
I feel grateful for the invention called camera to have made the brain and heart work lesser.

Here is hoping for a tomorrow full of Sunlight, Health and Happiness.

In a perennial pursuit...

It happened 3 years ago. In a small and absolutely beautiful village called Ratnagiri in Maharashtra.

We were visiting the house of India’s freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak- the ‘Bal’ of the famous ‘Lal Bal Pal’ trio- which was being renovated for public exhibition.

As I moved about the place, I had a feeling of redolence but couldn’t put my finger on it. Taking the confused feel with me, I moved on.

Cut to present.

I went to my grandparents’ home for a week, thanks to a completed degree and delayed date of joining on the job.

It is then that the old feel came back to me.

The air was the same.

As weird as it may sound, I could make an absolute connect.

The ceiling fan-the kind which one wouldn’t normally find in today’s time- has a huge box for a regulator that sticks out the wall. It has now become smooth and edge-less from being in use for many decades.

My grandfather’s desk is decorated impeccably with his glasses, medicine, some documents, a diary and a pen arranged in exactly the same manner at any time of day since last 18 years when he retired.

There is an old radio set- decorated by a hand-woven and beautifully embroidered patch of cloth- whose print has come off with all the years of use.

The beds, or the ‘khaat’, I’m sure are a rare possession in any delhi household today. But they are being proudly used and by personal experience I admit, they are better than any bed!

The various calendars - with images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses covering almost the entire area on it - irrespective of their years, adorn the walls of the entire house.

These and many other things are not only reminiscent of my childhood but also drive home an important conclusion.

Never let any experience die in you. Always keep the feelings as well as the feel alive. Always.

You never know... what connects where and when.

This home is an integral part of me, as that ‘house’ will be too from now on.

You don’t necessarily have to play a major part in somebody’s life to make them an integral part of yours.

Sometimes, it’s the feeling of being connected- like with my grandparents’ home.

Other times it’s the FEEL of being connected- like with Late Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s house.

A message...

At first I thought I was still dreaming and it was again a nightmare. But when the alarm did not stop, I forced my brain to think why I had set the alarm for 5:45 am. I fought with myself, coming up with any unreasonable excuses my sleepyhead could concoct, still knowing what was committed had to be done.

It took all my will power for me to step out of the bed on the chilly winter floor. After fighting another urge to hop back in the blanket, I started putting on layers and layers of all the clothes in my wardrobe.

Slinging the camera, I stepped out of my room, cursing the camera-the cause of my discomfort today.

Ok… So I was headed to the playground to shoot the early-morning cricket match- a game I’ve always hated.

The ground is 10 mins away, if you walk leisurely on a sweet Sunday afternoon.

But ask me and I still feel it took me 30 minutes and my entire breath to reach there. But once there, I was glad I made it, although a bit late.

Out popped the camera and as I was about to click the first shot, horror struck me.

There was no battery in the camera.

I still remember the feeling. It was worst than plugging-in your cellphone for charging and forgetting to switch it on.

I had still not recovered from the run, yet I started running back towards my room to fetch what was left behind- the SOUL of my camera.

This happened almost a year back.

And now, for this New Year, I have a message.

Never leave your SOUL behind. If you do, you’ll be out there in the cold, running, out of breath to get it back.

You just cannot do without it.

Also, Keep your loved ones close. Never hold a grudge for anyone. Have lots of sunshine… for you never know when the Earth will die.

Keep smiling! J

Potpourri of my MBA

Sometimes, we are the prisoners, other times, the leaders or workers cutting envelopes… Zimbardo must be so happy in his grave right now.

I've lived for 22-23 years and NOT analysed myself as much as I've done these past 15 months.
What does it anyway lead to? I'm sure this self-introspective MBA paradigm runs across the country and all first class MBA colleges churn out hundreds- if not thousands- of top-notch managers year after year.

How differently would they, probably, act had they not been, say told that they are ENTJ (sorry my non-MBA friends…if I sound French) and THAT is why they behave as they behave.

Again, as I write this, the only thing that my mind is processing right now is an experimental design using an experiment an control group.
How I wish I could, sometimes, un-MBA my mind and see how different my life could be.

so… which mask is your MBA making you wear?

I am not against these self-introspective tests and this kind of MBA paradigm. I love it, infact. Attributing your behaviour to a theory proposed by a gentleman in some other era donning a wavy-white wig like a lady's can be the easiest to get away with your unfavourable idiosyncrasies.

But somewhere, I feel this education, where on one hand, exposes a world of worldly theories and enlightening self-concepts to us, on the other hand blinds us from the existence and operationally of a world which awaits us right outside our B-School boundaries.

So… Do we have the education to un-MBA our minds??

Backing it up...

Life becomes pretty devastating when you, hoping against all hopes to have your data secured, get to know that one wrong download cost you all your work till date and that you were naïve enough not to believe in inventions called “hard disks” then.

In short, I, permanently and irrevocably, lost all my data.

And by “data”, I mean the photographs that I took immense pains to first click, then transfer and compile neatly into albums. 

It still hurts. Thinking of all those faces in the pictures, suddenly I miss my “data” even more.

One good thing I did, though, was upload a select few on FB (FYI, for tagging a zillion faces, FB has barred me from any further tagging).

So this one day I was sulking over my devastated sans-pics life, staring at my cruel laptop’s heartless default desktop background. When I realized I could stand the background no more, I downloaded one of my uploaded pics on FB and set it as my wallpaper.

("THE" wallpaper)

Before I could breathe a sigh of relief seeing the beauty, a revelation occurred.

The faces in the pic seemed happier, including mine, than we actually were at that time, if I remember the moment correctly.

Doesn't it so happen, while you are in that moment, u do not realize how happy it is until it passes. After 6 months, when one fine day you sit defeated and helpless and suddenly set this pic as your laptop’s wallpaper, you say to yourself “You lucky girl! What more do you want from life? Aren’t you lucky enough that you are one of the faces in this happy pic?”

I, once more, understood the importance of these three people in my life.

This one pic is enough for me to forget lamenting over the rest 100000000 lost.

I love you guys more than you can ever come to think.