Pursuit of Happyness

Life’s been crazy these past few weeks – that has become my standard response to all the “How are you doing?” queries flung at me by friends and acquaintances. Somehow, this time, this semester seems different from all the others gone by. This one seems special. A foreboding of times to come?? Maybe. Or maybe it's just my overactive imagination. In any case, things have been different from what they used to be. For one, I feel as if life is suddenly spinning out of control with too much to do and too little time. At the same time, there is this serenity within me that tells me that no matter what happens, it's all going to be OKAY. Yes, I must confess, I did have a tough time adjusting to this routine in the beginning, this apparently humdrum existence but life’s come a long way since then. Suddenly, the future that I dreamt of, of being free and independent seems quite close. So, today I decided to take time off from all the “necessary” activities and do something totally unnecessary i.e. watch a movie. I had been hearing a lot about “Pursuit of Happyness”. So, the afternoon found me in movieland.

The movie brought things in perspective to say the least. Suddenly, my good fortune and great circumstances looked me right in the face. I suddenly realized what it meant to “earn” success and with such realizations comes guilt. Yes, I felt guilty for squandering away time and resources that so many people would give anything to have. To fight the odds and win is stuff winners are made of and I have always dreamt of being a winner. It made me wonder if I was fortunate or unfortunate. Its only when u have been through hell’s fire that you can truly crave for and achieve heaven’s peace. But I never went through that fire. Does that mean I’ll never achieve that peace that I too crave for. Are the ones placed in difficult situations the lucky ones because they have the environment to prove themselves and rise beyond their capabilities? Do timely opportunities and resources prevent a person from being as great as he/she might have been after overcoming adverse circumstances? It’s a crazy thought, I know but a thought nonetheless. For those people who have courage enough to beat the odds, obstacles must almost be a welcome test. Or is it just that we love to look at the other side and assume that we’d have been far better off on that side? Human nature, maybe. Just a passing thought… 

Money matters

Well, well, well. This internship is turning out to be quite a learning experience! There have been so many firsts already. For the first time, I’m living in a flat with 2 other MS employees, for the first time I’m cooking for myself and more importantly, likely it, and for the first time yesterday, I had a 3 course meal at a 5 star hotel’s restaurant. Now, how’s that for firsts! But as usual this stupid conscience of mine (or do i mean my brain...inconsequential anyway) always ends up noticing the wrong things and brings in an element of sadness into all things I do, no matter how grand. Last night was a great experience in terms of the people I saw, in terms of the food I ate, in terms of the way I was treated and served but still there was a feeling of detachment that justwouldn’t let go of me. I saw a glimpse of money in everything around and not just any money…BIG money, from the cars that people drove up in, to the clothes they wore, to the food they ordered, and even, to the way they talked. It all reeked of wealth and money. I realized that I do not belong to this world…yet! This thought made me question myself, “Do I really ever want to belong to this place?” I’m not saying all those people weren’t good and kind souls or that it was in any way bad for them to be splurging like this but do ‘I’ want to have all that and lead that kind of a lifestyle? The answer even surprised ME! I realized that I DO NOT want that life of money and style. I really don’t. There should always be certain things in life that are a luxury. Its only then that you value their true worth, else the term luxury itself loses its meaning if one endeavors to make it commonplace which we all are hell bent on doing in each of our individual lives. When we say we want to reach for the stars, all we actually mean is that we want to dine in fancy restaurants, wear stylish clothes and mingle with rich people. But those are not the kind of stars I’ve always wanted to reach for. My stars were oh-so-different. I always envisaged a life for myself that had just enough of everything – love, happiness, success and a small sprinkling of disappointment evenly spread over it all, just to keep me on my feet and grounded, always. Also, because its only through the disappointments that I can truly appreciate the other blessings in my life. And money ALWAYS corrupts. There is no limit to how much a human being can get used to. The level of satisfaction is individual specific. So, it’s for each one of us to decide what’s “enough’ for us. People who choose to run after money all their lives aren’t the ones to be pitied, the real unfortunate ones are those who never knew that they had another choice!

 

Just another sunday.

It is one of those days when time seems to have come to a standstill or rather when I seem to have lost track of it. With thunder and lightening in the background, the ambience is perfect for a session of retrospection and wonder about where my life’s headed and where I want it to go. I’m experiencing one of those rare flashes of insight that give meaning to life and living, a moment when you look at your own life objectively, sometimes critically and come to terms with what you have made of it or want to make of it. It is a time when everything that is important or ought to be important in life is crystal clear, no ambiguities, no doubts and no deliberations.

Sometimes, just some time by ourselves works wonders to resolve all the knots that we tend to tie ourselves up in, in our day to day life. The misfortune of the hour lies not so much in the lack of solutions to problems but rather the lack of time to come up with these solutions. There is a phrase I’ve often come across in those quaint li’l stories of yesteryears that are such favourites of mine – if you are unable to solve a problem, sleep over it. Your mind will usually work out the problem by the time you wake up. But I guess this adage would only hold true if we kept all other factors constant (that’s the engineer in me talking). I guess, in today’s world, each one of us has become so obsessed with success, professionally that is, and are so encumbered with all kinds of problems that the precious few hours that we give our poor mind to relax have become largely insufficient to sort through the problems, much less come up with solutions. We often complain of not seeing the sense in all these age old ways of life but I think the problem lies elsewhere. I think we just tend to ignore the accompanying details and conditions of a lot of these old sayings and simply dismiss them thereon for lack of credibility and inconclusive proof. Yes, sleep does help to sort out a problem if that’s the only one you go to sleep with. But these are subtleties we’d rather not be burdened with, right?

Anyway, coming back to the point before I stray too far and take this in a totally different direction than where I want it to go, I’d just like to state that I miss the good old days. This, at the cost of sounding middle aged and boring . Well, one of my very close friends did point out that a lot of people in all ages have often wished to have been born in a different time just because we humans have this weakness of imagining that any time but ours would be rather better than the one we are living in. I agree but that doesn’t stop me from missing the essence of the good old days – time. Yes, TIME, a commodity that has become a rarity now, especially if success is on the agenda. I feel sad about the lack of time in our lives nowadays. There seems to be such a mad rush for everything, from travel to shopping, from eating to working to even talking. Everything has to be done faster. Efficient execution is the order of the day. There’s no time to just sit back and relax and enjoy. It’s all about speed. For instance, in reading, its about extracting maximum information in the minimum time, its about obtaining what is relevant from the long text, leaving out extraneous details. According to me, it just kills the essence of the book. It detracts substantially from the joy that is reading. When I read a book, I prefer a slow perusal of the words, trying to feel what the author wants to me to feel. If the author took the trouble to write two pages describing a particular flower, then I think its worth understanding why, by playing along and seeing what we are being shown. But no, now, these are irrelevant details that can be ‘skimmed’ over. This is especially true of every CAT aspirant in the country. Its all about ‘speed reading’. I agree what the CAT tries to do is look for people with the ability to handle large volumes of data in small amounts of time but then I’m sure that these data wouldn’t be of a literary nature, would it. And if it is, shouldn’t we be allowed to take our own sweet time to savour it rather than being rushed into gleaning useful information from it? And who defines “useful”, by the way? I hold literature sacred and such blatant dissection of it on the basis of “usefulness” to my mind, at least, is a sacrilege.

On a different note, how many of us have recently sat under the stars and admired the vastness of the universe? This question is only applicable to the lucky few who at least get to see a star cover at night contrary to those living in the “big” cities where “stars” of the celestial kind, contrary to the human equivalents, must be a species unheard of. Not many I’m sure. I still remember a time when me and my brother would be walking on the terrace of our house with our parents and asking them all sorts of questions about the universe and feeling this awe inside, at how insignificant we all are compared to what is out there. I remember those times to be my first odysseys into the mysteries of science. It not only gave vent to my curiosity about nature and its works but also gave me sweet memories with my family to cherish a lifetime. I know Wikipedia or any other source online would be a much greater authority on my questions than my parents ever were, but I wouldn’t exchange those moments for anything because those times, spent learning and laughing about things together, are things no one can ever steal away from me. they imparted knowledge of a very unacademic nature that’s not to be found in books or online. It taught me the meaning of “quality time” spent with people you love even if its spent pitting your limited knowledge against that of your sibling or if its spent asking every conceivable how, why and what question to your mom and dad. I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything in the world.

In these moments of realization, I just somehow want to preserve this clarity of thought about the important things in life so that I never lose sight of them in this mad rush of life that I see all around me. I just hope that I’ll always find it in me to be patient and to savour the joys that are ours to behold and enjoy. I hope I’ll always be able to distinguish the more important things in life viz. my loved ones and friends from the relatively unimportant ones viz. fame and money. In that lies true satisfaction and contentment for me and I hope I never lose sight of that!

Love's labour lost

‘Love’, that magical word we all pretend to have an understanding of, has definitions so varied that one would almost think that such a concept did not exist. The love I’m talking about today is the love we talk about in reference to our better halves. I’m not pondering on the forms and types of love but rather just an understanding of its basic nature. When can we say we are in love? Is it the surge of excitement and happiness on encountering the object of our affection somewhere unexpectedly or is it the silent admiration and respect held for someone, currently, far from one’s reach or is it the mental acknowledgement of somebody’s importance in one’s life? When we don’t really know the true definition of love, can we really afford to wait for the ‘right one’ to come along? A character from the book 'Pride and Prejudice' comes to mind. Mr. Collins is this loser kind of guy who proposes to Elizabeth Bennet simply because there are a list of reasons (none of them being love) why he thinks its ‘appropriate’ for him to get married at that particular time. Lizzie, of course refuses but then some days later, her best friend Catherine comes over to tell her that she’s engaged to Mr. Collins. At Lizzie's shocked expression, Catherine tells her that this is the best offer she thinks she’s ever going to get considering that she’s 27 yrs old and has poor prospects because of her humble background. At the look of outrage on her friend's face, Catherine “dares” her to judge her for she thinks that not everyone can afford to be romantic in life and sometimes, life forces you to make a compromise.

We usually tend to label characters like these as “weak” and "spineless" but I think we ourselves are in error here. I think it takes more courage to compromise than to be stubborn sometimes. I think it takes a greater effort to resign oneself to mediocrity when something far better and desirable has even a remote possibility of happening in the future. So, what of those who believe in the whole funda of “love” being the most important thing in life? Can these people wait all their lives for the “love of their life” to come by? It it worth the wait at the end? I know a novice like me has no experience and authority on such maters but still it des give me lots of food for thought. I think its all a game of probability, the probability of just about anybody being in your life at the right moment and in the right situation. That’s what love is, that “anybody” being immaterial.

That’s where logical analysis of the whole concept takes you but then I’ve always prided myself on being a die-hard romantic and a streak of irrationality is an inevitable side-effect of being a romantic. I believe in true love, in the existence of a soulmate and the works. I believe in the power of love to heal wounds inflicted by time and circumstances. Love's the only thing that keeps you anchored during storms in life. It’s the only thing worth living for, for all emotions, be it happiness or sadness are inevitably linked to it. It adds colour to an otherwise colourless world. It gives flowers, their sweet smell and spring, its freshness and birds, their gaiety. To be able to feel, one should be able to love. Its something each one of us is innately capable of doing, so we really don’t need to go about trying to define the whole concept and reaching a consensus about it. It can mean different things for different people. For some, it can be the whiff of her perfume, for some, the way his hair falls on his forehead, for some the pure laughter of a happy child, for some the concern in an elder’s eye. As long as we acknowledge its prescence in our lives, love’s alive. All we have got to do is stop trying to customize it. Rather, we should let it mould us!

Just a passing thought…

Yesterday evening was just like any another evening. But still, it brought with it a realization that was like no other. I was just sitting in the MS bus waiting to get off at the next stop. The bus stopped at the traffic lights. In my semi-concious state I looked out of the window only to encounter the broad expanse of a water tanker. Looking ahead I could see a 15-something kid sitting in the passenger seat with his feet hanging out of the door. Nothing extraordinary upto now. And then I saw a small kid running towards the back of the tanker shouting “pani” (water). This made the boy in the front get down, probably to shoo the boy away from the back of the tank. By this time, a few other small boys and girls had started running towards the back. These were kids I saw on the road everyday, bedraggled, poverty stricken, begging for money as if it was the only way of life known to them, never having explored other options and ways of life. It wasn’t a heart wrenching moment, not by any means. I could see the glee on the children’s faces and the fascination that drinking water from the back of the huge vehicle held for them. The elder boy must have seen that too ‘coz he just gave a half hearted warning, got back in and smiled. He did not want to spoil the kids’ fun. So, what if they’ll waste a few millilitres of water. He did not mind!

Though this incident in no way bears a direct reference to what came to my mind next, it was the trigger point definitely. Several such images flashed before my eyes - that of a ‘chaat’ vendor giving the balloon boy a small plate of ‘chat’ to have, all the time putting on a gruff exterior, of an ice-cream waala handing out a small ice lolly to the poor girl helping out her mother with the sale of her goods and of the popcorn vendor dishing out a handful of popcorn to the small, naked, poor children milling around him. There was a streak of sympathy and understanding here that ran very deep. I realized then that there was a sense of comradeship among the poor that the united rich could never achieve. Poor people bonded even when their poverty was the only thing connecting them. They understood the other’s plight simply because it had once been their own. Here, amidst hunger and discomfort, there was a deep rooted comrehension of things considered trivial in today’s world – of pity, of sympathy and of love.

This was a thought so contrary to my expectation that I was quite startled. I always thought that the rich were a ‘community’ but that was so not true. All that the rich have are pretenses and show. There is no connection inside. It is just a matter of protocol, a way of behaving according to their own pre-determined norms. It is a harmony born out of the necessity to stick together for otherwise they stand to lose their monopoly over the world. I’m not insinuating that everyone in the world is like that but most probably are. So, is it that I’m looking at the wrong set of things to make a judgement or is it juat that the rules of the world have changed without my realizing it? Probably, friendship, comradeship, sympathy and understanding have become over-hyped things of the past. ‘WE’ have probably moved on to bigger, better things!

Apocalypto

Well, I'd thought I'll never watch THIS one! I'd almost believed it wasn't "my type" of a movie. But boredom is a far bigger motivator than anything else. Result : watched the much talked about 'Apocalypto' yesterday. WOW!! What an experience. Here I am, writing about whether or not I'll fit into the corporate world and what, in my opinion, was missing from the office life of a corporate executive, when there are people around the world just struggling to live. I know the Mayan civilisation was another time and place altogether but they were people, right? I struggle with choices that seem very trivial when compared to theirs. When we talk of advancement and the march to progress of human civilisation, are we actually moving towards something better or mere trivialities? Do we really need to make life more and more complicated in order to pretend that we are making some progress when we manage to disentangle ourselves from the webs we ourselves weave?

Most of us would call what Apocalypto had to show as 'gross', 'uncivilised' or even 'inhuman' but I felt that the people the movie portrayed were infinitely more human than we ever would be. They had a greater sense of honour and more importantly, a greater sense of purpose in life. They might not have known what caused the solar eclipse but they sure knew the 'how' of almost anything. They knew how to survive in the jungle, they knew how to protect their young ones, they knew exactly how to train these young ones to survive in the forest. They knew how to celebrate life and mourn death, how to pray and how to bless. Their methods might have been different, aye, even 'weird' but the sentiments were the same. They feared the unknown (don't we?). The only difference was that at that time there was A LOT that was unknown. Does that give us any right to think we are in any way more 'advanced' than they were or 'better'? I think not. I sometimes miss being close to nature. The life of the tribal people, right there in the heart of the jungle fascinates me sometimes. Yes, their lifestyle apparently borders on 'brutal' to onlookers sometimes, but their oneness with nature makes up for it all.

Its amazing how just one brush with a harsher reality makes you see your life in a clearer perspective. I feel blessed to live in an age and time of extreme comfort but I also understand that it's come at a BIG price. Its come at the cost of tall trees with lush green leaves, meadows with cows grazing in the distance, hilltops with lots of sheep milling around, small wooden bridges over brooks, gently flowing rivers whose bottoms are visible from the surface, houses with attics and gardens in front, small whitewashed fences and backyards. Was it a good bargain? I think not. But then I don't really have a choice in the matter. Like everyone else before me, I too have been placed in a time and a place, my only option being how I choose to live in it. So, here's to days gone by, forever cherished as memories!!

To be or not to be!

Back for another blog. Was very contemplative (read sleepy) today on my journey to the Microsoft campus. Am I really meant for the 'corporate world'? And then, what really is the 'corporate world'? The money seems to be good, the office and the facilities and food available seem to be fantastic too. But still, something isn't sitting very well with me. It took me almost 2 days to realize what was nagging the back of my mind - it is the lack of personal interaction I see in this place. Everyone's isolated in cubicles, with probably a few words exchanged during the whole day. I know its too early to make a judgement but shouldn't your workplace be more fun? And when I say fun, I mean loads of people, loads of interaction, loads of masti. But I guess this would be very contrary to the whole image of the corporate world, where efficiency and competition drive people and the iindustry at large. Maybe I'm expecting too much, maybe not...who's to say!! I'm just gonna live out the duration of my this internship and then decide on the big question - A Software Engineer, to be or not to be???

THIS is me!!

Finally, my incessant efforts to create a blog yielded results and 'here I am' (Bryan Adams style), with my very own blog. I am surprised sometimes by how simple things become so complicated that you end up feeling disgruntled and frustrated because after all, it WAS supposed to be a simple matter actually. I got into trouble because I wanted everything to be perfect even before I started writing - the template had to be just right, the name of the blog, just perfect and the first blog, truly a literary masterpiece. And that's how it took me almost 2 years to get started. A thing well begun is half done, they say. I think a thing too well begun is not done at all.

So, I decided to give up this obsession with a perfect start and just...start. Ah! It feels great to have finally taken off after driving around like a maniac on the runway. Going by my previous record, I should now start wondering exactly what to write. Should I talk about my oh-so-interesting life (honestly!) or my heroic exploits (believe you me!) or my not-so-ordinary thoughts. In order to avoid another time consuming deliberation, I'm going to stick to the bare facts. I will try and make up for lost time by chronologically listing the events in my life so far. For all those, whom I have balckmailed into reading 'my blog' may now get ready for a repeat telecast and for the unfortunate few who stumbled upon this all by themselves, all I can say is...BRACE YOURSELF!