Right Wave

“Empty mind is said to be devil's workshop"

Mostly, it seems that at this moment- Life has caught me on the wrong foot .May be my mind is empty and is incapable of thinking anything, all I could imagine is leaving behind everything and running away to a very distant land, which offers me new shades of life, new opportunities and new advances.

This is no new feeling, its common with everyone.

Everyone tells me and I feel it too, there is a conscience which seems to be trapped. But I wish to know, where and how it is trapped? I am also starting to believe that I am a bit more confused than normal being when it comes to knowing what I want from life. Success or Happiness. Family Values or Personal Agenda. Pro-active or Reactive. Social or loner.

At one instance I feel that I know the answer and at another it all seems to be useless shit.

                    I am greedy,I want everything in life. And I consider it as a Virtue, Life expects everything. Another confusion!! What would you expect of me when I say that I am good at analyzing things & people and this virtue in itself is turning into a disease, I wish I could stop but this analyzing keeps on filling my mind with all the weird thoughts, it fails to stop and then I have to channel it but recently it has gone crazy.

 After reading, ‘Seven Habits of Effective People’ i am trying to jot it down on a sheet of paper as to what I want with life, then the first thing would be I don’t want an average life as most of the human beings live, I even don’t want the life of a wealthy brat but what I want is a purpose to live, a role to play so that I may pioneer the change I wish to see in this world. I am not insane to think that I may change things around me but I feel helpless, powerless when it comes to fight for things I truly want and I let go of them believing that it’s not the time. Till you don’t have any Power and Authority, fighting for your values might trouble you.  One day, they would return and by then I would be ready to take my stand.

Yes, it is very optimistic of me to believe and to wait for that right moment. May be, everyone is waiting for their right moment. Entire world is waiting for that Right Wave.

Why I Hate SRK

It was the year of 1995: I was on the brink of Standard 3, when DDLJ was released. Entire audience was clapping at the end of the movie - where Simran runs behind the Train, and Raj pulls her in. Great ending, but DDLJ spoilt a generation in that era. I was along those spoiled ones. I started dreaming of my Simran. When accidently I will get inside a train, find girl of my dream and live happily ever after. After reaching my tender age, an urge of getting my Simran increases.

                                      Every time, I get into train, mostly for Kanpur, DDLJ was playing on the back of my mind that perhaps I meet my Simran somewhere.  She might be wearing big glasses; after finding her private stuffs, I would flirt with her, “Aapki aakhen bilkul meri Daadi jaisi hai”. Though I never liked small eyes of my Daadi, but still that pick-up line was one classic of that time. For the trouble with a grin that would show no sorry and I would say, “Bade, Bade shehron mein aise choti choti baatein ho rehti hai Senorita”. The rest as they’d say would have been history!

So, this was a dream which come true - never mind if they were taking me to one of the lesser known hills. After DDLJ, it was ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’. I craved to hear “Kuch kuch hota hain Karan, tum nahi samjhoge.” Seriously, no one understood me. I turned out to be spoiled brat of my school, not even single girl considered me seriously.

Even I led a make-belief life after that for a long time where I imagined bumping into Simran at the drop of an eyelid everywhere possible:

At the library-Imagining her fall from a ladder and I would be there to catch her, not bothering about her weight for love at first sight. Or she and I picking the same book from the opposite sides of the shelf following the smiles-ah! I know filmy, sue me!

In the trains-Getting into a wrong one and being into an adventure of sorts-damn, there was even some mind blowing session imagined in the pantry.

And then Shahrukh also gave me some unreasonable expectations, which I never fulfilled:-

1. I did not look in her eyes and said whatever I said with as much intensity as though Shahrukh did on screen.

2. I never spread out my hands with a slightly tilted head, when I saw her coming from far.

3. I did not talk in whispers sometimes just near her ears.

4. I did not overact. (Not exactly, but it was thoroughly unromantic.)

And when I did begin to like him a bit in Swades and Chak De, he managed to wash out all his impression by doing films like Om Shaanti Om, Billu Barber, Rab ne Bana De Jodi, Ra-one and the recent crap Chennai Express.

And although now some seventeen years have passed by, the after effects of Raj is fresh in my mind. But SRK is gone, and after looking at his up-coming projects I’m sure his impression will never come back in my mind.

Happy Birthday, Shah Rukh Khan.

Greed & Media

              Few days before, I was watching ‘Face the Nation’ on CNN-IBN and their topic for discussion was ‘Is Greed the driving force of new India.’ They came up with such discussion from latest IPL spot-fixing scam. Fall of Sreesanth’s career is one big example of pure greed. 

‘Greed is good.’

                If not, why we feel happy seeing an Ad of recent Samsung Galaxy S4; why we admire the person who drives Audi/ BMW and why wearing Being Human t-shirts makes us feel proud. Because, we are one product of “product-debased” lifestyles, that we lead and how we have all lost a sense of the self. And when you lose yourself you tend to start making money from wrong means.

But tell me one thing, why our inner conscience doesn’t hurt when we do corruption. We never feel bad giving bribes to Government officials. Is our conscience dead or we had stop giving damn to it. It’s the fact that we have enclosed ourselves in our tiny apartments with things that supposedly give us pleasure which signifies that how we have started living our lives by letting others judge us and they’re judgement dictate our actions. And, we don’t want to think above it.

               Our life has been cluttered by the “need-creation” of companies and how this has culminated in a moral degradation of the society we live in. Switch-on your TV, you will find only Negativity around you. “Negative, srif Nagative hi bikta hai yaha” –one dialogue of movie Rockstar, seems to be correct. Daily soups are showing misery of newly married couple, News channels showing Rape, Scam, Corruption, betrayal, inflation, Falling Economy, etc and our Hindi Cinemas are showing crime as a legitimate path of getting rich in glamorised way.

From where, the society will get its motivation? When we try to generate moral from Lord Ram, Krishna, Mahatma Gandhi, we end up thinking - gone are days where people thinks good about others. This doesn’t mean that only bad is happening around us. If the women are getting raped, somewhere there’s also one single-mother who is becoming an IAS officer. There’s also some person who is working for social cause or making some rural innovations like Bio-fuel Stoves. Don’t they deserve some media attention? Why not propagate about such people and make them our celebrity.

                            We are in a society that is on the verge of boiling, we need a specific media  where we can showcase good things happening around us; there’s only one initiative taken by CNN-IBN in their program ‘India Positive’ where they  talks about positivity and accomplishments of people in our society. We need to know such stories more to make us strong and motivated.

In present state, I consider media as only simple mean to moralize, not customized. 

Trying to be Different

“Try to be Different"

                                     “Think out of the Box”

                                                                              “Come with an Innovative Ideas”

Since Engg and MBA, I have been hearing all this crap. Students who were bright and having out of box mentality suffered a lot in Exams and also in their Campus Placement. In Engg, some of talents like Liju John, Nilashish Mandal, Saurabh Mandal were not placed,  afterwards they did some further courses and made themselves employable. Believe me; none of their jobs are giving justice to their talent and skills. Same happened in MBA campus. If the guy is multi-talented, then they are questioned ‘Why are you having diverse areas of interest’ or ‘you don’t seems to be stable minded.’

                   Life is one big bitchy irony guided by dogmas and ‘sacred’ beliefs. Right from your forced religious beliefs to education system, everything is based on conventionality but not on logical thinking.  I will not discuss about Religious Belief (watch 'Oh My God' for that) but want to make few points on education system.

Education system has the most conventional approaches witnessed.

MARKS. Biggest Chutiyapaa. Marks kill all the fun. If questions are of 10 marks, then write 3 pages and for 2 marks then write 5-6 lines. WTF! This exact parameter kills the fun of learning and actual implementing an idea. Marks can never judge what we have understood. In Electronics term, it means our cache memories worked for 3 hours in a stupid exam. Still, you can’t ignore; entire system is based on that.

Study, get a job and die.

If we even dare to dream, hopes are squashed even before we know it. Thanks to the our conventional approaches used towards life.

Then comes biggest barrier: Society

Wah re society. If a girl is wearing salwar-suit , she’s behenji. When she’s putting on fancy make-up and wears a skirt, she’s a slut. What a marvelous way of judging a girl. This is the same society who also consider girl as ‘Devi’ or goddess. These judging systems are also meant for guys. If a guy daily travels seating on back-seat of girl on a bike, then society calls him sissy. Thank you society for making your own people feels uncomfortable and disgusted by your stereotypical chutiyapaa thinking.

                     We follow conventions out of fear, not respect. If you are not going to break the chains of convention, there is gonna be even more chaos. It’s true; an Idea can change your life. Then, allow them to come up with their own idea. Don’t bind them in a circle for sake of marks and convectional way of society. Motivate them; allow them to think differently and to prove themselves. Stop considering education institutes as Job-portal agencies and placements as supreme goal.  Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t prove, nothing wrong will happen, but you will become a statistic. Not an inspiration. It’s sadly not practically possible to follow the metaphysical concept of ‘I don’t give the slightest fuck about people. I’ll do whatever I want’. Even if you try, many times it just backfires. But don’t quit.

One example is Manjunath Shastri, my college colleague in Alliance University. After first year, he left MBA and went to Mumbai for perusing career in Film Making. Currently, he’s working in Excel Entertainment under Farhan Akhtar and is an assistant director of upcoming movie ‘Fukrey’.

Being Good or Feeling Good ?

If anyone is having a fair knowledge of Dexter Morgan, knows very well that Dexter is Pretentious. Dexter is typically capable of faking "normal" human emotion to a degree that he is generally invisible and unremarkable antisocial personality. He masks himself to protect the people around him, without letting them know. Same with Superheroes like Batman. In our real life, we distance ourselves from reality to feel good.

FYI, being good and feeling good is entirely different things.

Pretence is only parameter which can distinguish them. Reality is bitter so we find ourselves comfortable in our fictitious world, where we have your full control. Our Mask. Our terms. This characteristic is born from your experiences. The most common one is when we face rejection from our loved ones. Made-up scenarios will fuck us every time we try to indulge in them but we are so incapacitated that we do not think pragmatically. Pretence gives us a temporary sense of happiness. Facebook is one such proof of pretentious life .

In our life, we stopped keeping attachment with anything or anyone, because we know feeling hurts. They leave indelible scars in our conscious, so we start being someone else. Just like in the movie Fight Club, where Norton becomes Tyler Durden. Who is someone interesting, influential, admirable, someone who you really want to be. In our daily life, we find ourselves uncomfortable in various occasions like work place, GYM, room, etc so we start living the pseudo life. Giving fake smiles to all of them, liking their over-edited DPs in facebook, LOL on their stupid jokes. Believe me, pretentious is best way of dealing with idiots, no hard feelings only experiences. Suddenly, you start feeling that you are surrounded with Morons and obviously you find best among those.

It’s a beautiful process; you mold yourselves as per the situations and people. It’s like this, when you become a kid with kids, they start enjoying you. People never changes, they just show their real self which is awful at times because it is inadvertent. A man does anything for survival, so pretending someone he is NOT is not a big deal. As Tyler Durden said, you’re not special, you cannot be perfect. We are nothing but all singing-all dancing crap of the world. 

I’m quite sure most people fake a lot in everyday human contact. But at the end, they are left hallow from inside, empty and unable to feel. Not even happiness. Just like Dexter Morgan. Finally it’s you who have to decide, what’s good for you. Being Good or feeling Good?

One of the best Poem of Khalil Gibran 

A Lover's Call

Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you as infants look upon the breast of their mothers?

Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of virtue has been placed in your honour, and upon which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice?

Or amongst the books, seeking human knowledge, while you are replete with heavenly wisdom?

Oh companion of my soul, where are you? Are you praying in the temple? Or calling Nature in the field, haven of your dreams?

Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and filling their hands with your bounty?

You are God's spirit everywhere; you are stronger than the ages.

Do you have memory of the day we met, when the halo of your spirit surrounded us, and the Angels of Love floated about, singing the praise of the soul's deed?

Do you recollect our sitting in the shade of the branches, sheltering ourselves from humanity, as the ribs protect the divine secret of the heart from injury?

Remember you the trails and forest we walked, with hands joined, and our heads leaning against each other, as if we were hiding ourselves within ourselves?

Recall you the hour I bade you farewell, and the maritime kiss you placed on my lips?  That kiss taught me that joining of lips in love reveals heavenly secrets which the tongue cannot utter!

That kiss was introduction to a great sigh, like the Almighty's breath that turned earth into man.

That sigh led my way into the spiritual world announcing the glory of my soul; and there it shall perpetuate until again we meet.

I remember when you kissed me and kissed me, with tears coursing your cheeks, and you said, "earthly bodies must often separate for earthly purpose, and must live apart impelled by worldly intent.

"But the spirit remains joined safely in the hands of love, until death arrives and takes joined souls to God.

"Go, my beloved; love has chosen you her delegate; over her, for she is beauty who offers to her follower the cup of the sweetness of life. as for my own empty arms, your love shall remain my comforting groom; you memory, my eternal wedding."

Where are you now, my other self? Are you awake in the silence of the night? Let the clean breeze convey to you my heart's every beat and affection.

Are you fondling my face in your memory? That image is no longer my own, for sorrow has dropped his shadow on my happy countenance of the past.

Sobs have withered my eyes which reflected your beauty and dried my lips which you sweetened with kisses.

Where are you, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping from beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need? Do you know the greatness of my patience?

Is there any spirit in the air capable of conveying to you the breath of this dying youth? Is there any secret communication between angels that will carry to you my complaint?

Where are you, my beautiful star? The obscurity of life has cast me upon its bosom; sorrow has conquered me.

Sail your smile into the air; it will reach and enliven me! breathe your fragrance into the air; it will sustain me!

Where are you, me beloved?

Oh, how great is Love!

And how little am I!