The 100th Post.........

6 years of writing, 100 posts, numerous comments and feedback, many thoughts written, many not written, many blog posts drafted and left unfinished, many posts started with some idea but ended on completely different note, some posts written to please people, some to please me, some to tell the world I can write, some to tell myself that I can think, some to bookmark events of life, some to capture time, my blog has seen it all. It has been a medium to motivate people or to vent out my frustration, it has been a diary, it has been a complaint box, it has been a career guide, and it stood still like a silent spectator of my journey from a small city to one of the leading b school of the country. It has been my shoulder when I had nowhere to go, it has been a smiling face to celebrate my victories, it has been a silent friend who stood with me in my loneliness telling me there is hope in life, it has been a careful watcher, it is a part of my life I return to time to time. It is me, my soul in encrypted form, witnessing and capturing every aspect of my life. It’s my subtle perspective.

Voldmort was very intelligent to have a diary as a horcrux. You may not be always there, you are a perishable product. But words and thoughts are immortal. You can always be there as a memory. You can have your presence felt. Many of the quotes we share on FB are said by people belonging to different ages and culture, but they are with us and in this age of information, words can make any person, celebrity or non-celebrity immortal. I doubt Anne Frank had any idea that she will be such a well known personality and a emblem of Jewish holocaust when she was writing her diary, she was just a little girl capturing the world from her eyes but she is immortal now. 

6 years back when I started it, I had no idea I would be able to carry it to such a long time. I have habit of switching from interesting activities. I have fantasized myself playing a music instrument and to be a Rock star, singing and mesmerizing everyone, dancing and making people skip their heartbeat, all the mainstream ways of impressing people and making an identity I have thought through, tried a few and then stopped it. It turns out I shaped myself more as a writer with time and here I am writing about what I could be and what I am. I am everything I want to be because I can write. I can make characters and put my soul into it. I can be a singer in a story, a guitarist in another. I can create my own fantasy world because words are powerful. Words are powerful than any other entity in the world because they let you create your reality and your fantasy. If you are not happy with your reality, you can create your fantasy and once you learn how to do it, you won’t find reality much difficult to cope up with.

What started as an experiment turned into a life time memoir. A boy who reads and writes mostly in Hindi started his venture in the world of English, a language associates with high class. I was never comfortable in English, to a large extend I still don’t find as much comfort in English as I find in Hindi. I have been ridiculed, thrashed and insulted for my poor grammar. People have laughed on my posts in front of me. I have been mocked and I have enjoyed every part of it. Because, it was an improvement cycle. I have not edited any of my previous posts. I still visit them, look at all the grammatical errors, poor sentence construction, use of misplaced tough word to flaunt vocabulary and I also laugh at them now. But I know how much I have improved only by writing, nothing else. I have tried reading wren and martin for more than 20 times and I have never gone past 10 chapters. I have tried many other ways but never continued but I didn’t stop writing. As it turns out, practice indeed makes a man perfect.

Writing is definitely not an easy job but at the same time it is not as tough as people have made it look like. It’s not arrangement of some hardcore tough words which are rhyming and makes you appear cool. It’s just expression, the only question is can you dare to express? Can you pour your emotions out in public or even on a paper in private? Can you dare to give a physical form to your inner turmoil? Writing is not about syntax. Lots of people know grammar and word, it is about soul and we all have soul, we just need to put it out. If I was focusing on grammar, I doubt I would have completed 100 posts. During my 1^st year of engineering, many people started their own blog. In fact, at a time there were 13 blogs running parallel with different people sketching different thoughts on the canvas of blogger. Unfortunately, no one continued it, not even for 6 months. Life has a way of taking us away from our hobbies. Even I have my phases of ‘writer’s block’ during which I fail to write a single line but somehow I always return to writing.

Also, you can’t write solely for the purpose of impressing others. I have tried and I have failed, many have tried and they have also failed. You can’t write to get Facebook likes and favorable comments. You can try, but it won’t last long and if you aren’t a professional writer, there aren’t any rewards or motivation associated with this hobby. People may like 1 or 2 of your post, then you would lost into oblivion again for a long time. Many of your posts will go unnoticed like a deserted field with no traces of any happening ever. Many of your posts will draw criticism or may be people will laugh on them especially in the beginning. The reward never lies in the no. of FB likes you get, it will happen on one fine day when a random person who you may not even know or know but never talked will message you that he read one of your post and it changed his life. It made him pursue his goal again, it restored his faith in life, it made him laugh or smile, it made him looking forward to read more. That’s the reward you will get, nothing in public just a few smiles and appreciation in private that will keep your engine running to write more.

A write writes for the silent spectator. Those who would never express their opinion or give any feedback but those who want to read. They are the people you will never met in your life but they know you, they know you’re thinking, they know your reactions and they wait for your posts. A writer writes to give voice to those unheard people, a writer writes to bring out their frustration, a writer writes to let them know that they are not alone, a writer writes to show the world that it’s roughly same for all, we all have similar experiences in life. A writer is a messenger that connects reality with imagination.

Having said and claimed all these big statements, I know that I am not a great writer. I have been blessed with the gift of words by god and I have developed an ability to express. I am far away from being good but it’s a process not a competition. The aim is to write something good that will touch few lives and not write a bestselling book. I know my limitations and I am happy with them. May be someday I can write something worthy, till then it’s roughly my own life experiences and life from my perspective. I hope I will improve with time, I will read more and read better to improve myself. I will encourage others to write so that they can also paint their own picture.

So whoever is reading this, I request them to start writing, not frequently not much, just some words once in a while. You will feel good, you will get to know about yourself. You can revisit yourself few years back, you can see the changes in you. You can stay in touch with your past and you can smile. You need not have a fancy blog and lots of followers, best writing is often never revealed to world, it's too precious to share with world, just have a personal diary. Write in it once in a while and you will have something precious forever. 

PS: This picture is of Ajit Agarkar's celebrating his century at lord’s, a big achievement which even Sachin failed to do. Life is all about persistence, you may not be a legend but you can do legendary things if you try. Keep writing people. 

Are we really hard on ourselves .... ?

Are we really hard on ourselves?

The question popped up in my mind while doing one of the counselling assignments where I was supposed to observe the counselling process. We have a subject where we are supposed to counsel each other, 1 person plays the role of a counsellor the other one becomes a counselee and 1 person observes the entire process and takes notes. What’s surprising is the fact that most of us have similar problems and the roots of those problems can be traced back to similar origins. In fact, it’s something I have observed everywhere I have been to. People are never satisfied with what they have and they are always reproaching themselves for it. People always think that they are lazy, dumb, unskilled, inferior, procrastinating and could have achieved much more if they were more hard working, sincere and serious towards life.

From childhood we are raised with lessons of hard work, being focused, being unsatisfied, always aiming higher, I think that has produced an entire generation which is always unsatisfied and insecure and always competing. I have rarely seen anyone satisfied with his/her life and achievements for a long span, people celebrate victories for a while and then get into the rat race again. When dreams become realities, when success is realized, when victory is achieved, people hardly find time to sit quietly for a while, rest and relax, pat themselves on their back, and live the moment fully. There is always a future to think upon, that’s exactly how we are raised. Never rest, never quit, just compete, just run, keep on running, don’t get satisfied, there is much more to achieve, all the clichés were part of our holy book of living life, to compete became our karma, hard work became our religion and in this process insecurity became our god.

Our colleagues, our classmates, even our friends, everyone is a potential rival, a potential competitor, a threat, someone who can run through us, go ahead and won’t stop to pick us up. We are not satisfied with what we are but we are always aiming for what we can be. Now, this article may looks very negative or in fact opposite of what general motivational articles are. But, right now I am not talking about motivation. May be, many of us don’t need motivation at all, we just need relaxation and realization. We just need to appreciate small victories and celebrate big defeats.

I have seen people pushing themselves really hard to get a decent paying job, but when they land up with one eventually they don’t have a long lasting happiness. It’s just a temporary elation, rest they start feeling threatened again. Only the stage changes, only the track changes, only the participant changes but the race continues. No time to rest, no time to hang the boots and lie on the grass, people pick up from where they stopped and start running again. May be for promotion, for a more paying job, for an on-site opportunity, people in India mostly start studying for post- graduation. GRE, GATE, CAT, UPSC there are multiple examination. Those who don’t do anything start feeling useless when they see others working hard. It’s like an infection, person working hard is also unhappy and person who is not working hard is also unhappy when he sees other persons working hard.

What next, you land up with a better job or a good technical college or b-school. Again the track changes, participants change, running continues. Talking from my personal experiences, when I joined XLRI which is one the most reputed and prestigious college I talked to many people initially who were of the opinion that they have done enough hard work for life, did a job of 10+ hours daily along with study and now they want to relax. Within 2 weeks, everyone realizes that they are in the biggest circus of life, professors are the ring master and grading system is a whip. A whip that will make you dance on its tune, now there is a competition to stay relevant amongst the best, amongst those who are equally talented and hard working as you are, and you will be evaluated relatively. So, all the happiness of making it to best school vanishes quickly and you have to prepare yourself for another battle, a battle for survival because many gives up the hope of thriving very early. There is struggle for grades and then there is struggle for job and with the continuous assurance that you will live the life of your dream once it’s over.

Like your parents and society fooled you during 10^th board, then during 12^th, for college entrance preparation, during graduation and then post-graduation or job. There is this carrot of pursuing our hobbies and interest that never come. Most of us didn’t learn guitar, or start regular gyming or travelled the world because we kept on fooling ourselves since a long time that once I achieve this goal, I will quit the race, hang my boots and smell the flowers. What we lose in this process, our happiness, our stability, our satisfaction, our peace.

I have seen people always in regret that they are not doing well with their life. They haven’t achieved anything. They could have utilized time way better than what they are doing right now. People are hard on themselves. We are turned into a masochist in the process. Then there are inconsistent phases of us living our ideal life. Some people going gym, some learning guitar, some studying regularly, but then once our consistency breaks, we are sad and disappointed again. We start blaming ourselves again, we are hard on ourselves, we are our own punisher, we are our own judge, we became the parents that puts pressure of expectation on us, we became the society that judge us, we became the coach that push ourselves for working hard, we became the teaser and taunter, we became our worst nightmares.

All for few successes, which never ends, only the criteria changes. We may be successful for few but not for many and people keep changing in our life. We may be successful for those who are not in a good college but we can perceive ourselves as failure because we are unknown here, we don’t have good grade, or we may get a job way below average here. The same package might be something we could only dream of after 10 years in our previous job. But we used to perceive ourselves as a failure back then although we were successful for someone who hasn’t got a job. It’s a matter of perspective, we decide whether we are successful or failure, and for some we will be successful always. For a person earning 3 lakh, 12 lakh is a big deal but a guy studying in a college where average package is 17 lakh, he would perceive himself as a loser. Our perception is the reason of our dissatisfaction.

And the race never ends, it’s an addiction, we are addicted to compete, we are addicted to be hard on ourselves, we are addicted to chase the carrot of peace and pursuing hobbies and interest. We are running since a long time and we have been brainwashed to such extent that we think only running is the purpose of life. It is not, purpose of life is living, a life which has proper mixture of rest and hard work, perfect combination of victories and defeats, involvement of both friends and enemies, interaction with both companions and competitors. Life is an experience, live it before it’s late.

For all those who are employed or who are studying, just think for a while when you are 70, lying on a bed in some hospital with all the money and success, what will you be thinking that time? Will you be happy on all you earned or you will regret what you missed? Your designation might not bring that much a comfort than the photographs you clicked while on a solo trip would. Your cash will be much less meaningful than the poems you had written. There would be many people visiting you, bringing flowers and fruits if you had time in your life to build relationship and you didn’t crush people to move up the ladder.

Life is short, too uncertain, and too unpredictable, it doesn’t take much to be happy. A smile is contagious, positivity is like an epidemic, spread it. Ending with Jim Carrey’s quote:

"I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer"?

The Friendship Cycle ............. !!!

It’s been almost 14 months now since I arrived at XLRI. Whenever you arrive at a new place the best part is meeting new people. Crazy people, funny people, silent ones, arrogant ones, moody, you get to know so much about them in a relatively small span of time and at the same time you are able to share a lot about you so in turn you get to know yourself better. You get to hang around at new places with new people and that’s a completely new experience. During one such expedition, someone asked me to write a blog about it and that’s why I decided to write about how friendship starts. I had no idea what role this girl will play in my life. I have just met her 5 days ago, whether we will be friend or just group partner for a project and then part away. It’s hard to tell. The guy with spectacle sitting with us looks very serious and disinterested. I had no idea whether he will be friend with a person like me who is always talking and take things lightly. As it turns out, they are integral part of my XLRI life now.

Why we are able to tune much better with a group and not with some other group, why we have a hint of dislike for some people even if we haven’t talked to them yet, why we prefer few over others, why we talk to so many people in the beginning but after a while get confined to a group of few? There are so many questions to ponder over and too much uncertainty in the answers.

So how friendship starts? Try to think about 3 of your best friends.

Done?

Now try to recall how you met them first, what kind of conversation you had with them, what was your initial perception about them, did you thought that you would have a life long relationship with them. It may be the case that you despised your best friend in the first interaction, you didn’t like their attitude and never thought that this person would have such a big significance in your life. On the other hand, there were many with whom you had a great bonding and tuning in the earlier phase but they fade away quickly from your life and are mostly a blurry image now.

The more I ponder over friendship, the more it appears a freakish coincidence. You met with some people and you become good friends with them. What if instead, you would have met some other person, it’s just a coincidence that the person you met become your best friend. The story could have been completely different if you had met some other person. Are we destined to be with some people or it’s just governed by the rule of randomness? Friendship is result of just a chance, or we would have become good friends with people we are now anyway no matter we met them 1^st or we met them after meeting many other people at the same place.

Some of us are lucky enough to be blessed with having the eternal company of a friend since childhood, while some of us have people who came into our life for a while, made a big impact and they are strangers now. The cycle of being a stranger first, then acquaintance, friend, close friend, old friends and stranger again is quite complex and painful. You are part of someone’s friendship day’s wish status on Facebook in some year but now you are replaced by other names and this change happens automatically. Not all friendship turns into being stranger by an ugly end or fight, they just transform gradually with time and next time you talk to a person, you have no idea who you are talking to, it feels like talking to a stranger.

I have seen lots of people sharing a particular picture these days on Facebook which states that we have grown up and we all are busy now so there is no need to stay in touch regularly, people must know that we are there for you when you will need. I find this picture very ironic and insensitive. Helping others in need I think is just a very small part of friendship. When required, even strangers help, the neighbour you have never talked to will also help, and friendship is not something that is done for taking and giving help. Friendship is about sharing memories, creating them, making life awesome and sharing and celebrating it. If it was about helping, it’s a business. I personally don’t think so there is anything called busy. We are not busy 24 hours and even if we are it can’t be for 7 days and if you are then there is something really wrong with the career decision you have taken. For most others, new people just replace old people, priority changes, relevance and importance changes, we just don’t feel to stay in touch with people who were insuperable part once. It is a reality, no matter how cruel a joke it is, people come and go in your life.

Some people’s emotions are temporary, they make big promises when they are in your life but they will move on much quickly. It’s rather a painful part of life which exists in all of our life, and may be knowingly or unknowingly we might have done same with some person. Are we in touch with all the people we were once? Have we tried to rekindle any old relationship which was very dear to us once? How often we try to revive our friendship before giving up? It’s very easy to quit, it’s very easy to take things on your ego or self-respect and say that if he/she doesn’t need me, I will walk away from his/her life without bothering. Quitting is perhaps, in any field, most easy part in life. But it takes courage to hold on to  a relationship, it takes courage to heal it and revive it, it takes courage and effort to keep watering dried up roots of once a very fruitful tree but if it’s worth it, we should do it.

The worst that can happen with any friendship is it getting converted into a formality. I would rather prefer an ugly end with all bridges burned than just wishing a friend twice and thrice with having no idea on what’s going on his/her life. A friend, specially a close one should always be someone you should be eager to share your success or find a shoulder to cry on. It’s good to have few close friends in life with whom you can fight as much as you can, say bad things without thinking anything, judge them, tell them they were wrong and when they are wrong laugh on them saying I told you so. It’s good to have few close friends that you can call at 2 AM, wake them up and say that you just called to disturb. It’s good to have few close friends because you know you can count on them.

For others, who were part of your life but now aren’t and you have put enough efforts to stick on the relation but you know it’s not worth it anymore. It’s good to let them go. There is no point in holding any grudge against them. They have played the part in your life destiny wanted them to play. They taught you what they came far, they changed you as god wanted and now they are on their separate ways. Life is not always what we want it to be, but there won’t be any point living if we always get what we want. I have tried to hold on to many important relationship since my graduation ended. I tried to message people regularly, call them, share with them what is happening in my life and I was disappointed when people didn’t reply. It’s hard to see people changing without any reason, people giving lame excuse is further painful but that’s a part you have to accept. You can’t retain all the people in your life but those who you would will be worth it. As you move on in your life, you will have fewer important people and far more once ‘good friends’ type people. Hold on to those fewer important people, rest were just fellow travellers who left at their destination, but these few will walk with you till the very destination.

I am recalling every important person right now who have crossed paths with me ever since I gained conscious and I suggest you also to do the same. I am thinking about those who left in between, why they left, what they are doing right now. Was it really their fault that they left, did I have any contribution for breaking of that relationship, can I rekindle it again? How many of those are worth rekindling? Why not give a try? Why not filter out some of those relationship who could make our life wonderful and better. Why not catch up from where we left with them. Let us tell our story and hear their story. Let us refresh some old memories and laugh again with them.

Also, those who are still there. Why not tell them that you are grateful for their presence. You appreciate their presence in your life and you acknowledge the fact that their presence have made your life more legendary. Friendship is about small gestures not big show offs. Friendship is about small talks not big dialogues. Friendship is about sharing a smile. Friendship is about pulling legs and teasing. It’s a wonderful experience, it is god’s gift to us, it is like reading a book and creating a story. Every character is different, you live in a story and you are the god of your character, why not make this film a happy movie. Why not appreciate and acknowledge everyone for what they have done for you. As I finish this, I have prepared a list mentally and I know it will be awkward but it’s worth it. I hope you have created your list as well and pick up your phone soon you stop reading it.

I started this blog back in June 2015, I wrote parts of it in different timelines. My views of friendship changed a lot in between. Many characters in my life changed in between. Those who were important are not in the picture, some others have joined, and wheel of life keeps moving. I don’t know how many people will stay, I don’t know whether I will be a good friend to those I am right now, I don’t know how life will change my priority but I hope I won’t lose my faith in friendship and I hope you also won’t.

Keep smiling! Happy friendship day to all !! J