Life of a common boy.... !!!!

Yes, he was a common boy, with not a very distinguished identity, rarely known by his name anywhere except his friend circles, and his life was also very common. It was neither tragic nor very shining, instead it was just ordinary. He also faced all the common problems like any other common boy does and he also dealt with it in the same way. Though he also had dreams and ambitions, nobody cared to listen about them. He also got hurt sometimes but there was no one to comfort him. He was also disappointed and sad many times in life but there were not many to comfort him. He just represents faceless existence of a general mass.

He was common throughout school, neither very naughty nor very bright. He used to pass with marks, neither very high nor very low. He did his homework, neither so good that would bring praise nor very bad that would invite criticism. He had some hobbies and participated in few activities but again as a common boy. Nobody knows whether he ever craved to top the exams, or win a competition, or do something different in the class. The only time his name was taken in the class was during the attendance time rest he was identified by his bench number, second last bench, boy in the right.

Story didn’t change much in college days too. He was just some boy who came to college. Nobody knew about him, not even his name let alone about him. Mostly, he spent his time in herd of his friends, doing the same thing as they were doing, laughing and enjoying. His life was not bad, not very unfortunate, just unknown. Teachers used to ask him during practical exams “I have never seen you in my class, did you ever come? “, all he can do was to just smile as he knew that he was never noticed. Nobody cared about how much marks or grades he got, even he too, he was not one of the toppers. He never stood up in the class to give an answer, or to ask any stupid doubt which mostly people do just to catch the attention of the teacher. He never liked it; he thought it’s cheap, asking silly doubts just to fake sincerity.

He also developed feelings for girls, almost everywhere he had been. But somehow he knew, they are of no use. He was not the Mr. charming, how could he get a girl. No girl was interested in knowing in his name, accepting him was a far away dream. But still he liked his fantasies, short little stories of escape that were born, lived and also died away happily in his own mind. All he could do was to watch from distance all the boys and girls talking, occasionally he also get to chat, during practical labs or some fun event or when out of the blue he was honored with some attention but these moments usually never lasted long and nor did he longed for them to last long. To interact with girls and have their attention was a luxury he knew he couldn’t afford and he was sometimes frustrated because of this but with time he was at peace with this fact. He enjoyed talking about girls in his friend circle though and there were a lot many like him, he was happy at least he wasn’t alone.

He was neither a matter of pride nor a matter of disgrace for his family. Yes, they had expectations from him. Every parents has, every parent wants to see their child go as high as he can. He was often compared with some achiever among society or relative. He was jeered and taunted. Indirectly, he was shown a mirror in which he was nothing more than a loser and why not, he never topped any exam, he had no abilities, he has done nothing so far to get some lime light and bring pride to his family. He has no identity here too. He was just someone’s son or someone’s brother. His little achievements which were very specific and generally not in accordance with usual convention of achievements were discarded soon or rarely listened. Lastly, even the brightest of people are never given the choice to live life according to their own will or to choose their own path, then how could he raise his voice and decide his own fate.

Amidst all this oblivion, there was indeed one day in the whole year which gives him the privilege to know that he also had an identity i.e. his birthday. With due thanks to facebook, he also had lots of wishes on his facebook wall at least and he was happy with it though he knew that most of the people had just written it formally but he felt nice about it. There were few who bothered to wish him via whatsapp or SMS and very few had called him but it’s a nice experience to be known by people no matter for what reason. It’s a delightful experience to express your gratitude to all because they wished you but somehow deep inside he knew that this stardom has an expiry date of only a day and he would be forgotten soon and to be remembered only the very next year.

Very little people knew about common boys but yes every common boy has dreams, passion, will to achieve something, certain talents that are hidden but would surely emerge out at the appropriate time. Some of these boys are great painters, who can paint far better than reality or even better than imagination, some of them are excellent singers but their voice can be heard only during silence, some of them are great at writing or poetry but their content is hidden from the world. Every common boy waits for his turn, his time when he would sparkle in the fullest to dazzle the world with his talent. All he wants is some respect, some appreciation, some acknowledgement, some identity and he is planning from the beginning to have it.

Even those who think they have got no talent at all, nothing in the world to create a unique identity, they must search it again, search deep inside, introspect carefully. God never creates anyone in vain; he has equipped all of us with at least something that we can use to create an identity. All we need is to identify it, work on it, and carve it carefully like stones are carved into beautiful statues so that everyone can admire their beauty. Every  superstar has spend days in loneliness, when they were nobody, you got to take a stand, challenge the conventions, fight for yourself and make your place in the world else you would remain part of the crowd. Whenever one starts afresh at a new place, all start from square 1, and it always involves a lot of struggles to make your own identity. To be or not to be a part of crowd would always remain your choice, all you need is some courage, some will power and an urge to appear different and you would surely shine even when you are part of the crowd.

Life of a pretty girl.........!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, she was a pretty girl, and the world never missed a single chance to remind her that, in both ways, good and bad. The one thing that annoyed her most was the unwanted attention that never left her ever since school days and that’s the one thing she could never get rid of. Being a pretty girl, she was popular, famous and known everywhere. She was approached by many; she was tired of tackling with multiple futile attempts to get close to her. Even if someone is not trying to talk to her, she knew that she was not alone, she was always accompanied by constant gazes and stares of people that followed her till she didn’t disappear from their sight and she knew that she would still continue to exist in their fantasy world.

She was judged for all and judged by all. Her every act was scrutinized in detail by everyone around her. If she is enjoying her life, then they will tag her with all sort of negative adjectives. If she is scoring good marks, then people would be astonished and surprised that how is she doing that despite being a pretty girl. If she is participating in any extracurricular activity, then she is selected to increase glamour in the event, if she won then solely because she is a pretty girl. Numerous times she is snatched with the credit of an achievement and eventually all her accomplishments were summed up as one single accomplishment, “She is pretty”. 

Though she was always surrounded by people, she was close to only few people, and even those few  misunderstood her time to time. It was very easy for any person near her to feel intimidated by her and sometimes she herself was scared from it. There was always a long list of people who hated her. Boys hated her because she didn’t talk to them or didn’t reply to them or didn’t behave nicely with them. Girls hated her because they felt envy and insecurity because of her and she had a tendency to take away attention from them. Teachers hated her because they thought she had neither brains nor will to hard work, she has no sincere plans to study. Her cousins hated her because they feel inferior because of her.

It wasn’t the case that everything was gloomy and negative in her life. There were lots of pros associated with her life and she has learnt how to use them, though she was tagged as ‘opportunist’ and ‘exploiter’ but she has learnt not to mind harsh adjectives as they were going to remain a part of her life. She knew that the attention she gets can easily be used to get some favors without harming anyone. She knew people were willing to help her and she has somehow convinced her mind that she is doing no wrong  by taking help. Little did she know that what appears casual to her was deep inside raising hopes of many persons.

One problem she constantly faced since growing up, lack of a good friend. She always felt that she requires a confidant, a mature and strong support, an understanding person who would show the right path to her every time she felt lost. In the process of finding a friend, she lost many. Often people confused her friendship with love and as it happens, everything is ruined. So many times, she craved for a helping hand from a friend, she got a helping hand but it was of a friend disguised as a hidden lover. How to maintain and balance a friendship without raising anyone’s hope and without hurting anyone, something she never learnt and failed miserably whenever she tried.  Often, she ended up hurting the other person and in turn hurting herself. Being guilty of crimes she never did haunted her life forever and she couldn’t redeem herself from them.

One big mistake she often did was getting affected by every bad experience she faced and letting it influence every other incident of her life. Her prejudices made her so biased that she lost the proper vision and neutrality while dealing with any situation. She started confusing situations and people. If someone is helping him even without any purpose, she always tried to find any reason for it. Even if someone has intention to be only friends with her, or just a casual conversation, she would always consider that as an attempt to hit on her and she would repel and scare off that person. In the process of staying away from people due to past bad experience, she missed various nice people and many good experiences of life.

There were few things that she learnt gradually like she would remain a matter of public gossip and discussion no matter what she does, she can’t avoid it, she had accepted that as a part of her life. She knew she can’t keep a low profile. People would always be interested in her life and to maintain a low profile while being a pretty girl is impossible. What she loathed was how she had become a brand people just wanted to get associated with. She no longer was considered as a person, or as an individual, or as a friend or something. She was just a brand name everyone likes to have so that they can boast it off. If she had talked with someone for the first time, then that’s an achievement for that person and he would boast it off among many people. Having frequent conversation with her was the ultimate proof of being a ‘cool dude’ or ‘stud’ after all you have tamed the untamed and reached the unreachable.

However, the biggest drawback of all of this was in the process of restraining and constraining herself to attain momentary peace of mind, she stopped being a nice person. She started losing her inner beauty which is far much serene and valuable than any external trait. She started degrading something permanent while tackling something temporary. She was always so obsessed and equipped with her own problems, she was cut off from those who were always there for her and now needed her. She started wasting too much time in useless people and valueless issues that she forgot to invest her time in people precious to her. Just to tackle with people who only looked at her face, she started losing people who were attached to her soul. Her outer being gradually killed her inner being, and she unaware of it, blamed situations and her bad luck that she is left all alone. All she needed was to act like a normal person, taking some time for her friends and family, keeping her problem aside for a while and helping others in their problem.

Yes, her life was hard but not as bad as it looked like. “There is nothing worse than being ordinary” famous dialogue from the movie American Beauty. She should consider her life as a blessing as she was given so many boons and gifts that others just crave for. All that is required is to channel all the negativity into something positive and use it for something constructive. No doubt, her life was not as good as it should be, but it was not as bad as it could be. All she needed was to learn with more freedom, to breathe freely without any thought about others, to care less about other view and more about her own wills. All she needed is to walk and roam around freely unaffected of anything and all she require is to take that one step that would led to that road.

Being born pretty was nature's gift to her, being beautiful is something she has to do by herself.

PS: The content is not aimed at differentiating anyone on the basis of anything. It's just an attempt to look into the problem of those people who generally get more attention than the usual crowd and learn about their mindset. Everyone is beautiful and pretty in their own way and everyone should learn to appreciate that.

Boys who write and girls who read...................!!!!

Not many boys write. From those who write, not many write for themselves, most of the time it is for an image they want to acquire, or to show the world that they can write, or they write for the sake of writing. ‘Writing’ is never combination of few fancy words on an offbeat or mainstream topic; neither is it flamboyant ornamentation of vocabulary. Writing is never show off of tough, not so common words and trying to ape some particular style heavily influenced by some movie or novel. Writing, in its crude form is just expression, and serves only one purpose i.e. to express. A boy, who writes, wants to express.  He wants to express every emotion that he feels, everything that he goes through, every joy, and every pain, everything that affect him in some way.  He wants to sketch a picture of all the scenes irrespective of whether they are beautiful or ugly around him and represent a complete lucid picture of what he wants to show.

A boy who writes knows that he can’t control the world. Sooner or later, he would just be slave of thesituations. But he can create an alternate world which only he can control. He can create characters he like and make them do whatever he wants them to do. He has full control over a world. He is king of a hypothetical world, he is the supreme authority and no one can challenge his powers. He can show the real world a mirror through his fiction world. He can draw characters inspired from real world to unmask people and their hypocrisy. He can inspire, he can give messages which can change the entire perception of people. He can motivate, re energize, revive, and support people. He can create magic and be the magician that can dazzle people.

A boy, who writes, often finds himself incapable of finding a suitable medium to emit all his frustration and hence chooses ‘words’ as the medium. He is not much concerned of what people will think, who will read and what would be their response because mostly his concern is his expression, the one right no one can take away from him. For all the turmoil going into his head, uncontrolled thoughts, blurry images, half baked ideas, complaints, tensions, stress, he got only one solution, to write it up. Writing is more of permanently bookmarking something. Something that happened and you are sure , you would forget or become unaffected soon but would like to visit it somewhere later in the future and hence you create a save point by writing it down.

A boy who writes is often lost into thoughts. He may appear completely normal, doing mundane task, doing what he is suppose to do and doing it pretty perfectly without raising any doubt or he may be completely quiet, completely lost in some other dimension, temporarily transited to some other world where only he and only he is allowed to enter. In both the cases, he is thinking, he is thinking and shaping words. Words, that pops up automatically into the head. Words, that needed to be given a direction, a shape, a proper orientation and converts them into something that would make sense, that would be meaningful.   

A boy who writes is quite often not a charming one and thus attracts less attention. He is not well known. He doesn't have a mesmerizing voice that could charm any listener. He doesn't have any dancing moves to impress anyone.  He is not a rock star that would become one with his music instrument and completely change the atmosphere. He is least known and lives his life mostly away from the lime light. He might have a limited fan base and that’s all he wants and expects. He doesn't want to be appreciated but to be understood. He is not loud, he is quiet. He can’t make you dance on his beats but he can make you tranquil. He can’t fill you with energy but he can provide you peace. All he has is words, words that he himself is puzzled off, and often gets confused but somehow he struggles and tries to align the words into something more meaningful. He can sing with his poems, he can make you move with his rhythms and flow; he can generate music by his intensity. He is a dancer, singer, musician all in a disguised form and only for those who would take interest in understanding him.

Some girl reads. Out of those girls who read, only a few reads for the real purpose of reading. Reading is a tough habit. Very hard to develop, much harder to maintain. Some girls read because other girls tell them something to read, some reads because their teacher told them to read, but a few girls reads because they find it worth spending their time. Reading completes them. Through reading, they get to know a part of themselves that they can’t access in normal world. Reading take them to a fairy world, where they can meet their prince or to a place where they can realize that they don’t need a prince, they are the princess of their own world.

A girl, that reads, doesn't live in a fiction world. She lives in reality and knows how to convert the reality into fiction. Reality is harsh, fiction is an escape, you have to find a mid lane and a girl that reads knows how to approach it. Reading makes her strong and prepares her for the battles she has to fought daily. Reading gives her support and pampers her. Reading encourages her to take steps she is afraid of taking. When she reads, the characters don’t judge her. She is free to roam in the world, unafraid of anything that might harm her. Whenever there is a void in her life, that she can’t feel, she would read and find something that will feel the incomplete.

She reads because she knows world is not perfect and is hard for a girl. She reads because she needs strength. She reads because she knows that the world would never understand her and won’t even try to understand her. She reads because she wants to immerse herself into something sane, something dignified, something gentle and something comforting. She reads because sometimes there is nothing that can explain life to her apart from the words of the book. She reads because that is something she does for herself, where she doesn't have to prove something to someone, where she doesn't have to fought any battle, where she could relax and take deep breadth and lost in the flow of words.

Not many boys write, not many girls read. Not many boys get people who would like to read his work, not many girls get writers who would write what they want to read. A boy who writes need not always require a muse for writing but can write far more impacting and touching content with a muse. A girl, who read, could be a perfect muse for a boy who writes. Let’s hope all those boys who writes get a girl who reads.

BYE BYE XP.............. !!!!!

Let me clarify first that I am not making any official announcements of ending of XP (I guess though they have already declared the date for it). I am just writing the post because of all my feelings attached with this operating system with which I have almost spend my entire life so far. Recently I upgraded to windows 7. Now all of you must be using Windows 7 for guess 3 or 4 years so it’s no big deal for you but for some reasons I decided to stick to XP for a really long period and now I am giving up on it eventually.

Now, from where I should start? So many memories are associated with XP. I started working on XP as soon it was launched in market (or as soon it reached Ujjain) and I really enjoyed the change. Everything was so colorful, so bright, everything looked upgraded and new, it was like entering into a complete new dimension. While I started my computer journey with Windows 95, I have learnt most of it with Windows 98. 98 was so simple, basic and easy to use operating system, I always consider it like father of all new modern operating system or more like a switch from basic computing operating system to an entire new generation of operating system supporting multimedia, gaming and other cool stuff.

I still remember the big windows icon that flashed on opening 98. The simple yet elegant start menu and task bar. The simple screen and icons and everything was so simple and the beauty of using 98 always lied in its simplicity and that somehow increased the magnitude of delight on using XP. Everything was fresh and new, bright and cheerful; XP always resembled ‘youth’ as it was full of life and energy. The green start button; the use of ‘TURN OFF’ word instead of ‘SHUT DOWN COMPUTER’; the starting wallpaper showing clouds, mountains and greenery, every change was very positive and appealing to a young child just getting familiar with computers. Even after XP, I used 98 for a relatively large period of time (I finally quit it in 2006) and ever since there was a monopoly of XP in both my desktop and laptop.

Though I indeed switched to windows 7 when it was introduced, but the earlier versions were quite unstable and there was some display driver problem in my version and so I regressed back to XP. I guess I was the only person in my class using XP and many people indeed find it weird but guess other operating systems were never able to make such a profound impact on people’s life as XP did and recently I read somewhere that XP is still in great demand and majority of people still use it. Ironically, I am writing this article on my desktop which is still having XP and as its hardware constraint would never allow it to upgrade, I guess I will always remain in touch with XP. Also, in our college labs every pc is having XP so XP is something that we can never leave permanently for say some more years.

Nowadays most of the people have upgraded to Windows 8 and I guess I will also install it after 3 or 4 years. I am enjoying Windows 7 as of now though I was not very comfortable with it in the first half hour and there was always a tempt to insert the Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD again but some how I get over it.

Kids nowadays are beginning their childhood with computer so I guess they will never understand the thrill of switching from normal video game to a PC game, from Windows 98 to Windows XP, playing GTA Vice City or Age of Empire in your new upgraded operating system and see, feel and enjoy the changes from the old operating system. At times I still miss listening to songs on my 2 speaker in high volume as with laptop we use headphones most of the time. Life is changing from bulky to micro and though the change is convenient sometimes it’s not enjoyable. The upgrades in life will go on but the enjoyments they are going to provide will only decrease in magnitude as we are getting used to the comfort.

Mall vs Mela

At first, this comparison may seem a bit weird and it is indeed weird; but what I am trying is to compare two sources of enjoyment and recreation. Mall represents the choice of modern shining India while Mela is usually the choice of rural India and urban middle and below middle families.  Though we may see some bunch of people both at Malls and Melas who we think doesn’t belong to the respective places.

Mall has gathered widespread publicity in the past decade and it has become favorite place of almost every middle person to the aristocrats. Teenagers like it because it’s a safe and standard meeting place to impress both their friends and ‘beloved ones’. Women like it because it’s a matter of maintaining standard to visit malls for shopping or for nothing. Men like it because they got no choice; they have to comply with their kids and wives. 

Mela existed for a long time and in past its primary purpose was to facilitate business by providing a common place where every useful commodity can be made available. In recent days there is a shift in the trend and apart from a business place Mela has also become a fun place. Common men like it as it’s cheap, it’s a good source of escape from day to day trouble and tension and a good place for a family hangout.

Though the classes of people visiting these places are different but purpose of each class is same. Some fun, some shopping, and an escape from day to day monotonous routine. Children, no matter, whether they are in mall or Mela have the same curiosity and enthusiasm. They want to play; they want to eat; they want to experience everything that the surrounding environment is providing them. Mela usually have speedy and quick entertainment stuff like magician’s show, death well, giant wheels and other kind of thrilling adventures whereas mall has standardized entertainment also; it provides multiplexes, ice skating, bowling, 3-d and virtual reality games etc etc which only rich people can enjoy. A middle class person can only enjoy the view of rich people enjoying these games from outside and he makes firm resolution that one day I will also enjoy life in the same way.  

If I talk from economic point of view, then there is an amazing similarity between shopkeepers of both places. In malls, a major chunk of profit earned by shopkeepers is given as rent and other service taxes so they have to fight real hard to survive in the luxurious competition inside. Scenes of new shops opening in malls, struggling for few days, and shutting down are very common these days. So we may get a feel that people owning a shop in a mall are very rich but we don’t know in reality how well they are doing, and is it sufficient to thrive. Similarly people owning a shop in Mela basically belong to the middle level shop keepers and they also have to give huge rents to local municipality, administrations and bribes to local officers.  There is a limited amount of time to earn profit, and there is excessive competition. I was once watching this shop, they were selling every item for 5rs and I was wondering how much profit they will earn eventually and will it be enough? 

Though the mannerism, clothes, shoes and other accessories may be different for a person having a shop in Mall and Mela but if you closely observe the expressions on their face is almost same. Worried, tensed and hoping that customer will come to their shop and they can continue their struggle. Such kind of partiality can occur only in a country like India where employment means just to increase the quantity and give people a basic medium to survive no matter if it’s not enough to assure any quality life to them. 

It seems peculiar to me, 2 places, completely different yet serving the same purpose and you can trace as many similarities as there are dissimilarities. Ultimately, both places show the human spirit of enjoying the life, having a little fun, a little get together with family and friends after a long time, different colors of life with all possible variations and a perpetual struggle for survival and an attitude of never giving up.

 

Forget or Forgive......

“I do not forget but forgive"
"I never forgive but I forget"
"I neither forget nor forgive"

You must have heard all these trash dialogues from your friends many times as if they actually follow it and I guess you must have uttered it yourself at times to express the strength and tenacity of your character. But the question that I am pondering upon is that do we actually mean it when we say it or these statements are just temporary expression of aggression??

And what's the best thing to do. To forget or to forgive or neither or both. What I think is when we use the term 'forget' we are concerned primarily upon the situation that is troubling us and when we talk about the term 'forgive' we are concerned about the person whose act is bothering us. We are brought up with all the bookish statement of ' forget and forgive’, one must have big heart to forgive, we must forget things and move on and other such things. Often I am described as a person who never forgets anything and never forgives anyone. People around me suggest forgetting things, forgiving some people and forget all the things they have done to me. They describe this as a key to a happy and peaceful life. They think one can't enjoy life when one has lots of burden and weight of past.

I never agreed with these thoughts and I think I won't ever. As in a standard software procedure, a record of previous errors and what caused that error is always kept so that it could be avoided later and I follow the same procedure. If we forget anything then we would be prone to get hurt by it again and if we forgive someone then often we are taken for granted and that person took it as weakness of our character and considers it as our inability to take strong actions. What's the sense of getting taken for granted and giving other the chance of hurting us again and again? Desperate time requires desperate measures and at times the best measure is to isolate someone from our life completely so that person would never have the chance to bother us again.

 And if we forget a situation then there is a high probability that situation would repeat itself. Then the same old procedure, we would cry, would hear sad songs, talk  same things to same persons and get same reactions from them, update some Facebook statuses,share some 'strong message' pics on Facebook, make some internal resolution of how to avoid it next time but in the end we fall in the same pit again as we never bothered to watch our path every time we fall.

My above views may be interpreted negatively (as it always happens). I am not saying to be cold, rude and completely isolated. What I am trying to say is that some things we must keep in our mind to save ourselves from inconvenience. Giving chances is a good thing because at times we also need some chances. There are some mistakes that can't be avoided, some misunderstandings that have to be cleared, some gaps that have to be filled but we must keep an eye on the frequency of chances we give to people otherwise some people have the tendency to make a habit of making mistakes. Some bridges are to be burned else we would always reach the position we started.

Anyway I guess there can't be a universally accepted generalize principle on it. Sometimes you have to forget things and move on sometimes you shouldn't even if you could. Sometimes you have to forgive some people but do not forget what they did but giving chances is the best thing you can do in such situation. Sometimes you just shouldn't forgive a person and the best thing would be to forget his existence in your life completely otherwise that person will continue to give you troubles. So one has to use his conscience to decide in a long run what would be the best thing to do but some tough decisions should be made at the right time for a happy and peaceful life. There is no benefit in bragging about having a big heart and forgiving and forgetting just for the sake of ' as its a good thing to do ' !!!