I showed the finger!

After years of believing that marriage would be a futile thing, I still could not duck this one that came at me. It was almost like God looked at me, showed me an angel and said "Aha..so you don't want to get married huh! Okay, now try and resist this one."


Well, I did not resist. So decided to sacrifice (hehe) my peace and freedom for a cause - of that of keeping Sangeeta like a princess. That's her name and I showed her my finger for the engagement ring.

I got engaged on March 18!

Turn a life around

Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed that the boy ahead of him had tripped and dropped all the books he was carrying, along with two sweaters, a baseball bat, a glove and a small tape recorder. Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered articles.

Since they were going the same way, he helped to carry part of the burden. As they walked, Mark discovered the boy's name was Bill, that he loved video games, baseball and history, that he was having a lot of trouble with his other subjects and that he had just broken up with his girlfriend.

Mark went home after dropping Bill at his house. They continued to see each other around school, had lunch together once or twice, then both graduated from junior high school. They ended up in the same high school, where they had brief contacts over the years. Finally the long-awaited senior year came. Three weeks before graduation, Bill asked Mark if they could talk.

Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met. "Do you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?" asked Bill. "You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn't want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had stored away some of my mother's sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that if I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might follow. So you see, Mark, when you picked up my books that day, you did a lot more. You saved my life."

By John W. Schlatter

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around - Leo Buscaglia

The music wont last

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's
Erratic fly
Or gazed at the sun into
The fading night?

You better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music won't last

Do you run through each day
On the fly
When you ask "How are you?"
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music wont last

Ever told your child
We'll do it tomorrow
And in your haste
Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch
Let a good friendship die
'Cause you never had time
To call and say "Hi"?

You better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music won't last

When you run so fast
To get somewhere
You miss half the fun
Of getting there

When you worry and hurry
Through your day
It is like an unopened gift
Thrown away...

Life is not a race
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

Source unknown

A - Z of Quotes

A—"Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it." Lou Holtz

B— "Believing in yourself is not for you; it's for every person who has touched your life in a significant way and for every person your life will touch the same way five minutes from now, or five centuries from now." Jaye Miller

C—”Change is as inexorable as time, yet nothing meets with more resistance." Benjamin Disraeli

D—"Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the action stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living." Anais Nin

E—"Enthusiasm releases the drive to carry you over obstacles and adds significance to all you do." Norman Vincent Peale

F—"Focused will is incredible. If you have a dream and you don't give up no matter what obstacles come up, then life's problems will fall away and you will get what you want. It happens. It works." Yanni

G—"Goals are like a map. They help us determine where we want to end up, and give us personal direction on which to focus our energy." Catherine Pulsifer

H—"Happiness depends upon ourselves." Aristotle

I—"Ideas won’t keep; something must be done about them." Alfred North Whitehead

J—”Joy is not in things; it is in us.”Richard Wagner

K—“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.” Samuel Johnson

L—"Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects." Arnold Glasow

M—"Motivation is like food for the brain. You cannot get enough in one sitting. It needs continual and regular top ups." Peter Davies

N—"Nature does nothing uselessly." Aristotle

O—"Opportunity dances with those who are ready on the dance floor." H. Jackson Brown Jr.

P—"Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish." John Quincy Adams

Q—"Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers." Anthony Robbins

R—"Results! Why, man I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work." Thomas A. Edison

S—"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Leonardo DaVinci

T—"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend." Diogenes Laetius

U—"Use your unique abilities to shake the world." Wendy Hearn

V—"Victory belongs to the most persevering." Napoleon Bonaparte

W—"Wisdom is the daughter of experience." Leonardo da Vinci

X—"X-ray your life, are you where you want to be, if not set your goals, take action." Catherine Pulsifer

Y—"Youth teaches, age puts what we have learned into practice, teaching us wisdom." Catherine Pulsifer

Z—"Zone into your comfort zone, and, then zone into where you want to be. Be all that you can be." 

Compiled by Catherine Pulsifer

Relationships

Not everyone is healthy enough to have a front row seat in our lives.

There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a distance.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of, or at least minimize your time with, draining, negative, incompatible, not-going-anywhere relationships/friendships.

Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention.

Which ones lift and which ones lean?

Which ones encourage and which ones discourage?

Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill?

When you leave certain people do you feel better or feel worse?

Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know or appreciate you?

The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you...the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of Your Life.

"If you cannot change the people around you, CHANGE the people you are around."

Remember that the people we hang with will have an impact on both our lives and our income. And so we must be careful to choose the people we hang out with, as well as the information with which we feed our minds.

We should not share our dreams with negative people, Nor feed our dreams with negative thoughts.

It's your choice and your life..... It's up to you who and what you let in it......

Source: Unknown (received as a forward from a friend)

Off the mark

Yeah, I am off the mark for 2012. The year has started off really well. Hope the flow takes me through and leads me to where I want to. Catch being, I do not necessarily know what the end target is! Big deal, who knows the big plan anyway.

Let me reproduce these lines I read somewhere:

The new years come, the old years go,

We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,

We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,

We curse it then and sigh for the wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,

We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,

And that's the burden of a year.

Here's wishing you a fantastic New Year and rest of your lives.

God bless. Keep smiling.

Life's an examination?

I am starting to believe that life, somehow, tests each & every belief you have had in life about various things. For instance, if I love sweets, I happen to get so much sweets-eating-opportunities that at some point I might lose the craving for it. It is as if life looks at you & says "So dude, you love sweets huh? Lets see how much you can take it". Of course, craving for sweets is a relatively trivial issue but the same applies to every other belief, liking and disliking you have ever had.

In my case, my belief system is being constantly put to test through various situations appearing as a small little test. And I must add here, I am not faring very well here. Also, I wonder now how this new belief of mine is going to be tested!

Seven and a half learnings

As a student, taking up the CA course was not really a well deliberated decision for me. It would be incorrect to say that it was my dream to be a CA. In fact, far from it. The decision to take up this course was more by default than design. My elder cousin was doing this course and it was seen as a high Return on Investment course! Well, things went well and I did end up clearing the course in 2004. It has been 7 complete years (almost) since that eventful day.

The other day, in one of my many introspecting/reminiscing hours, I was wondering how life has shaped up since clearing CA. I could think of the following key learnings I have had over this period. Here they go...

1. Money is an important factor in life. To my mind, anyone who says money is not important is either lying or is ultra-rich. Financial security gives you a lot of space to do well in various aspects of life. In no way I am trying to imply that money is THE thing to chase, but having enough of it surely gives a lot of flexibility. Well, how much is enough is a totally different point altogether. Also, I feel earning a fair amount of money after being a CA has not been difficult. If you have a reasonable flair and grip on content, earning a lakh a month before you are 30 is not difficult at all.

2. Having a strong passion about something or having a genuine hobby is a very useful thing in keeping you happy in life. During phases when people and circumstances around you are being discomforting, your passion/hobby can see you through peacefully. It could be a sport, a game, an activity, travel, watching movies, reading books, music, anything. Anything that keeps your mind occupied and not idle.

3. Talking of mind, it is the most important part of our system I guess. Have a control on your mind, things are smooth. If not, it's havoc. Simple yet very difficult!

4. I have also learnt that our views and perceptions about things and people change over a period of time. What I believed 5 years back may not necessarily be my belief now. Things change. Change is the only constant. I know I know, it has been said a million times before.

5. We have a lot more time than what we think we have in life. There is enough time to live your life the way you want (assuming you know what you want!). We can afford to slow down, get off the rat race and relax sometimes. The important things will wait and the things that cannot wait may not be really important.

6. Love is an under-estimated concept. Even after thousand of movies and millions of exposures on it, it is still worth the time and efforts.

7. And finally, never say NEVER. I know I just did, but still!

These are my seven bits of wisdom for myself and for other takers. As always, for whatever it is worth :)

P.S. The final half bit of the learnings is that I am still so much a work in progress. Though I do not know how the finished product is supposed to be like, I am still closer to the start than finish.

When do I grow up?

When I was a kid, I would think I could touch the moon someday. The belief was at the peak especially those days when the moon appeared bigger than normal, so it was like 'wow, it's coming closer'. As I grew older, my fetish for touching the moon evaporated.

What I did not realize is that am still the same little kid in many ways. Just that the moon has been replaced by many other things.

Resuming the musings

It seems like a lifetime since I have posted last. Time, as they say, is an illusion. So, though the months of blogging-gap seems few, it seems like eternity since I was here the last time. As always, I resume blogging - hoping this time it will stay!

Life has been what it is always, life. Unsteady, surprising, shocking, happy, unhappy, volatile.. all these in regular phases. I have been trying to be myself through all this, but could not always. May be it is being too harsh to expect myself to be so consistently.

In a way, I am searching for myself these days. Somehow I feel I have lost myself, if that is indeed possible. Or possibly, this new me is the actual me. How am I to know since I'm living life for the first time :)

What do I want to write about now? I am not sure yet. Too many random thoughts floating around inside my muddled, cluttered mind. But will let myself go now and write with the flow. Me wants to see where it goes!

I do want to mention something here. I am pleasantly surprised to know that there are many in this world who has been waiting to see my blog active again. Not getting into self-praise. Just feeling a little humbled that few has been 'missing' my blog. Thanks to all such super-fellows :)

Worth a read

Click on the image to enlarge

Simplify

If we were to see how a typical life around us goes, there are just a few instances in one's lifetime where one has to take potentially life-changing decisions. Rest of the time, the things that we do are mundane, uncomplicated stuff. Yet these mundane tasks are the ones that test our mettle. Its these little moments that define what we are and what we could be in our lifetime. Unfortunately, we end up assigning a lot of undue importance to the big moments and take the smaller ones for granted.

Life's short - made up of tiny little beautiful moments. Capture them. Live them well.

As Anton Chekhov puts it: Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Don't fantasize!

No, I'm not veering towards what the title would suggest. I am talking of some froth we create in our minds - consciously or sub-consciously. Over the last few weeks, I have been audience to few incidents that had the same underlying theme - the disappointment of expectations not being met. Let me take few general instances here:

First: A die-hard fan of a mega superstar, who likes the star madly, desiring to meet him, goes and stands outside his house everyday from 5am till the sun decides to call it a day. Even after 10 such days of wait, the mega superstar does not turn up to meet the die-hard fan, who is presumably his greatest fan. The dejected fan goes back home and vows never to worship his hero who broke his hopes and dreams so brutally and heartlessly.

Second: A boy deeply loves a girl. He expresses his love to her. He is very sweet to her and takes good care of the girl. He wishes all the happiness in the world for the girl. He desires to marry her and keep her happy, always and forever. The girl, however, does not wish to marry him. Reasons? Irrelevant here. The boy is dejected. He feels cheated. He goes down hard on the girl and thinks of her as a heartless, brutal person who has no respect for other's feelings.

Third: A young married couple wishes the joy of parenting and wishes to bring a little bundle of joy to their lives. A baby is born to them. They are extremely delighted to have value and purpose added to their lives. The baby is well taken care of. The husband quits his job to be able to be with the growing baby who needs to be nurtured. The baby grows to become a very able adult and the parents are proud of her. She falls in love with a guy and wishes to marry him. She conveys the same to her parents. The parents are dejected and feel betrayed. Their hopes have been shattered by their daughter for whom they made so many sacrifices over many years. They decide not to be with the girl in this decision and makes it very clear that the day she marries the guy, she is out of their lives. Why? Because she is heartless and brutal who does not take care of her parents' wishes and expectations.

What is common among the three instances? Expectations have been broken. Desires have been left unfulfilled. Well, hard luck. Yeah, it is a simple case of hard luck. It is utter nonsense to put the blame on the superstar/girl/child for the state of mind of the fan/boy/parents. Sounds harsh? Well, so be it. If I expect something from someone, it is MY problem and not the other person's. Why should the other person accomodate your expectations if he/she is not happy doing it? If they are not able to see your viewpoint, fair enough. Different people dances to different music in this world. If they do not like your music, hard luck. Accept it and move on. Stop feeding sympathy to yourselves. Do it if you feel so, but do not hold the other person responsible. It is your problem and you must be the one who should take care of it.

The more unfortunate factor in all these instances is that the fan/boy/parents apparently love the superstar/girl/daughter. Unconditional love, they boast! Such unconditional love that their expectations comes much before the other person's happiness. Amazing love indeed.

To all the parents in this world, your children have a life and mind of their own. Accept it. Be with them if you indeed love them.

To all the lovers in this world, the person you love may not be be happy loving you. Accept it. Be with him/her if you indeed love him/her.

Accept things. Stop fantasizing. Everything we do for others are only because they make us happy. Everytime. Let us accept that we are selfish. Let us stop blaming others for breaking your expectations from them. Sure, feel bad that your expectations have been shattered. But do not hold anybody else responsible for it.

Me thinks..

The more I live, I realize I cannot plan to live.

Children and values

A lot has been talked about the demographic structure of India and the amazing dividends that we could reap owing to the fact that a large proportion of our population is in the productive age group. One dimension of the key to exploit such natural advantage is to ensure that the upcoming lot of younger generation is educated and skilled. Towards that, a lot is being done and a lot more promised to be done.

Personally, I am more concerned about another dimension. How and where is the value system of kids going to be cultivated and nurtured! Reason why I feel there is a lacuna here is two-fold.

Firstly, schools increasingly are money making machines these days. The entire process of education and teaching has now become more a business idea with the objective of creating knowledge-driven-weath creators rather than values-driven-productive-human beings. Money making at the cost of deteriorating values is an unwarranted scenario.

Secondly, families these days are increasingly becoming leaner and nuclear. A married couple where both partners are working professionals, staying nuclear away from their respective parents and trying to manage a full-time career is extremely productive for them. But when a child is born to them, the equation must change. What we are increasingly seeing is that the mother taking a maternity leave followed by a post-child birth sabbatical for few months (a year tops) to take care of the infant. Post the initial couple of years (where generally either set of grandparents are also present), the child is taken care by a nanny/baby sitter, sent to kindergarten, school, etc (with years passing). Now, when the child's mind is most fertile in the growing years, parents are not really available. They are, but not completely. In many cases, even the grand parents are not. So whom does the child learn the values of life from? He will surely be educated but will he grow up to become a man of strong values? In my generation, mothers generally were home makers and inculcated a lot of essential values to us. I can be sure in my case atleast.

And what do the children get exposed to when they come to home from school and wait for parents to come? Shocking television programmes, abundance of polluting information on the internet, social networking sites with hosts of online 'buddies'. 10-year olds are becoming memebers of networking sites these days and some of their status messages really shock me. Surely all this would make the kids cool, funky and street-smart but we should not complain if some of them later think that commiting a crime for money is fine or getting the latest electronic gadget for themselves must be the agenda in life.

I wonder about this for the coming generations. Should one of the parent completely devote himself/herself for the development of child in the formative years (between the age of 4 and 12 perhaps)?

Bringing a child to this world is a responsible decision. Does it end with sending the school to the best available school and coaching class? Isn't parenting a lot more than that?

All this around...

... and I continue to lead a self-centered, selfish life.

Source of pictures: Amit Naik from Pankhudi (a very active NGO)

What love means to me

This magnificent piece is written by a dear friend Payal. I am really jealous of her in a sense that it is she who wrote this and not me! I totally loved it. Incidentally, one of her poems was also posted by me earlier.

- Love to me is a selfless feeling when you want the person to be happy, even if it involves him / her being with someone else

- Love to me is when even if you are fraught with pain, when you go to the temple, you pray for the one you love, not for yourself

- Love to me is when the two people have the ability to find the craters in each other's lives and fill each one of them with love and warmth

- Love to me is when you are not scared to expose that side of you, which can be otherwise judged

- Love to me is when you feel safe and complete with the person

- Love to me is when you feel that one lifetime is not enough to experience fully the karmic ecstasy when with your partner

Either it is love or it is not... there is no mid-way :)

Aha

Life's changing... Slowly but surely.

Me thinks..

Compatibility, looks, age, likes/dislikes are fairly over-rated parameters in relationships, aren't they? The basic parameter must always be respect. If you cannot respect your partner, all other things would fall apart sooner or later. If men could respect women the way they must be, we would not need a Women's Reservation Bill. Stop taking your partner for granted. Mutual respect is the essence of a beautiful relationship.

The zing of life

Every time you think life's a cool ride and you know the route, there's a change in plan. With each day passing, the noise around is unending. The scenes change, the characters remain. The plot change, the actors remain. New happenings, different beginnings, several endings, old woes, new joys, an old face taken off, a fresh one added, an enemy here, a friend there, missing someone now, being with someone the next moment, a hope there, sometimes a wish, at times dreaming, most times chasing.

In all this, there has to be an underlying generic theme, isn't it? What is that constant?