Happiness and Vodka

Happiness. It is 1:50 AM, and this post is a repercussion of 4 shots of vodka and some amazingly blended sutta aka cigarettes. The term happiness is as elusive as the beautiful girl I don’t let my eyes off during the Lsquare parties in my college. For long, I have held a linear view on happiness. I always thought of it as a function of some definite variables in life, which when attains an optimum value will finally help me break or reach the happiness threshold. But every time I try to reach this threshold of happiness some new unknown variables get added to the function and put me off limit. After-all, what can a B school student aspire for in life? Fame, Grade, Good Placements, Love. Oh wait, did I mention love? Why does it have to appear in anything and everything in life? I don’t know. Even when I try not to, it keeps on appearing in every aspect of my life. For the other elements can be attained through your efforts but love is something that happens and is truly an unknown random variable over which we don’t have any influence over. After much of pondering I have realized that to attain a true level of happiness you need all elements in good proportion and to complete it you need a bare minimum value of the random variable called love. Surely, life still goes on without this variable. You still would get happiness. Just increase the importance of other variables in life. Mathematically speaking, this will not give an optimum solution. To put things in perspective, unless we have bare minimum quantity of everything in life we cannot arrive at true happiness. Our happiness value will always tend towards the optimum value but never really near it. Happiness will always remain elusive. The feeling then is different. You might have everything you've ever yearned for but still have a feeling of emptiness. But ain't this happiness function different for different individuals. It surely is. I have just put a perspective to my thoughts on this post. Whatever be the variables that define your happiness, identify them and strive towards increasing their values. Their lies the true happiness. I ain't any person who is seeking the eternal truth in this world. As our understanding on life and its true objective improves, we would need lesser variables to attain happiness and these variables would be very much under our control. I still have to begin that journey so I have to carry a burden of too many variables to keep. It surely is tough and so shall be shown in my efforts. I wish, hearts would have listened instead of head. 

Late Morning Surprises

I pulled the blanket over my legs that were left uncovered. For I could feel the chill in the air touching my feet. Somewhere I had left some part of the window in my room unclosed. Not a big room though, my college hostel room means a world to me. A-216 and F-204 will remain in my memories forever. No, no don’t doubt my modesty. I never intended to say someday I would sit back and reflect upon this room where all the so called dreams were hatched. Never, for I don’t know how life is going to unwind right next moment. Ok, let me come back to the present. Bangalore weather is getting sexier day by day. I, for one, never feel the urge to get up from my new Kurlon double mattress with extra spring bed, whatever the occasion is. I leave it up to my friends to wake me up for an exam or class. My midterm exams got over yesterday and I stay put lazily in my bed till 11:22 AM. When the realization dawned that the whole world is probably awake and busy with their chores, I should at least make good use of the time. As I woke up, still on my bed, I started thinking “Ab kya karna hain?”, which translated to English means, “What should I do now”. My mid terms were over; this is my last term. I was in the best management institution that one could ask for, had landed a job in big 4, what else? Somewhere, something was missing. I somehow felt an awning gap somewhere. The answer followed from a conversation that I had with a friend of mine yesterday. I need to un-clutter all bookish learning and go somewhere to live and experience it firsthand. No am not talking for another internship. I think I have a fair idea of where I want to go after my exams are over. I have good 3 months time before I join my new company. Tillonia, that’s where I want to spend time and other such places. I don’t know and I don’t have any agenda. I plan to visit parts of our country that doesn’t appear or any tourist map, see the people, speak with them, see their innovation and learn from them.  As of now all I know is this. Maybe 2 months down the line, I will check if this gap has been filled.

A small but genuine dedication !!

You held me speechless all along

From long back when you were gone

To days back when I was reborn

You’ve always stayed far but never apart

Meeting you again in life was a thought apart

Life had its ways and our paths once met

That moment still holds me in astonishment

From that day to this moment all new

These are the words I have plucked for you

You blew me off the first day

And your eyes lit my life everyday

Your smile made my worries vanish

I always recollect them when my happiness famish

To this day and this very moment

I can only craft these statements

There are words yet to be said

I’ll wait for that while with all due respect

I just hope that am continued to be held speechless

My words will be there for you nonetheless…..

Changing Times

Times are changing for sure, else I wouldn't be writing this blog at 8 in the morning before even starting off with other things. Facebook & Twitter comes to my mind first. It started off as an almost innocuous little social networking forum but they are turning out to be one of the most powerful identities. Both have equally proved their worth in complementing media activism and gathering populist sentiments against unjust regimes and oppressive rulers. Facebook is proving to be a platform for the self propounded gods. It is an all new world parallel to the one we live in. It has its own microcosm and societal structure. But the problem I foresee is that Facebook is defining the new social strata that might then carry on to the real society. The popularity of a person on Facebook is a non linear function of many aspects such as sex, education, number of friends, time spent on Facebook, frequency of response to other's post, how opinionated a person is etc. And it is non-linear because there are many intangibles that add on to it. Twitter has a different meaning for different users. It is used as a very good platform for social/media activism. Some use it to post minute by minute update of their life. Maybe they find their life really interesting for others. But all said and done, both Facebook and Twitter shall just become more powerful in the coming years. After all it is the basic human nature to seek popularity and recognition to stabilize their atomic configuration.

My little tribute to GOD and his men

In these 28 years, our nation has come a long way. Today, as the first 30 minutes of Indian innings progressed, I found uncanny similarity between my first faint recollection of the 1996 match between India and Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens. As our innings faltered and Kambli put up the sole resistance against the mighty Ranatungas and De Silvas, I sat at a corner and cried the night out. Today too the situation had an eerie similarity. The Ranatungas and DeSilvas were replaced by Jayewardene’s and Sangakaraas. The Indian chase faltered in a very striking fashion. Everything looked the same except for one thing, India and its Indianness. We have really come a long way. The coyness has been replaced by aggression. Optimism has replaced struggle. "Can we do it" has been replaced by “We can do it". No matter the initial fall of the precious wickets, we were witness to some of the finest innings in the history of cricket. What swept me off was the patience and mental strength that was displayed by both Dhoni and Gambhir under pressure. Many of us spend a lifetime to live up to the expectations of a single person. Imagine living up to the expectation of a billion plus people. For the 3 hours of Indian innings I was stuck to the same position without flipping. Almost petrified initially then later held back by the crept-in superstition about retaining the status-quo as our innings was built brick and mortar by Gambhir and Virat. How often have we discussed and written off Dhoni in this World Cup criticizing his batting. We often raised this question that, “Is it really that Dhoni is so good a captain or just that he has landed a very good team to play with?" Today, the most understated captain of all time simply silenced a generation by coming up the order and taking the responsibility on his shoulders. He took it on him and he did it in style. How often do we fail to see the genius of a person behind the veils of our ignorance? Today they proved them all wrong. Today they rescripted the World Cup Final history. Never before a team with a player's hundred in the finals have lost the finals. Today they did. In the end, I still cried, but this time and probably for the first time ever, I was happy to let my tears flow by. We have arrived. This goes out as a tribute to our little master. The GOD himself!!  

Life's Like That.

They, in fact all so called, self-declared greats and the actual greats, say that as you grow so does your clarity on life. But in my case, I find things getting hazier than ever or that my perspective on things has changed so much in the last six months that instead of getting clearer they are getting hazier. After all it leads me to think every time I compare myself with what I was six months back. Not that I have changed but my thinking has. Being born in a conservative Hindu family brings along a set of unasked baggage. Some of them worth carrying throughout your life and others best disposed as soon as you find a suitable place to. Naturally, things we learn in childhood are in black and white, either Good or Bad. It is only life’s experience that has taught me why some good things are bad and some bad things are good at times. This has caused all the blurring and with life's so called uncertainty which is fairly far from Heisenberg’s realm, things don’t get any sweeter. One thing that I have learnt and maybe one of the most intangible and yet valuable lessons outside my MBA classes is that there is no point trying to steer your life because no one can. The best we can do is to shape things up as things shape up.  I do not know how much sense it makes for am writing after a hiatus of nearly 8 months. With the sun outside shining bright and humidity getting the better of you in Mumbai, it makes sense for me to be indoors and revive my stupidity and the vestigial intellectual remnants through my blog. Will keep it updated.