Reaching There

I came to South Africa not knowing what to expect. But, surprisingly all my unknown expectations were fulfilled beyond my imagination! I managed to taste and enjoy most of the colors of the Rainbow Nation. Although just a three week visit and riveted around Durban, I managed to get a feel of Suid-Afrika. Durban   Airport   and the Indian Girl King Shaka Airport, Durban, SA I landed in   Durban   on a bright sunny evening in mid-November. Just near the immigration counters was a big poster of a smiling Nelson Mandela; welcoming us with a big smile and the 2010 football world cup trophy clutched tightly in his big hands. I knew I was in   South Africa,  a country I would never had thought of visiting if not for my job. The diversity was quite evident from the people at the counters. I had an African guy, a white guy and a girl of Indian origin wearily looking at the long line of people that had just landed from a flight from   Dubai . I ended up wi...

Quarter-life Crisis The years from twenty five to twenty nine are a weird experience; at least that’s how they are turning out for me. The word weird here is a mixture of humour as well as distress. These are the years when you’re well past your adolescent days. You’ve moved through the puberty into the maturity carrying the burden of college degrees. You even got your first job and were very content making that monthly loan installment towards the education loan. Your college buddies who looked doomed seem to be doing fine. Your friends, like you, seem to be doomed for an unknown amount of time to follow. You’re pretty sure you will lead the pack of your doomed friends. Maybe you’ve a relationship with a girl or a guy who has managed to stick with you through these waves of changes. Or you’re still not sure whether it is worth to be in a relationship. For others this part was all but happiness. However your parents and mentors have showered you with enough wisdom about the opportuni...

The strange thing about being open or receptive is that both happiness and sadness can come in through the open door. But it is up to us to decide which lives in our house. Of course the house I am talking about is our mind. The openness is a characteristic you can't live without as well as can't live with it! (my U2 line :D) Openness comes with a disclaimer: use at your own risk! When I agree to being open I sign a contract with unlimited possibilities. The contract clearly states that the result may or may not align with my expectations. But the contract does guarantee an experience that would justify the suffering or joy. So eventually I might just end up with an experience. No more no less! But that's the cost of the openness. But can I define openness? To me it is the condition when mind is ready for possibilities. It is not restricted by its' own biases and inabilities. Openness puts me in a vulnerable state where I am like a traveler on the way to nowhere. I ...

I came across a very interesting quote recently by Stephanie Gilmore. Just a bit of background on her. She is a professional surfer from Australia and four time world champion on the women's Association of Surfing Professionals World Tour. You can read more about her blog . The quote goes something like this; "I am a good loser, I know how to lose now!" Unfortunately I don't remember the rest of the quote from the magazine. But the jest of it was learning from the losses, not get bogged down by the losses and most importantly moving on to try for the next win! It was a very interesting insight from somebody so young (she is 22). So it is important to enjoy the loss and use it for your preparation. Sulking or hypothesizing the win isn't gonna help in any way. So happy losses! Cheers!

Sometimes the time pushes you and other times you have to push the time. The relationship between time and you is a mutual one. Both have to take care of each other to enable a benefiting relationship. The end result is a wonderful lifetime! Let me take you through my thought process. "Sometimes the time pushes you". This is the part where we are governed by the circumstances or surroundings in our life. This government could lead into situations which may not be at a comfort level acceptable to you. But you have to go with these situations. Calamities, losses, heartbreaks, betrayals and other misfortunes push you into unknown and highly vulnerable surroundings. But to move through this you have to be agile and forgiving. Other times time pushes you into wonderful things. Serendipitous circumstances are typical examples of time pushing you into something wonderful but you feel equally vulnerable as well. Hasn't it happened to you when you ended up saying, "Wow! I wa...

I was wondering about my doubts and prejudices I have at this stage of life. It is in human trait to suffer from these emotions. But history has given enough evidence to form a case when humans have risen beyond their flaws I recently saw the movie "Invictus". It is based on the true events that lead to South African national rugby team, the Springboks, winning the 1995 rugby world cup. The movie shows how two persons from completely different backgrounds rose above their beliefs and prejudices to unite a country broken by apartheid. These were South African President Mr. Nelson Mandela and the captain of the South African rugby team Francois Pienaar.  Clint Eastwood directed this movie. It stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar. The movie is thought provoking and inspires you to dream big. It in its' limited time depicts the segregation created by decades of apartheid in South Africa. However I was captivated by the song played ...

The  ego  gropes in darkness, while the Self lives in  light   Sometime back I wrote a post about my writer's block . I just couldn't create a new piece of writing. Although there were thousands of thoughts jumping inside my mind but I was unable to latch onto one. This inability leads to frustration which made the process even more difficult. Anybody would tell this period of inactivity is unavoidable. And my mind has been under the influence of this atrocity for over a month now. The coupling of helplessness and uncertainty leads to stagnation of not only intellectual growth but the emotions took a beating as well. In a writer's life these periods are as common & unpredictable as the seasons in a year! The last post was about the symptoms and after effects of this disease. In this post I would walk through the cure for this. I must admit the inspiration behind this post came from my father. On reading my previous post he said something that st...

Indian Ocean, Durban, South Africa A few days back I realized I am going through a writer's block! This got me thinking how I can get out of it? It occurred that the best way to get out is write it out. To go through the storm I'll have to ride the stormy waves! No other way out. And if I can go through this storm I will have to do this self-psychoanalysis. But what should I write about? Probably if I can take you through the writer's block I may find the cause of this problem. So please bear with me while I write it out for you. Writer's block is a "condition" when a writer loses the ability to write something new. The desire seems to have dried out and mind has suddenly become less receptive to inspirations floating around. Inspiration is all around us; in form of trees, birds, people, sky, sea or even divinity. But the challenging part is to wait till something brews inside the mind until it is ready to pop out. The "wait" is the hardest and ...

For most of us the best days of our life were the childhood days. Everything was fresh and exciting. A piece of paper to a toy gave us a world of endless possibilities. Each and every moment we were ready to learn new things. Almost nothing felt boring. Lack of ideas or no time for play was boring! God! Everything felt like a source of endless possibilities. Success, failures, disappointments, anger, selfishness and other emotions just felt like a phase that would bring something and then go. Fast forward twenty odd years ahead, you're in your twenties nearing thirties (or any age you are in). Life has become a drab and you are pushing your way through it. A piece of paper is just a piece of garbage. A toy, I can't even understand now why I played with those "things"! The moments of learning have given way to a seemingly endless race of fighting for the next level of success. The excitement of finding something new in small things has faded away and financial wants...

Disillusionment is a dreaded word which we always try to avoid. It is like an illustrated scary book I had when I was very young. I didn't wanted to get rid of it neither I wanted to keep it within my eyesight! So what did I did with it? I hid it under my mattress and soon forgot about it. I wanted to keep the book as it scared me; a feeling that challenged me as well as gave me kicks! But it was a feeling I wouldn't like to be reminded of too often. I am not sure if disillusionment gives me kicks but it certainly challenges me. This is the same perplexing relationship we have with disillusionment. It scares the living daylight out of me. It dissolves all the hope and life feels like a boat without oars. If carried on for too long disillusionment is the "stepping stone" to depression. But there is an other side to it as well. Disillusionment gives a unique opportunity to contemplate on things we may never have taken a time out for. It is a self-realization tool tha...

Recently I read " Why the Best Solutions Are Always Temporary Ones "  by Peter Bregman   on Harvard Business Review . The article did brought up some interesting points. These points I must add are worth sharing with you. The article's central theme is (and I quote) because nothing is perfect, and nothing lasts forever. So we're better off seeing every solution as temporary, every tool as potentially valuable and probably fleeting (unquote). This belief aligns with two areas I love to read about these days:  acting  and  spiritualism.  Let's take acting first. In one of my older posts I wrote about actress Hilary Swank talking about  forgiving ourselves when things don't seem to work . In these moments we tend to exert ourselves to make things work which is most of the times counterproductive. These are the moments which destroy our psychological and emotional construct. Actress Julia Roberts talks about not burying ourselves within heaps of self...

A week ago I was on a train from New Delhi to Kanpur. As the train whizzed along the outskirts of Delhi it momentarily halted near a wasteland. Needless to say it was full of garbage, covered with wild bushes with a small murky water body in the center. Obviously it was a dumping ground for all the waste human beings can generate. Something I wouldn't have given a second look had it not been for what I heard next. "Itni achchi jagah main itna saara kooda, (Such a beautiful place but so much waste covering it)" remarked a child, staring out of the window with curious eyes. Of course his parents didn't pay any heed to this. But this simple observation stuck with me for sometime. It made me take a second look at the land. Now I noticed it was a green patch of land with some wild plants and a few lotuses floating in the water. Surrounded by a lot of half-constructed houses this land may have been a small playground. I could even make out a few wild flowers that had sprun...

I went inside the theater to watch Rajinikanth's Endhiran ("Robot") in Tamil with no expectations. And I came out after almost three hours of extravaganza comprising of breathtaking action, loud but good music, hyper excited audience and having no idea what most of the dialogues meant (sadly I don't understand Tamil)! But I do feel I know now why Rajinikanth is considered the God of "Indian" cinema; more than twenty four hours later. But this new found admiration for the man is more to do with his off screen personality rather than his onscreen panache. A little bit of background of "The Man" as millions of people across southern India and world would describe him. According to online magazine Slate, he is the second highest paid Asian movie star after Jackie Chan. During his 61 years of earthly life he has starred in more than 150 movies. And what the magazine says next is probably the most funniest as well as dandiest words anyone can ever use ...

Some of you might have seen a movie called " Good Will Hunting ". The movie is about an orphan whose family are his three other friends and his desires are limited to the neighborhood he grew up in. Although blessed with an extraordinary gift for mathematics he is too feeble to take a chance for something even slightly larger and complicated. The tag line for the movie says it all "Some people can never believe in themselves, until someone believes in them". Although my current post doesn't have much to do with the movie but it did caught your attention, right? My post is more about "God Will Hunting"  rather than "Good Will Hunting". It is about the perpetual hunting we all go through in our lives. The hunt for desires, success, money, love, passion; so it is either something or someone. We are hunting not just looking because hunt is more painstaking. We toil in our lives each day and night to build a world of our own. A world which we fee...

I was wondering how unusual a relationship I have with God. A small devout petition to the Almighty and I expect my problems to be solved and my desires to be fulfilled. I blame Him for the problems but still reach out to Him for fixing them. Sometimes I just treat Him as an ombudsman whom I expect to be ever ready to hear me out. I expect Him to carry me through the difficult times yet I forget Him once I have entered the land of happiness. Ain't that the strangest form of expectation in a relationship? I expect Him to protect me in times of sorrow and guide me through the stormy sea of despair. When He does bail me out through ordinary or extraordinary circumstances I sometimes do hail Him as the savior but more often than not I "judge" His actions based on what the result was for me. Everybody trusts His fairness. Yet the "fairness" of His judgement is constantly evaluated based on the outcome. Ever wondered how simple God is? I pray to Him with great exp...

Happy Radhaashtami to all of you! If you want to read about this festival please visit  http://www.barsanadham.org/festivals-radhaashtmi.html

I know, it's a very catchy title for my post. Julia Roberts and Elizabeth Gilbert are probably two of the most famous names from the field of arts. These two artists have risen to pinnacle of probably the two most toughest forms of human creativity; acting and writing.  These two forms of art require large amounts of inspiration as well as perspiration from the person trying to pursue it. And interestingly the unemployment rate is highest in these fields. However there is a certain attraction that draws thousands of people to delve into their lives and bring out something new through acting and/or writing. (A trivia; Julia Roberts is starring in the lead role for a movie based on Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir called " Eat, Pray, Love "). Although there are lot of things to learn from these artists but they do form an epitome of a characteristic that has shaped their magnificent careers. Julia Roberts If you think of Julia Roberts you would probably think about the...

Elliott Smith was probably one of the songwriter/singer who was bestowed with divine gift of music. He is popular among the masses for his Academy Award nominated song " Miss Misery " which is part of the soundtrack for the movie " Good Will Hunting ". Although he died young but his music has endured the waves of time. This post is inspired by his interview posted on youtube . In the interview he is asked general questions about his music and song writing tips for budding musicians. Although his answers sound rather simple but they do carry a certain hidden weight within them.  The first question is about his method to write & compose music for a song. He simply states that there isn't any methodical approach he uses. In his own words " It's just the divine force, and if you don't block it up it'll come out and surprise you ". So does it mean we all have the ability to surprise ourselves if we just allow ourselves to be free? The...