Reaching There

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...