Story of my life - I

What is up with me these days?? I am going to go as far as making this blog a daily diary entry as my mind right now permits. Right now, I am listening to Pink Floyd, a live version of Fearless, with people going chorusy in the back ground. I always like these songs, with the chorusy bits, where the crowd comes in and sings the songs for the musicians (case in point nothing else matters live versions, by metallica or paradise live versions, by coldplay (para para paraaa)). But, keeping in mind that important things come first, I'll segue into a topic that I had planned to discuss about. This is a post. It's not a post I'd like to call the best post ever, literally or languageally (we had english literature and english language in school, for those who didn't languageally/linguistically means grammatically). This is a post about what's on with me in life today, as I see it.

I've not written a post in 2 years. August 2011 was the last date, and I'm so sad that I haven't written anything in between. That was awful and lazy of me. But, now, right now, I feel engaged enough to claim :"I could write new posts everyday". This inspiration comes in spurts. It's like God gets lazy and starts watching football matches, forgets that he's put something in the oven. He'd be like, "Oh Shit!! I was preparing that inspiration dish and totally forgot about it. Whop!! I see a lot of discouraged people in South Asia." (Apparently, God has forgotten the comedy dish in the oven as well).

I read this book. It's a famous book, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. In short, it's about a guy who commits murder, and regrets it for the rest of his life. He finds love in between. Not the kind of love that includes both parties engaging in relationship talk, divulging each other's deep secrets to each other. It was a kind of love that comes out of mutual respect and tacitness. Sometimes, the unsaid is more deep than the said could ever be. That is a beautiful story, and it gave me something that no other book has ever given. It gave me a philosophy. Although, the book doesn't clearly highlight it, I got great pangs of existentialism through it.

See, I'm an honest guy. Even when I'm not drunk, I usually let everyone realize what I'm about. Sometimes i come of as a little off-society. An introvert, who doesn't wish to interact perhaps. Or maybe, someone who's just too serious about life and has some objective in life set forth always. My facial expressions usually don't help me. There are trust issues for everyone who ever sees me, as my expression reminds them of an angry young man, who's out avenging his family's lost honor. And so, I'm not that. I'm just a straightforward guy, who's got a different style of living than most. Perhaps, there are many who feel this way. You're not along my friends!!!

 So what does a person like me think? Firstly, I have numerous things I'd like to do in life, not because there's a bucket list or anything. Bucket lists are too uncool for what I'm trying to do. It's just that I want to inspect ways of life, and see what those ways of life bring to people. It would be fun being a bungee jumping instructor, wouldn't it?? No it wouldn't , it would probably suck for the guy. Imagine his wife, she would go, "ohe yeah my husband!!! he jumps off a bridge for a living". Yeah, it seems cool to hear that, but if you think about society, some wouldn't be completely reassured by that line of business. So, for some bungee jumpers, bungee jumping isn't the best they want out of life. I hope I'm making sense here, because it'd be very difficult to explain that using some other analogy.

 So, I look at new experiences. What do I hope to gain out of these new experiences (Shine on You crazy diamond - pink floyd, brings tears). I want to just learn about ways of life, that's it. I like alone time, the time spent on a hill looking down on a city, or on a beach, when the breeze is playing tricks with your hair, and intoxicating you into a enjoying a good evening (Seriously, sea clubs/pubs/restaurants/dhabas are ideally the best) Why do I like that alone time?? Because it makes me believe that I'm coming closer to peace. But am I? Not really. I enjoy peace for a couple of hours, and it's back to the original score of life again. "What is the weather like in your city?", "Oh, I know a friend who's a friend of my brother who has gone there".

 What could truly bring peace. I imagine, that knowing multiple aspects of life, experiencing them and choosing how to live yours, not because there are ways of life you've seen and can select the best among them, but because, you know yourself and what you're good/bad at, and where you would be most comfortable.

 So, for me, it all comes to comfort of life. Not saying that it involves a lot of laxing. I like to work hard, and I would like responsibility (With greater age, comes greater responsibility, I like to believe). I'm that sort, and I don't know about others, but this philosophy that I've thought about works for me, and I'm happy by it. Of course, this could come off wrong to people who've experienced great wrongs in life, or who have responsibilities that they must cater for and look out for before their own interests.

 I'm no expert at these scenarios. All, I know is comfort with oneself is primary to living a life you can be alright with in the end when it matters most. But that's just what I'm thinking right now. I'm certain that it'll change in the future, but right now, I hope it doesn't. Because, I don't mind living my entire life like this. We come here, we go.

"If a man does his best, what else is there?" (General Patton)

 -hoping to continue with more rants more often for my own sake, because this is an awesome diary.. Gmail rocks!!!

 -Saurabh Ahlawat (10-05-2013)

The law of Diminishing Returns

Ever since I heard about the London Riots a few days ago, I couldn't help but feel a sense of exhilaration at the exciting times that London must be witness to these days. With the shops and showrooms there for the looting and the streets there for the vandalising, London must truly be looking like an anarchist's paradise these days. Oh wait, but I'm no anarchist, so why am I so happy about the state of affairs in London and why am I giving off a vibe that I'm rooting for the "revolutionaries" in their quest of "bringing down the establishment"? The answer is easy, I'm thrilled about the prospects of having to analyse the agitators' psyche.

Let's be honest with ourselves, everyday life sucks and anything out of the ordinary is exciting. Look how the media houses exploit any potential for arousing this idiosyncracy of man by providing eye catching, nail biting coverage of anything new in the world, anything that could (hopefully) excite us. Hence the word news, hence the phrase, "What's new?", because we all know what's already happened and I'll go so far as to say that we're bored of it. As an exercise, I would recommend calling your friend and asking, "What happened in 1999?", I bet that you won't receive any calls from him/her for the foreseeable future. So, to cut the long story a little short, we like "news".

With that in aspect, I doubt there is anything more exciting than the potential for a huge fisticuff. Alright my choice of word in the matter is not appropriate in the current scenario, but it sits well in explaining that the only characteristic that could give Man's desire for making Love some cold perspiring nights is Man's Love for making War. The world wars, Indo-Pak wars, near world destroying cold war, Vietnam war, Gulf war, Six-Day War are just some of numerous examples that show that nations like to resolve issues through usage of ammunition . It would be wrong to denounce both the warring parties here, but the aggressor's actions lay claim to the view that combat is the best solution for a major chunk of the world's population and no matter how hard the pacifists and the real-politik believers try, this ingrained confidence in one's marbles has led and shall lead to conflagrations.

So how do we connect the dots and bring the phenomena that I touched on in the contemporary dissidence scene. The London Riots were purportedly instigated by the incompetent London Metropolitan Police's handling of the Mark Duggan incident. First of all it is very unfortunate that the shooting happened, but I couldn't be led to believe that the police shot an innocent man without cause or provocation, and even then without it being somebody's fault. Exercising blatant authority over the citizens is a right reserved exclusively for the Indian police. The London riots were sparked when fed up hooligans heard of the shooting incident and saw an opportunity to cause a stir against the establishment. Their ingrained hunger for war added fuel to this so much so that they managed to keep up the nasty work for days. Others joined in as they saw something new and appealing happening. Obviously unemployment, the tax increases that have hobbled UK's economy, added to the fact that the current government got their image handed to them by the recent phone tapping scandal, an opportunity to loot some HD LCD TVs and expensive paraphernalia from all over London, and a chance to get back at the Paukis who've "come here and taken all the jobs away, those scum", all were factors that must have contributed to these riots, but I chose to override them for the sake of academics.

This also brings into question how we would behave when we're fed up of a certain entity. What would happen when you are fed up of the new shoes you bought a month ago and are not allured by their quaintness anymore. What would happen when you're ignoring your friend because you have been with him for a week and are frankly pissed off at the same old jokes and are begging for some new faces right then. See, this is an oddity in our lives, we want something, we would do anything to achieve it, we would spend days, months, possibly years striving for it but then when we achieve it in the end, we look back and think, "Well, this sucks." People always say it's not what you get in the end that's important, it's the journey. I'm inclined to believe that because man's psyche puts him at gunpoint and tells him to hate what he's doing/what he's achieved in the next 3-4 months. And after those 3-4 months, that man bored out of his guts about his present situation starts pondering about what he has achieved and finds that what he has achieved isn't all that awesome as he once believed and concludes that the life journey he lived towards achieving this goal was the important bit. According to me, all that is well and good, but as discussed before in the pursuit of something new, man will get on with his affairs, and the "journey" that he was pondering over will sit there in the "STALE STUFF" portion of his memories.

This is the world that we find ourselves in where nothing enamours us for long no matter how good the prospects. Each entity has a certain "good" period before it becomes routine and loses its appeal. The returns are the same but our perceptions lead us to believe something different. These diminishing returns push us to explore new avenues, so as long as that can be put into perspective, I understand why the rioters rioted. They wanted some fresh air.


To end it all, reminiscing memories is good.......................for like an evening.


Oh and yes :
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
-Otto von Bismarck , he was a psycho but I agree with him on this and emphasize that all that I wrote before, while it may have elements of truth in it, is mostly horseshit.

Movies, Ideas, Realizations, a lot of free thinking

After a hard Sunday's work(that's right, I work on Sundays), I was in a detrimental state. I was very irritable, so after narrowly escaping some awkward social situations, I sat thinking that this state of mind would act as a fillip to my creativity. I am not going to mention here that I've posted this after a long time. That to me just looks a lot like a waste of space, something quite like the sentence ending with this.

So here I was sitting, thinking, ruminating, munching - it helps me think, ask the buffaloes, sitting there munching all day, there must be an entire scientific research behind it- when suddenly it struck me that it would be a great idea to listen to some music.

So I clicked on the Winamp icon on my desktop and hit the play button, figuratively of course. The song that blared through the headphones was a weird techno version of push the tempo. I promptly deleted it from my playlist and hard disk(How did I happen to have that in the first place, I'll never know, probably some weird drunken night fetish). Then I proceeded to thinking up strange yet awesomely cool movie ideas. The initial ideas that floated through my mind were really funny, that's what I thought until I really thought about them. After rejecting a movie idea in which a man has very long arms and goes on to become the best basket ball player of a generation, I thought I had hit the jackpot when I thought up a particularly engrossing thriller. The story of the thriller goes something like this :

There are two people, the pro and the ant - agonist. Both of these dudes are famous milliners. The thing that separates them from the normal everyday John Hatsman (excuse the pun on Huntsman) is that they both are awesome hypnotists and they sell their wares by hypnotizing their potential customers into buying expensive hats and accouterments. But the difference is that the pro sells his customers the best quality products, which are politically and environmentally correct. On the other hand the ant is a mad hatter, he usually makes his hats by skinning rats, drat that. One day, as destiny would have it, pro and ant move out of their previous dens in search of new customers albeit with different motives, the pro's motives benign, the ant's malicious. They both arrive and set up shop in the same city and soon rise up to be the most famous milliners in the city. Now when there is a duopoly as this, there is usually competition between the opposing parties, one may just glance a big democracy to acknowledge the veracity of that statement.

One day, ant plots a coup to overthrow pro and lay claim to all of pro's clients. He dresses up as a lady and enters pro's boutique posturing as a higher upper class savant of a lady. Now Pro gets very excited because he sees an opportunity to make a quick and healthy buck(Pro is a little money minded but remains good because his after sale service is the stuff made of legends). He asks ant alias Miss Penelope RoundBottom to take a seat and goes about his preparations to hypnotize ant. Ant meanwhile has already put on his secret torque glasses, the ones that rotate in a spiral fashion so when pro asks ant to look closely at the oscillating pendulum, ant looks straight into pro's eyes and hypnotizes him. Thus claiming victory over his nemesis, ant orders pro to move out to the mountains and live a solitary, soul searching life till the end of his days. Pro solemnly obeys. And ant quickly becomes the sole proprietor of the city's hat business, then the country's hat business and in a few years his brand becomes synonymous to Nike. Ant marries a supermodel, buys a mansion in Norway and settles down in an acropolis in Ibiza.

End of story.

Then suddenly comes a quiet snap of fingers. And an old man wakes up to find himself high up in the Andes mountains. He looks around and finds a hut but nothing else apart from ranging valleys for miles. He's astonished to find himself in such a peculiar situation. He gets up and feels very parched. He finds a small stream nearby and walks over to it. When he bends over to dip his hands into the water, he suddenly stops and stares into the water petrified.


I'll tell you this, if that is not explanation enough of what has transpired in the story then I feel sorry for the guy who had to see the Matrix for the first time.
I thought that it is a good story, my story not the Matrix, and has plenty of potential. Put in Christian Bale and Leonardo Dicaprio and give the story to Christopher Nolan and I can imagine myself watching this movie and loving it afterward.

And you'll probably be wondering, where did the snap of fingers come from. He dreamt it.
I have seen Inception after all.

Well that's just about it from my end.
Thanks for reading.

(When I started typing today, "the evolution of rap" was what I wanted to write on, turns out that my article has evolved beyond that).

Ewwnique

From as long as I can remember and from well before that even, I’m sure (from the beginning of civilization to be more precise), I’ve seen people change over time. This is not some kind of evolution they undergo to be cured of life threatening diseases (I wish it were) or gain an added advantage at a sports event(although, I do believe that Michael Phelps has started the evolution of human-fish, excuse the prose). No, what I’m referring to is something plain as day, but when it occurs it hits us like a freight train, and shocks us to boot. The change I’m referring to is a change of trends.

Now, everyone must have heard of one or the other quote that conveys the idea : There are two kinds of people : the Trend Setters and those who follow. Many a wise man/woman has said something or the other about being your own self, being true to oneself and striving to be unique, to make trends and not follow them. Here, in this quagmire, lies my first argument, is it even possible to be “unique”. An evening stroll around the local hang out place would give one numerous examples of people who have been told that they are unique, but still wear the same branded T-shirt, or have the same ideas, or have a crush on the same girl/boy, or listen to the same music, and think of themselves as unique. The fault is not theirs for believing so; it’s the way they’ve been brought up. Every parent would should want his/her child to be extraordinary, and the first lesson that is instilled in the child to become extraordinary is to become unique. But then, just wanting so doesn’t make it so. There are various aspects that go against making a person unique, and among others nurture is the most significant. A child’s environment is responsible for a child’s future. A child brought up in a rich family, which believes in education is very likely to be successful in life. But, environment may also encumber a child’s prospect of being “unique”. This can be seen everywhere today, people like to stick with people who think alike. Thus, in other words people are more comfortable with people of the same type. This creates stereotypes and, by and large, kills “uniqueness”. Not only that, taking the question of trends into aspect, what is the real world if not a muddle of brands and ‘what’s next’ in the market. The market, at the risk of sounding anarchist, has transformed people into puppets, who lap up everything that the market spews at them. So, people today, and it pains me to proclaim this, have become, against their wishes, trend followers.

And what if someone really wish to be unique in all respects? There is only one way that it could be achieved  if the person in question were to live on a lonely island, then there’s a small, infinitesimal chance that he/she might turn out unique. But, what is one to do with such uniqueness? Uniqueness as an idea is vaunted, but being unique just for the sake of being different is unnecessarily laborious, and damaging to one’s social stature as well, a unique person might be shunned by others, not because this person has a questionable character, but because his/her uniqueness might be seen as a sign of arrogance by others.

It is only when this uniqueness is mellowed, and personality is augmented by an almost monomaniacal drive towards innovation and/or progress, that trends, in the true sense of the word, are made and a person truly becomes extraordinary. But that, is for another article.

- A typical writer.

Success : Things aren't always as they seem

What makes a man successful? What is the driving force that enables someone to forget everything and persevere towards his or her own betterment? This is a debate that can go on for hours, but I would take this opportunity to point out a few crucial factors that cannot be ignored.

I don't generally write serious articles here, but then the previous year has brought about that change in my  mind. A change that has compelled me to shed the facetious side of me behind. I've heard, read, seen thousands of people saying that a Rolling Stone gathers no moss, and now as I listen to "You can't always get what you want" by the Rolling Stones, I truly comprehend the meaning of it.The adage was meant to convey he following :

It was meant to suggest that while a stone moves continuously, it has no time to gather moss as moss can only be gathered by a stationary object.

This translates literally with the stone becoming a person and the moss becoming commitment, problems or anything perceived as negative, trying to gather on the person who in turn keeps moving, preventing problems gathering in the first place.

But another inference can be drawn from this as well. See, the worldly commitments, problems etc. that man seeks to prevent and set himself free from are what makes man's life man's. If you were to ask a person what makes human beings human and different from an animal, the answer would be society. Humans crave society, can't live without society, so, as they seek to relieve themselves of this burden of commitment, simultaneously, they find themselves desiring social contact at the same time. This is the Catch-22 that we find ourselves entangled in. Not everyone can be a real life Chris Mcandless(See the movie "Into the Wild").

These "problems" have to be forsaken to become successful in life as well, I have noticed. This argument can easily be proven by citing the examples of Einstein, Galileo, Da Vinci (These greats might have had brief romances in their lives but in the end pursuit for excellence was what they were truly after). This can be seen even today, albeit on a smaller scale, in every ambitious working person's life.

What are we here for? If given a hundred choices, the choice that most people would go for is HAPPINESS. Yes, that 9 letter word that remains so elusive. People pursue titles, people pursue fame, people pursue job opportunities, but what about happiness, that is something that can be obtained only by gathering the proverbial moss. The true secret to happiness is learning to live with yourself, learning to be content with what you have done in life thus far. This by no means means spurning ambition, the drive towards betterment, only if that ambition is towards making yourself content.

What did I hope to achieve with this ambiguous article? I would love to write a simple :"Nothing! Thanks for wasting a good five minutes understanding this but I was just in a mood to pull someone's leg through my words" but no, the aim was to spread faith in oneself.

Anyone can prosper, the trick is realizing this first.

Sure I'm a pundit! Everyone is!

"Whatever happened to the old "I don't know"."

Now by the look of the title even a layman would have almost guessed what the passage is going to be all about. and by layman I don't mean a person who has gotten laid(for all the laymen) but someone who just isn't very accustomed to the nuances of abstruse writing.

What I intend to present here is an issue that, I'm guessing, every normal person in the world goes through on a daily basis, a disease more or less, something that makes people of the normal variety feel different from others ( the irony ). Yes what I'm talking about is the globally widespread phenomenon which goes by the not very aptly 'nomenclature'd "punditry".

Agree to disagree or disagree to agree, you've got to acquiesce if not agree that this phenomenon, this pandemic of sorts is out there, blazing in the everlasting fire of the human psyche.

Take a daily normal example which I'm sure everyone goes through now and then : You have decided to eat at some "who the hell cares" eating joint because you've got a recent inkling to splurge some of your parents' hard earned cash. Now, unfortunately, in normal circumstances you would invite some friends along because nobody wants to go out some place to eat alone. Now, how do you go about selecting this elusive perfect abode of culinary delight. For simplicity's sake, let's just say that it's only 2 friends that you take out with you for food. One goes :"Dude! Let's just eat some burgers!I hear that the burger joint down the road is quite awesome." The other one because he doesn't want to be upsided by the other friend goes :"No dude! Burgers are lame, they've got tons of cholesterol in them, let's just have some kababs down at the kabab joint,I hear they're quite awesome this time of the day." the 1st friend goes :"Interesting choice considering that kababs are also pretty loaded on cholesterol, burgers are way lesser than kababs as far as cholesterol is concerned." The 2nd friend goes :"Alright then! Screw cholesterol! I just feel like eating some kababs!". This goes on for the better part of who the hell cares. In the end : you get the food, enjoy it, feel a bit full(because eating joints never give complete satisfaction), but after having gone through quite a while of the deliberations of the 2 pundits that you brought along.

Now I know that the above example wasn't very good but it showed a general picture of how people can transform into pundits without notice or memo.

From "punditing" around about who would win the next EPL match to which philosophy in life is the best, punditry is seen everywhere.(A note: Aren't there just so many millions of lucrative philosophies in the world. One would be absolutely mindboggled over choosing which one's the best. There's the old, tried and tested "One should play safe as one's got a lot of responsibilites not only to one's family but also to one's society" and the complete opposite "It's a short life, live life fully, take all the risks, experience every experience etc" and a million different variants of these 2 philosophies mixed together in some ratio. It is close to impossible to choose the recipe for the perfect philosophy.) Everyone's got some insightful information on every subject in the world (and "if you've noticed" none more so than the subject of making a girlfriend).

So people, don't ever worry about what you should eat for lunch, or what time would it be best for going to the local post office, or what training regime you should follow, or what would be best for everything in your life. Just call up a friend, or foe, and give the pundit a chance, I'm sure you'll get many insightful suggestions to pass a lifetime pondering over. The fundey as we like to call them never stop coming.

And please after reading this, don't call me a pundit, I certainly don't intend to be one.

Again : "Whatever happened to the old "I don't know"."

It's all in the Head!

Every now and then I come across(and I'm sure you do too) situations of such stupendous knavery of the human mind that it makes me wonder,"Is the human mind really a marvel??As the scholars seem to suggest more often than not!!!". I mean, the memorable memory, organic organization or credible creativity of the mind notwithstanding, we generally come across specimens showcasing the idiotic idiocracy, perverse perversion, stupendous stupidity, contentious confusion,or the usual (some might call it meditation) still state lethargy that seem to absolutely annihilate the faith that some of us believers might have in the capacity of the Mind. It's like God created these special "pioneers" for the rest of the world to notice and take a lesson as to what one should do to become what one set out not to become(or, set out to become, don't know about these people).

Now from the above paragraph, the faint of mind might have concluded that I'm writing about the goings on in Vatican State . That's where you're mistaken. To make it simpler, you're wrong.
I am simply bringing to light a phenomenon that seems to be engulfing our generation of today(driving home the point). People are becoming stupid.(you could note that as the prime argument of the passage in case this passage is included later on to train young minds in the art of reading comprehension).

And it's just not the superstitious sentimentalist that I'm writing about here. It's the general public who don't seem to know how to get out of a herd. Taking the point of the recent outbreak of Swine flu into consideration, what's got the people into such a hubbub?? Agreed that the flu is highly contagious. Agreed that it's got a chance of causing much pain in the body. Agreed that it may cause a few deaths. But what's the point of making such a huge fuss about it. Case in point, the Supreme Court suddenly decides that it would be better if Pune shuts down for a week. Yeah the curfew would be ok for say a week, might even slow down the onslaught during that time, but I don't know, does the virus suddenly stop spreading its wrath after a week??Why did the top judiciary suddenly decide to make such an uncalled for decision??Is it because of crowd pressure, the pressure of keeping the crowd happy, or atleast in a temporary state of satisfaction for a time being?? Well if that was what you were thinking, then you were right. Now, I'm not going to say that what was done was wrong, because I'm getting a free mini-vacation out of it, but for the sake of argument, I'd just highlight the fact of how tension and unawareness of the mind rules the way of life. People are going paranoid about swine flu, but when you ask a person of how it all started? What was the root cause of this mass proliferation??
They say,"arr!um!!Pigs!!foreign people eat pigs!!".

Keeping the criticism and the seriousness aside(gosh, I can't believe that I actually wrote something serious here), I know that H1N1 has spread beyond control (the constant mention of swine flu is pretty irritating), and I hope that the mind continues to play its tricks because it's giving us all a hell of a free time isn't it!

Go!Go!Go!