This blog is about things and philosophies, which shape my beliefs about life and people. It contains reviews, critiques on books and movies, or how I feel about things in life.
Today is the 9th of May, but more specifically it is the second Sunday of May and hence most of the world celebrates this day as “Mother’s Day”.
Mother is the lady who gives birth to the children and cares for them the most. I wanted to write a lot, but somehow I am unable to find the words to describe this unique and wonderful relationship that a child fosters with his or her mother. It is said, God couldn't be everywhere and therefore he made Mothers. The Indian folklore even goes to state that one of the reasons why Lord Vishnu kept taking incarnations is because Gods are not blessed with the love of mother.
To put some facts that can be found on the Internet, A human body can bear only upto 45 Del (unit) of pain. But at the time of giving birth, a woman feels upto 57 Del of Pain, which is equal to the amount of pain that person gets when 20 bones get fractured at the same time!
It is the miracle of life and the love of a mother for her child that allows her to survive this pain. I remember on this day what my mother has done for me.
I Remember...
Today when I am far from home, trying to pursue my dreams and career, I remember the sacrifices my mother made for her kids. I remember how she compromised her life, her wishes and her desires, whenever they came up as a conflict against the interests of her kids. I remember the tough days she had trying to raise my brother (I was a good boy). And the times when she did not take up an alternate career because her kids were small and needed her attention. I remember those sleepless nights when I remained up to finish my homework assignments and she stayed up with me to ensure I am comfortable. I remember the long nights when I was sick when she kept up giving me medicines and all the care and not giving herself a proper rest. I remember how she prayed for my good future, and was happy for me and my decisions, even if they brought sorrow in her life. I remember how my failures brought her tears, when I myself was unmoved. I remember all good days, and the good things that she bestowed in my life, and made the responsible and understanding person I am. I remember...
Dedicated to the BEST Woman In My Life
I want to write more, but cannot find words to express this beautiful relationship. One of the best portrayals of this beautiful feeling in my life can be expressed by the above picture. It is the feeling of being safe and secure in your mother’s lap. Knowing that your mother is there to protect you keeps the kid strong and even against the fear of the razor.
To sum it all up, today the kid has grown and the razor has taken a much more dreadful form in terms of the challenges that life offers, and yet the love and care and the feeling of security that my mother is looking out for me, keeps me strong enough to face the brunt of the world.
Final Verdict: There is no one and nothing in the world that can replace a mother’s love for her child. So, all I can say is on the eve of the Mother’s Day is that there is no single day that can be called something like a Mother’s Day.
Considering what your mother brings to you, starting from your life itself, not just today, but each and everyday should be a “Mother’s Day”.
Almost everyone is in some or other way proud to be born where they are born and have spent the formative years of their life, and I am no exception to that rule. Born in the prosperous state of Gujarat has been a thing of pride to me, and probably the readers who come from the same state will be able to relate to what I mean. The recent event of “Swarnim Gujarat” to celebrate the completion of “50 Grand Years” of statehood is what inspired me to write on this glorious and unique part of the world. The blog post is probably a hybrid of what a beautiful state Gujarat is in terms of its heritage and probably some of the wonderful things which make me nostalgic about it.
Gujaratis - The Businessmen
Gujarat has been well renowned for its prosperity and entrepreneurship since the very ancient of times. Even the earliest of the civilizations, the Harappa and Mohan-Jo-Daro had a port named Lothal in Gujarat for carrying their trade. It is rightly said, that if you go anywhere in the world, from the biggest of stores and refineries and from the tops of the hills to the depth of the mines, if there is a business opportunity, you are likely to find a Gujarati.
Gujarat has given birth to countless business visionaries which includes the Ambani family, Karsanbhai Patel of Nirma, Gautam Adani from Adani Group and Tusli Tanti of Suzlon Industries. Gujaratis are known for their prowess and risk taking ability to do business since generations and hence thus the spirit of owning a business is almost imbibed in the genes of the people.
Gujaratis - The Leaders
Not just the business, the Gujaratis have made their mark in all aspects of Leadership. Gujarat is the only state in the entire world which gave birth to two people, who are respected as the Father-of-the-nation in their respective countries. While Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was born in the town of Porbandar, the family of Mohammad Ali Jinnah traces back to Paneli in Gujarat where his grandparents and parents spent most of their lives. Apart from this, Gujarat also gave India, the Iron-Man Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel whose vision and dedication made the dream of a united Indian Union possible.
Gujarat - The Cultural Heritage
The gifted state with its brilliant businessmen and quality leaders has always been prosperous and hence the people not only had time, but also owing to the trade relations, Gujaratis communicated with people diverse cultures and hence this made the Gujarati heritage much more adjusting and much better.
Apart from this, historically, Gujarat is known for its beautiful temples and mosques. Dwarka and Somnath are very famous religious spots. Other than that, for Jains there is Palitana and Girnar, and of course, historically, Gujarat is the first state where the Parsis landed. Also, the Gujaratis are fond of both celebrations and food. The state also houses the world’s only Pure Veg Pizza Hut, which provides Jain Pizzas to cater to the local public.
All festivals from Uttrayan to Holi, and Diwali to Janmasthmi are celebrated with great pomp and joy in the state. However, the festival of Navratri, with Garba and Dandia Raas which are the traditional dances of Gujarat, is what truly shows the vibrant spirit of the state.
Gujarat - The Growth Story
Gujarat has always been growing rapidly. The state is also bestowed with the longest coastline in India. Once upon a time, Ahmedabad used to house the maximum textile mills in the country and was called the Manchester of India. The city is still famous for attracting a lot of pharmaceutical industries. Apart from this, the city of Surat, which is the diamond hub of the world, lies in the state. There are huge Reliance refineries in the city of Vadodara and Jamnagar, and a lot of Suzlon’s wind energy stations on the coastline.
With the stable government and able leadership of Narendra Modi, the state’s Industry friendly policies are making a mark. Last year, we saw the prestigious Tata Nano Project being moved to Sanand near Ahmedabad. The last Vibrant Gujarat Summit also saw MoU worth 12,00,000 crore being signed, which show the image of the state in the minds of the investors. While the state missed on the Information Technology race in the last decade, there is a lot of investment coming in this sector as well.
This is my personal opinion that the strong and stable Government of honorable Narendra Modi, has rekindled hopes in the hearts of Gujaratis and the very results of that are visible in very aggressive growth of the state in all directions. With the development of concepts like GIFT City and the BRTS in Ahemdabad, and with incentives like “Vanche Gujarat” and “Vibrant Gujarat” the state is on the fast track for further development.
While there are a lot of people all around the world who work hard and prosper, what makes the state of Gujarat special is the will of the people to help others around them. The unshakable faith of people towards improving their quality of life is what makes the state stand out in terms of progress. With great institutions like IIM, DAIICT, NIT, Nirma University, GNLU for Law and even a new upcoming IIT, the state is growing in education.
Gujarat has been prey to many natural calamities since ages. While were many riots in the past, the state was also bogged down by plague in the 1990s and the biggest hit was the earthquake in 2001. And yet, if you look back, you will see, the people always rose above the situation and came out as winners.
Today, the state boasts of 24-hour uninterrupted power supply, which probably no other state in the country can guarantee. The water of Narmada from Sardar Sarovar Dam and the huge number borewells and check dams which were created by Modi Government have caused the water table to go up and also allowed adequate supply of water in homes.
Final Verdict:
I am not being high-handed when I say that “I am proud to be a Gujarati”. The benefits of being born in a business oriented family, which understands finance gives you a head start in the world, and I am happy that I got that chance. As Malcomm Gladwell says in his Best-seller book “The Outliers”, success is not just dependent on the person, but also on several factors, which contribute to their success, and being a Gujarati is probably one of them.
The above song was composed by Legendary A.R. Rahman on the occasion of May 1, 2010, the 50 years of Gujarat’s foundation. While it starts slow, it gets speed midway and has a wonderful tune, which would sound much much better when heard after 2-3 times. It makes me feel utterly and yet happily nostalgic about being back home.
All in all, without trying to hurt any sentiments, I’ll quote what I read in a friend’s status message, “Some people have to work and try hard to be intelligent for most period of their life, while the lucky ones are Gujaratis by birth”.
This blog post marks the “Golden Jubilee” of the “Rushin Speaks...” blog, so a hearty thanks to all the readers who stuck with me in this beautiful endeavor. Also this post, partly by coincidence and partly by manipulation, marks the Silver Jubilee of my so-far exciting and beautiful trips around the Sun. And hence, this post is about the transition and the dilemma that most people of our age face owing to the overwhelming possibilities of what we want to do and how much of it can be done realistically in the limited time that we have at our hand.
The first title that I had thought for this post was the popular phrase “Quarter Life Crisis”, but then looking back at what nature has bestowed me with, like a good job, much better friends and possibly the best family I could have asked for, saying that my life is a crisis would be unfair and ungrateful and hence, the term dilemma. Now this post may slightly go personal, or not everyone amongst us faces the exact same questions, which need to be answered. However, with slight changes in some parameters all of us 20-somethings would have already faced, are facing or may face in the recent future, some of these catch-22 situations.
The Psychological Impact of turning 25
Even the Vedas emphasize on the number 25, as the marking of the transition from “Brahmacharya Ashram” to the “Gruhasta Ashram”, which in simpler terms of Internet Lingo mean that the person’s status in Facebook or Orkut should go from Single to Committed and finally settle at Married. However, this thought itself brings shudders to many among us and yet, the fact that you turn 25, brings a psychological feeling to your parents and “other enthusiastic” family members to assume that you have now settled with work life and they can start processing your matrimonial formalities.
But, I am still NOT SURE...
About Education and Work Profession
While many of us are settled down with a job or an educational career, there will surely be some amongst us, who would still be trying to figure out how to go ahead with their own lives. There are people among us, who still dream of studying something, or taking some drastic decisions or risks.
For instance, you may be happy with your current job, but maybe the prospects of growth seem to be slowing down, and you think of making a switch. Or, there can be a more lucrative option available which offers you a much better chance of working provided you leave the city or the country, or a more drastic choice would be to return to your hometown or a city nearby and hence live closer to your family and friends.
About Commitment
The expert advice from our adults when we try to linger away from the topic of commitment, by defending our life’s uncertainty goes like, “Son, you will never be sure of where life will take you, so take the plunge and the two of you can figure it out together.” The fact that some of your friends start getting committed or married also catalyzes the process of people start discussing your marriage. In honest retrospection, I am not scared of having a person around who cares for us and helps us, but the very thought of bringing another person in our life does bring in some sort of complexities.
It is the additional responsibility that scares me. Getting married isn’t just a formal knot between two people, where one person goes to stay with the other person and hence pays half the rent if they stay in a rented apartment and splits the other expenses like maintenance and electricity bills. As a guy, getting a wife brings with it the additional responsibility of ensuring that the person, who left her home and family to become a part of your life always remains happy. This would also mean that the decisions like shifting to another city, or even another country would not just need an approval from yourself and the outcome of that decision should ensure that her wellbeing and happiness, and her job, if you may, is not impacted.
The BIG Questions
The dilemma of the Quarter life also brings me to two very important questions which need an answer. It is almost like the companies bring out the quarterly results about their status and future predictions.
Are you happy?
The first quarter of my life has been pretty fruitful. I got success, if you may consider it that way, with a decently high paying job and some quality education on the professional front and a very supportive and lovely set of friends and family on the personal front, but there are times when juggling the professional and the personal spheres of life make it complicated.
Looking back at my life, I see various happy moments, which make the journey worthwhile. Honestly I don’t really remember many sad moments, thanks to the grace of God, blessings of my elders and nature’s gift to allow us to memorize only what we want to. The current professional life however demands sacrifices like missing birthdays, other occasions and festivals since you are away from home. And yet, in the greater scheme of things, I believe it has been a wonderful first quarter of my life and am hopeful for the same experience in life ahead.
And the BIG question, which a lot of “elders” in the family bother me with “When do you think you will be ready for taking the next step for marriage?”
An honest answer is “I don’t know.” There is no shortcut to happiness and no shortcut to knowing where life while take you next. Looking back at my life, I have found that it is only the “Long-term” goals which we can plan, and most of the short-medium term goals that I planned have been modified by the events that followed the planning. So all I can say to my own life is “Surprise Me” again.
Final Verdict:
The title Final Verdict is put to only keep up with the spirit of the blog. There wouldn’t be a dilemma if I could have my own verdict.
Based on the various serious discussions which I have had with my elders and my colleagues and close comrades on the uncertain topics of life like marriage and profession in the future, the only thing certain about this uncertain situation is that buckle up and prepare well, but remember, that whatever you do, however much you prepare and ready yourself, it will never suffice.
And hence, the best solution for now seems to just flow with where the life take us. Trust your parents and trust your Guardian Angels, like the seat belts of the rollercoaster and take the thrill ride. The light at the end of the tunnel of confusion will appear when the time is right. Another turbulent and exciting quarter in the life of yet-another 25-year old kid, is just about to begin.
The one thing common between the Apple iPhone and the Apple iPAD, except the fact that they both have an aesthetic appeal, wonderfully working touch screen and the illustrious brand name of Apple is the fact that both of them do not support Flash, which is one of the most prominent rich internet applications from Adobe. The spat between Apple and Adobe has been going on for many years now, and the exclusion of Flash from iPhone and iPad is just another chapter to this ever growing war between the two.
Flash is not only used for viewing videos, or creating multimedia websites, but it also can be used to create various applications and games, which has increased its popularity and reach many-fold, making it one of the de facto installations on the computers of people who surf the internet. The decision that Apple is not planning to provide support has made a lot of iPhone owners whine, more so, since Adobe came up with a Flash version for all major mobile operating systems like Windows Mobile OS, Palm’s webOS and even the Google Android, missing out only on iPhone’s Safari OS.
Apple’s Side of the Story
Apple has been adamant in not supporting Adobe Flash, since allowing Flash is against the Terms of Service Agreement of the iPhone. The main reason for this as per Apple’s software engineers is that allowing Flash will open a lot of backdoors or open up loop holes for malicious applications to misuse the information and even hamper the usability of the iPhone or the iPAD.
Moreover, historically, Apple’s MAC OS has never been in proper sync with the Flash player. Most complaints that the Apple Inc gets for the browser crashes is due to the use of Flash plug-ins and hence Apple is trying to stay safe by not providing the support for Flash at all, rather than allow Flash to compete for the battery life and the CPU cycles on the iPhone and the iPAD.
The “Other” Side of the Story
Apple is known to be a strongly coupled company when it comes to protecting its proprietary stuff. Allowing Flash to run on iPhone will not only enable users to view Flash content on their iPhone or iPAD, but it will also allow a lot of Flash applications and games to compete with their counterparts on the App Store. This will surely result in huge revenue losses for Apple.
Moreover, in the current scenario, all the things related to Apple iPhone and iPAD are owned completely by Apple and hence if they wish to make some drastic change like a Platform or architecture change, they can port and recompile their codes and libraries. However, if they allow Flash and then decide to do such a change, since Flash remains owned by Adobe, Apple would need to maintain some sort of a backward compatibility to ensure Flash support remains ON, until Adobe gets them the ported version of Flash.
Consolidating the Facts
The funny fact about Adobe Flash is that while all the major building blocks of the internet like HTML and CSS are open source, the most prominent proprietary software in the web-world is Adobe Flash. The popularity of Flash feeds itself and the result is it gets used more often. So the people who oppose the one company ownership idea like the fact that Apple is slowly weeding out Flash by sowing the seeds for HTML5.
Moreover, it is a known experience that while Flash works pretty well with Windows, it cannot do the same with Apple’s OS because the later does not allow Flash to access the lower level APIs and squeeze the maximum benefit from the hardware. However, while Adobe cribs that Apple doesn’t allow its platform level optimizations to be used for Flash, Steve Jobs rubbished Flash for being buggy and that was the reason why Apple is not too keen on granting support to Flash, and instead it supports HTML5 more getting the newer web-based applications.
Final Verdict:
According to me the reason why the Flash support on iPhone and iPAD isn’t encouraged, is a combination of both Apple’s way of trying to preserve its supremacy for the games and applications that get shipped for the iPhone and the iPAD, and also Apple’s intolerant behavior towards very stringent quality standards which currently Flash is not being able to adhere to.
For now, the situation is a dead lock and in midst of all odds, Adobe has come up with a bunch of tools which allow the Flash applications to get converted to a format where they can be loaded on iPhone. However, these applications match neither the performance, nor the elegance of what the original Flash could have offered.
And this leads us to the final big question is: When will Apple step down and allow a third party plug-in provider like Adobe, an access to its lower level APIs?
The starting part of the title is borrowed from the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” written by Dr. Viktor Frankl. It is a short autobiographical volume of this Austrian psychiatrist’s experiences in the Nazi concentration camps during the World War II, where he was imprisoned and tortured because he was a Jew. The book is a wonderful starting point to discover the power of the human mind and in a very heavy emotional way, it explains how we humans perceive things. The experiences he had in the death camp were terrible, and the explanations of the hideous tortures and indignities which were afflicted on the prisoners show to which extent their will to live was demolished. It is during this time, that he realized something which he calls “the last ultimate freedom”, which means the power to chose one’s own response in any given set of circumstances. During that period of time he realized that his Nazi captors could not hurt him, they could hurt his body, they could hurt his self respect, but whatever they do, they could not hurt the person who stayed in that body, i.e. they did not have the power to hurt Viktor Frankl. And little by little the spark of this freedom in him kept growing and he became completely indifferent to the hideous events around him.
It is that feeling which explains the fundamental power of the human mind. Nothing can hurt us, unless we want it to. It is our willing permission, our consent which allows events, people or things to hurt us far more than they originally hurt us. The things can hurt us, physically, but the real pain comes from the emotional hurt, which makes the physical hurt to multiply the pain many times over the circumstantial impact. This is particularly hard to accept and even harder to implement, because all of us, right from our childhood have this tendency of blaming the hurt to the circumstances, or because someone else did something to us. We have this tendency to blame things like, I am upset today because my friend doesn’t have time for me, or I am upset because XYZ did or did not do ABC.
This brings us to another important insight. If it is true that we are miserable because we wanted to be miserable, or we chose our response to be miserable based on a circumstance, it is also true that we can chose otherwise and not be miserable. No circumstance has in it the power to make us sad, unless we truly want it to. It is not the circumstance that influences what happens to us, but it is our response to the situation that decides what actually happens to us. This same thing can understood though in a much simplified way by Steven Covey’s 90-10 principle, which states, 10% of life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of life is decided by how you react.
There above is a simple and yet very beautiful example of this theory. There are numerous incidents and people who portray this very beautifully. Movies like The Shawshank Redemption and the Pursuit of Happyness show the level where we can reach, rising from all odds, if we keep hope and faith and most importantly do not let the “person” in us succumb to the external circumstances.
Implementing this in Our Day to Day Life
The above shows the importance of how the reaction of our mind can make or break a day. There is a beautiful line in the movie the Matrix, which goes “What is Real? How do you define Real? If real is what you can smell, see, touch or feel then real means just the electronic impulses interpreted by your Brain...” If you dig deep, the above statement does seem to suggest the same thing. The whole world, the perceptions, the situations, the experiences and to an extent event the outcomes of events are all dependent on how we react to a situation, and not the situation itself.
Since we are on the brink of yet another summer season, there is surely going to be a particularly interesting situation, where people constantly crib and complain about how hot it is around this time of the year. Do remember to do this exercise and keep repeating something like Shit! The weather is so hot… its killing me to yourself, and you will realize that each time you say the statement, you will actually feel a lot of heat, and you will actually feel the brunt of summer. And then, on a completely separate note, try to react in an opposite way and think something like, if the weather won’t get warmer in summer, when would it get hot? The minute you start giving these positive autosuggestions to your brain, the heat will kind of reduce by a couple degrees for you.
Final Verdict: While it is not particularly easy to reach the level where Viktor Frankl had reached and become completely liberated from the pains associated with the circumstances that keep changing the course of our life, it is also important to give moving towards this goal a try. Another thing, if you find yourself in self-pity or know someone else who is, I would suggest you pick up this short book Man’s Search For Meaning and gauge the situation that you are in today and be thankful to life for not being hard on you.
All said and done, the parting thought is that we keep in our mind is the fact that the key to a happy and satisfied life is to start choosing our responses and gaining control of our life. And the very reaction that it is not easy to make a change of this magnitude in our thought process, will make the process of this transition tough, and hence this negative thought, should be scrapped.
So in the end, it all boils down to what Mufasa, the Lion tells his cub Simba in the famous movie The Lion King, “Remember who you are”.
The first time I came across this catchy phrase, when I was learning Reiki more than a decade ago. This post can partly be considered to be a sequel on Happ-I-ness, but to consider it that way or not is left to the reader’s discretion.
The Attitude of Gratitude
Hardly anyone amongst us ever stops thinking about what we want, but we don’t have. The theists amongst us pray to God asking for those things, and all of us strive towards getting those things or positions or whatever we had wished for. Nevertheless, in this fight of never-ending wants, we forget to focus on what we have, we forget to even take a minute to enjoy the things we achieved, or simply put, we forget to count our blessings. In any language, probably the most powerful words would be “I love you”, but there is another set of words, which is probably as powerful as these, and ironically, it is also a phrase used very scarcely as “I love you” and hence there is still misery amongst us humans, and as you would have probably guessed it, the phrase is “Thank You”.
Do we really lack the quality of being Grateful?
Most of us would oppose to this fact and say, we are grateful for what we have in life. If today X get a more paying job, or a salary hike, or a new house or any profound success, X would be thankful for that. Hence X is grateful, isn’t he? However, if the same X gets laid off, someone in his family gets a disease, or if X loses a chunk of money, will X still remain thankful? In most cases X would be depressed, angry and disappointed.
Our problem is, in most cases, our gratitude is incremental, i.e. it depends incrementally on what I have today that I did not have yesterday, and not just on what I have today. If on the other hand, we can have an absolute level of gratitude, we would still be thankful for what we have. X would still be happy he has a two-bedroom flat instead of the bunglow he had yesterday, and he can still have a happy time with his family. In no way are we trying to say that X shouldn’t work hard to earn back his bunglow and just remain content with the flat, however, being grateful for what he has in had will reduce his mental stress and trauma, this will ensure he doesn’t get angry at his family due to his tensions, and more importantly, with a composed mind, he will be able to focus more clearly on how to fix the situation.
The Perception of Glass Half Empty or Half Full
The other issues about being grateful come from the perspective with which we look at things. Sometimes, it all boils down to the well known story of how we perceive the things that come at hand. Let’s consider the same story of Half-Full-Half-Empty Glass with a slight twist. Say we go to someone’s place for dinner and they serve you half glass of some new flavored drink, looking at which you may mentally think positively that they served you only half glass since you are full with the dinner, or you may smirk at the thought that how can someone serve a guest half-glass something. For the half-full guys, you are already there at the level of gratitude, however, for the half-empty people, here we fork of the story into 2 sub-situations,
Situation 1: You really liked the flavored drink and were unhappy since they served only half-glass. But then you come to know that it was the only amount of flavored drink they had, and everyone else in the house sacrificed because you were the all important person who was offered the flavored drink, would your perception change? Would you now look at that gesture of even having a half-empty glass and smirk, or would you be heartily grateful and appreciate the half-full glass.
Situation 2: You did not like the flavored drink at all, but are forced to drink the amount served to you or after drinking the half-glass you realized that the drink had caffeine and since you are sensitive to caffeine, had you drank a glassful you’d be awake the whole night. Now, would you be unhappy that it was half-full, or would silently in your heart rejoice the fact that thankfully you only got a half-glass to swallow.
Both the above situations try to move us from a negative perspective to a positive one, nevertheless, there is a subtle difference between the two, in both of them we first started with the perspective that we wanted a glass-full but we did not know whether getting the half-glass was good or bad for us. There will be incidents in all our lives when we look back at events and say, Thank God that what I wanted did not happen, else I wouldn’t have gotten so much.
This is beautifully depicted by a famous statement said by the character of “God” in the movie “Bruce Almighty”, which says, “When we say may God grant all your wishes, what we forget is that, since when do we know what we actually want?” The above idea resonates the fact; that we never know what is the best for us and hence rather than crib for what we failed to achieve, we should be happy and grateful for what we have.
The Direct and Indirect Benefits of this Approach
The direct can be considered from the fact that the attitude of gratitude makes us thank people around us for whatever good they have done for us. Everyone likes to be appreciated for their hard-work and sincerity and if someone takes time to just thank the person for his efforts it just makes the work seem tireless. In fact, I bet most of us would work full nights out for people who take that one minute to appreciate our hard labor. The same holds for our superiors and subordinates as well. Thus if we sincerely and heartily thank them for what they have done for us, irrespective of the fact that it is our group director or the security guard who stands in front of the office, a difference in their attitude towards us will be visible.
The indirect may be a little hard to prove, but if you have learnt “Reiki”, read the BestSeller book “The Secret” or plainly known any religion, all of them preach that “Whatever vibrations you send out to the Universe get echoed back to you in a long run”. By taking the time to acknowledge our blessings each day, we become a magnet for further abundance because we are placing the energy of our thoughts into further manifestations in our life, rather than in what we do not have. As Reiki puts it, this works simply because, like everything else, thoughts are energy. The level of the vibration of our thoughts determines what we experience in life, what is drawn to us and what isn’t. If we are constantly focusing on lack and attuning to its vibration, that is what we will attract more of, in your life. Conversely, if we recognize and are thankful for the abundance and blessings in our life, many more will follow.
Final Verdict:
As is depicted in good movies like Pursuit of Happyness, Shortcut to Happiness, Bruce Almighty and many more, it boils down to the line said in Kung Fu Panda, “Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery, but Today is a Gift, and that is why it is called Present.” So if we have a gift in our hand, the least we can do is be thankful for the gift. While we open the packet and realize that we haven’t got what we wanted, it’s time we remind ourselves of another dialogue from the same movie “There are no Accidents”, and then remain thankful for what we have today.
Before ending this post, I would sincerely like to “Thank the Universe” for the wonderful family and friends it has bestowed to me in this Journey called life. A special set of thanks to all my friends who give me critiques on my blog posts and point out my mistakes since “If someone points out your mistakes, be happy that at least someone is interested in what you have done” and a special thanks to a special friend who reminded me to write on this topic. Last but definitely not the least, a sincere and heartfelt thanks to You, my dear reader for patiently and painstakingly reading my blogs.
Quoting something I read somewhere, “God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say 'Thank you'?” -William A. Ward
So as a parting statement, take some time off to count your blessings; you will be surprised to find many things which are small or so routine that they go unnoticed every day till you list them down. Remembering the 4-line prayer we used to sing in A.G. (my Primary School)
Thank You God for the World so sweet,
Thank You God for the food we eat,
Thank You God for the Birds that sing,
Thank You God for Everything.
Like in Happiness, the word Grat-I-tude also has “I” in the middle, so start counting your blessings and I know for sure that many more will follow.
Over the last couple of months, I have been mostly blogging reviews of movies and books, and so I wanted to blog on a topic, which is more deep and different. However, the problem with this approach is it takes a lot of time to research and form an opinion to write about something. I almost felt like being in a writer’s block, even though I was writing regularly. The thought to what I would blog in the next weekend kind of persisted throughout the week. Though I have some thoughts, philosophies or musings, I never post at this blog, since I think this blog is in a different genre. And then, it struck to me, since the blog is rushinspeaks, why can’t I blog what I perceive and hence this blog-post.
The idea of this post came from the very thought, why do I want to blog every weekend, what does writing give to me (except the funny feeling to see the small virtual amount of money in Adsense, which will never cross the needed $100 to give me any real money), and the answer was “Happiness”, hence the topic.
Disclaimer: This is a type of topic I don’t generally blog about and hence the flow may not set correctly, please bear with the same.
Happiness
For those who don’t know, the above clip is taken from the Famous Movie “The Pursuit of HappYness”, which is based on the life of Chris Garnder. The emotion on the face of Will Smith is the one of the best portrayals of this complex emotion we call happiness. True and pure happiness is the feeling when you, even in a crowd and when you cannot stop yourself from celebrating and feeling the bliss around. What is beautiful in this movie is a line, which Chris in his musings thinks of, a line for which we can all relate to, “It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?”
Is it not true? Happiness, the emotion we seek, we look for it here, we look for it there and more often than not, we find that it completely eludes us. All our activities, the dedication and efforts we put in at our work, the meaningful relationships we have with our family and friends, our nature to seek growth and glory, from the biggest of actions to the small activity like reading or writing this blog-post, all of it happens in us trying to attain this momentary state-of-mind, the feeling we call happiness. And yet, ironically, the minute we reach there, in-a-wink, the feeling disappears and we begin our adventure once again. What is more disheartening is the fact that in transiting from one destination to another goal so focused we are on reaching the next milestone that we completely forget to enjoy the journey.
There is so much of a power-struggle in life, it’s almost like driving on the Express-Highway and focusing only on the road, trying to overtake the other cars in front of us, but what we fail to see is the beauty of the nature beyond the edges of the road. What is more sarcastic is the fact that we think we are moving towards the next hill station, the next pinnacle of happiness, but what we fail to see is that the trees, the lakes, the farms, the mountains, they are all right there, just by the sides of the road, when we are driving through. “But Alas! We have no time to stand and stare”.
Let’s think for a minute about a situation when we are truly happy. Let’s assume you wanted something badly and you got it, and you are happy briefly, only till we think of getting something else. So did the actual happiness come because of getting the first thing, actually no, if we dig deeper, we became happy because we became free from “Want”. For that one minute of happiness, we were at peace with the Universe, we were so contented with getting what we desired, that we had no other wants. So, in that sense than, Happiness is a feeling, which doesn’t depend on what we want, it depends on how we can keep ourselves contented with what we have. Ideally, this is the real reason of happiness, but unfortunately, we attribute to the success of getting what we had aspired and move on.
I took my own-self to test and came up a list of things which will make me happy. When I did a reanalysis, I found things like fame, glory, understanding family and friends, good health, interesting work, decent money topping my list. Nevertheless, if I look beneath the surface of what truly made me happy, I realized, most of these things are needed only to gratify my ego. Getting the above things will also not keep me happy forever; I will demand more once I get these. The problem with all of us is that the society has groomed us to think that our achievements define us, and to be “successful” means to be “better”, but is that really true?
Honestly, if we look at what things would have made us happy, say during probably our 12th Standard and the first few years of college time-frame, we would have things like higher education from a prestigious university, good stable job, decent salary, some growth and recognition, and probably an understanding spouse among other things on our list. Looking back today, we would have achieved some, if not all, of those things, but are we really happy, or is that list of “things which make me happy” changed now with a hundred other things? Moreover, when we have demands from others, we put some expectations in people beyond our control, and hence the outcome of their action defines our happiness, while actually since happiness is our-state-of-mind, it should only depend on us.
If we look at the Research done by Psychologists, Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman, I came across some part of their research in the book “Blink – The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell, they came to a realization that just like our emotion and state of mind determines how our facial expression will be, i.e. we smile when we are happy, and frown when we are sad, but astonishingly the exact opposite of the above is also true. If we keep smiling forcibly, we are bound to become happy and if we keep frowning forcibly, we will become sad, angry and cranky. What the above discovery reinforces is the fact that happiness comes not by actions and their outcomes, but can be generated from within.
By saying the above, I am not saying we should not put effort to achieving anything, but we shouldn’t let the outcome affect ourselves. The simplest way to put it in one line, and yet probably one of the toughest thing to implement in our life is, “Enjoy truly what you have. Strive fully for what you want, but strive with the understanding that the joy is in the striving, not just getting what you wanted. If you succeed, enjoy it again, if you don’t, still enjoy the striving.”
Final Verdict:
I am so used to writing the “Final Verdict” title in all my blog-posts that I have put the same title here as well. I wrote this post because it made me happy, I hope reading it would have made you too. I am leaving all of us (even myself, when I forget what I preach) with the above picture to remind us that “Happiness lies in our Own Hands”.
Last but not the least, a thought that suddenly struck to me, I as in the person in contention, is so very closely related to this feeling called happiness, that the way the word is spelt, in itself tells us, Happ-I-ness. The "I" is at the center of the Happiness and we cannot gain this supreme state of bliss, again spelt with "I" at its center, unless we indulge ourselves fully with this emotion.
Do drop in a comment on whether you liked the post or not. If you did, that is great, if you did not and you reached this sentence, I sure am happy you strived to reach the till the end.
I know I have been writing movie reviews a lot these days. I guess that can be blamed to my otherwise busy life in Synopsys Hyderabad, where I can’t have much time over the weekdays. The weekends, I generally watch a movie (though honestly, I am not a movie buff), and end up writing the review at the blog. Have got responses both-ways to carry on with this and to move back to the Current Topics, but with current less time at hand and movie at the Multiplex, I am writing yet-another movie review, with a promise that I will also write about the other things (when time permits ;-) ).
So here goes nothing, and in fact, on a fun note, the overall rating of this movie also matches the Overall rating of the last 2 movies I reviewed. If you do check the movie out, you can comment on whether the ratings are “Right Ya Wrong”.
Right Ya Wrong
Cast: Sunny Deol, Irrfan Khan, Isha Kopikar, Konkana Sen Sharma, Deepal Shaw, Aryan Vaid
Director: Neerraj Pathak
Overall Rating: 6.5 / 10.0 (A good thriller, slightly predictable, but a refreshing movie to watch, if there are no other plans)
The movie “Right Ya Wrong” starts with a climax scene and suddenly it moves back in a flashback. It is a story about a 2 friends Ajay Shridhar (Sunny Deol) and Vinay Patnaik (Irrfan Khan), both working as brave and valiant cops in the Goa Police Force. The movie starts of by showing them battling the bad guys together, each in his own style, while Vinay is a cool-headed cop, who analyzes the complete situation before taking any action and believes Justice is everything, Ajay on the other end is hot-headed and spontaneous, and he is also a risk-taker who also looks at the crime committed from a humane perspective and makes his own decisions.
The movie starts with Vinay and Ajay trying to catch the dreaded criminal Boris (Aryan Vaid), but then moves to a web of conspiracies, which involve Anshita (Isha Kopikar), who is Ajay’s wife and Sanjay, Ajay’s brother. The plot gets deeper with the post-interval entry of Lawyer Radhika (Konkana Sen Sharma), who also happens to be Vinay’s younger sister. Since the movie is supposed to be a thriller as per its genre, and there isn’t much that can be written without revealing the plot, I am directly moving to the “Rights and Wrongs” of the movie.
The Rights
Sunny Deol and Irrfan Khan, both have acted very well to portray the characters they were supposed to project. Their on-screen chemistry keeps the movie go on very smoothly. All the other actors, Isha Kopikar, Deepal Shaw and Sanjay plays her part well.
The script and the story-line keep the viewers excited and hence even though the movie becomes predictable at time, it never really gets boring. In fact, so evident is the climax, that I had a hard time finding a picture for this movie, which wouldn’t reveal the plot.
The first half is a bit slow and drags on, but the second half sweeps on pretty well. Also since the movie is about 2 hours, it doesn’t seem to be too long at any point.
The Wrongs
There seems to be a disconnect with the exact portrayal of Konkana Sen Sharma’s character, which doesn’t completely blend with the story-line.
Last but definitely not the least, like a lot other movies, this movie is also inspired from a Hollywood movie called “ABOVE SUSPICION”, so much so, that if you check this movie’s plot on IMBD (contains Spoilers, so don’t check it unless you want to know the plot), you will say it is an IMDB page with a Plot-Review of Right Ya Wrong.
Final Verdict:
I almost seem to be writing paradoxes, when I say the movie is a thriller and yet predictable, but then, this is one of those movies, where you can very easily suspect what will happen next, but still look forward to how the movie portrays the same. Thus, in spite of the movie being predictable, the movie is pretty enjoyable and can be watched once.
The movie also in some parts, puts some questions about ethics and justice, which the viewer can answer to himself, based on his own value system. And like any genuine ethical question, the review of a movie depends a lot on what the person who is reviewing liked or disliked in the movie, but all in all, if you ask me, whether seeing this movie on a normal care-free day (when you don’t have anything much to do), would be a “right or wrong” choice, I’d say:
Right Choice, just go with less expectations and enjoy the flow of the movie.
This weekend, I had a trip planned for Bangalore and so had been thinking of what I would blog about. However, the joke turned out on me, since Synopsys Bangalore took us out for a Movie, which was ironically titled “Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge?”, a question, which was asked repeatedly to me by my colleagues in the Bangalore office, though, hopefully, not with the thought of sending me away. ;-)
Nevertheless, to give justice to my Bangalore trip, and make the expensive Inox ticket feel worthwhile, here’s a review on the same movie.
Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge?
Cast: Ajay Devgan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Paresh Rawal
Director: Ashwini Dhir
Overall Rating: 6.5 / 10.0 (A good movie to watch, if there are no other plans)
The movie begins in the Metropolis of Mumbai, depicting a typical nuclear family, trying to survive the hardships of the competitive cosmopolitan life. Welcome to the home of Puneet (Ajay Devgan) and Munmun (Konkana Sen Sharma) and their kid, comprising a family, who has never ever welcomed any guests, since they never had time to keep contact with people, owing to their fast life.
Things are going smooth in some sense, till Lambodar Chacha (Paresh Rawal), a distant relative from Gorakhpur suddenly drops in uninvited at their home to pay a visit. For the first time, the family has to make small sacrifices to accommodate this guest in their home and they still try to cope up with the situation maturely. However, pretty soon they realize that Chachaji has no immediate plans of returning back and this is when things start getting topsy-turvy.
The story shows beautifully how the inclusion of a person from a small village or town can impact the lifestyle of the modern urban family. Munmun has to wake up early in the morning to make breakfast for chachaji, thus adjusting her routine, which can impact her productivity at her job. Puneet, called Pappu lovingly by Chachaji, also falls prey to the illiterate Chachaji’s rural gambits. To make matters worse, Chachaji with his loving and inviting nature also brings home, friends and neighbors, who tag along with him, adding to the woes of Puneet’s family.
“Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge” mirrors a reality of the new generation, where the family being victimized by the perils of the guest feels that their privacy and happiness is threatened. The ways in which the family reacts to the guest and tries to send-him-off is what makes the movie funny. On a comic sense, Chachaji also has some gastric problems, which adds an element of laughter. And yet, the movie shows the upsides of this rustic guest, who lovingly installs good “sanskaar” in the kid of the family, teaching him to be ethical and more responsible.
Final Verdict:
The movie is a synthesis of satire in the new-age urban life and strong virtues of traditional Indian family system. The movie though is about 2 hours long, seemed to comprise of various parts, and atleast some of these chapters, weren’t really needed and were probably added to drag the movie along. Paresh Rawal acts his beautifully and Ajay Devgan and Konkana also do well for their respective roles, and yet the movie isn’t a real pleasure.
Nevertheless, the movie does have some parts which bring giggles, and also tries to convey a good message. But this makes the movie a combination of “Hera Pheri” and “Baghban”, which though is nice and watchable, cannot have the humor, seriousness or the charisma of either of the movies.
Last but not the least, it is watchable for all the people who want to relax and laugh with a packet of popcorn in their hands after a hectic week of hard work, and carry home a good message as well. Reminding the viewers of the traditional movies of 1980s timeframe, the “Atithi” will probably settle in the guest-room of your heart.
Overall Rating: 6.5 / 10.0 (A good movie to watch, if there are no other plans)
The movie Karthik Calling Karthik, starts with the portrayal of Karthik (Farhan Akthar), as a low on self-confidence and hence low on self esteem, hard-working guy. His straight-forward nature and self-formed fears have made the subject of exploitation from everyone; from his greedy and wily land-lord and smart colleagues at work to his ever-cribbing boss, who gets all the work done by him and takes away the credit without even thanking him for his effort once. Ironically, even the people who bullied him did not need to boss-around or threaten him, and even a whimper would scare Karthik, who would silently bear all the pain, and do all the hard-work fearing a reprisal. The start of this movie almost reminded me of another movie like “Rocket Singh”.
The movie also adds a romantic twist, the entry of Karthik’s dashing dream-girl Shonali (Deepika Padukone), who has worked with him in the same office for 4 years, but doesn’t even know that he exists. The story trudges slowly and suddenly Karthik loses his job, and in midst of all this depression, Karthik thinks of ending his life on his birthday, when at 5 AM in the morning, he receives a “phone-call”, a phone-call, which as mentioned in the commercials, changes his life for the better or the worse.
The person on the other end of the line claims to be Karthik himself. After initial resistance, the LOSER Karthik decides to listen to his mentor on the other side of the phone. The mentor Karthik seems to be sort of a Steven Covey or a Dale Carnegie, if you may, who grooms Karthik to become a better man. He listens to the insecurities of Karthik, imbibes positive thoughts and incorporates confidence in Karthik. He also plans both personal and professional strategies for Karthik, which is fun to watch. The same LOSER Karthik now almost undergoes a metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a butterfly. He not only subdues his landlord with his new skills, but he also convinces his boss into giving a much better job, and more importantly finds a place in the heart of his romanticized angel.
However, as all good things come to an end, Karthik’s dream streak also reaches its end once Shonali finds out that he receives phone-calls from his imaginary self, and asks him to make a decision and pick either her or his so-called mentor. And, one-day Karthik doesn’t pick up the call of his mentor and things start going in a downward spiral for him ever since. Since Karthik goes against his mentor, the Guardian Angel suddenly becomes the Messenger of Death for him. He ensures that Karthik suffers falls in both his professional and love-life, ushering him back to his world of miseries.
The movie moves back and forth, trying to then answer the questions like:
Who's the other Karthik and why is he calling Karthik? What can Karthik do to free himself from the menace of the other Karthik’s wrath, and will he succeed in resolving the issues in his life?
Final Verdict:
The movie in a nutshell shows the trauma and stress surrounding the current corporate scenario and fast lifestyle. We have on one hand an exploited and depressed worker Karthik, who is trying to set his life on track; and Shonali, who has had too many bad relationships, and is trying to bring some stability to her life.
Personally, I felt the storyline went on too slowly, and yet, with witty and sarcastic dialogues, the movie kept going on. The end is almost abrupt, and before you can fully comprehend the movie-flow and get into the flow of it, the credits start popping in.
Nevertheless, Farhan Akthar has done a marvelous job, acting almost like a chameleon, moving from the dull-boy to happening-guy and so on. It is a movie with a new topic, and the freshness along-with the comical thrill will probably make the movie sail thorough. It’s a good movie to watch, if you have no other plans, and look forward to seeing a light and yet serious flick.
Last Thursday, I was sitting in the Hyderabad airport, waiting for my flight to arrive, and thinking on what should be my next blog topic. Suddenly out of nowhere, I got reminded of this recent flick that I had seen which seemed to be a complete match to my wait for the flight situation. And so, here is my review on “Up in the Air” literally written up in the air, on-board my Flight from Hyderabad to Ahmedabad.
Up in the Air
Cast: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick
Director: Jason Reitman
Overall Rating: 7.5/10.0 (A very good movie to watch)
For most of us, the very thought of taking a flight reminds us of endless queues for luggage checkin, waiting a grueling amount of time before the boarding commences and then the flight itself, where we are made to breathe recycled air, given some cookies and snacks, while time gets spent looking at the clouds, without nothing much in sight. However, this is the story about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who is kind of obsessed with the thoughts of flying, so much so, that he prefers to be on-the-move, rather than stay snuggled on the ground.
In his life on the ground, Ryan works for a company, which takes the outsourcing of the work of downsizing people. This means that Ryan is always on the move, going from one city to another, visiting the offices of the loser-bosses as he calls them, and helping them by discussing with the to-be-fired employees about their dismissal. The idea of travelling is also perfect for Ryan who wants to keep earning more sky miles and reach a magic figure of 10 million miles, as a sense of personal achievement. He keeps buying and spending all of the allocated corporate allowances to ensure that his sky-miles keep getting maxed out. The idea behind this is to ensure excellent loyalty-related services for being a preferred customer. Things seem to be going pretty smooth for Ryan, when all of a sudden; Natalie (Anna Kendrick) enters the scene. Natalie is a 23-year old graduate from Cornell, who is all set to revolutionize the way firing is done, by bringing in ideas like using Remote Access Video Conferencing to lay-off people and having set of instructions, almost an algorithm to inform people about their lay-off.
Being the big-fish in town, Ryan obviously doesn’t like the changes and he takes Natalie with him “on-the-road” so that she understands the need for the human presence when the axe is lowered. The idea is to explain to Natalie, that the way she treats this business makes it seem like a presumed human resource expert, who follows a set of instructions and has no grasp of the human character. On the other hand, Ryan fires people sitting face to face, with a smile on his face, and sometimes even giving a pat at the back of the employee being downsized, doesn’t hurt the person on the other side of the table as much. In fact, he even tries at times to make the person realize that it is a blessing-in-disguise and they should look forward for tomorrow, with renewed hope and energy. It is this journey in which, while teaching Natalie the emotional side of the job; that Ryan figures out a lot about himself. For the first time, he understands the importance of family and friends in life.
The story also takes a slight romantic twist when Ryan meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), who is also a high-flying executive and probably as mile-hungry as him. Their perception of life and definition of relationships though seem to be inhumane to most of us, are perfect for each other, and thus this adds a new chapter in the story.
The movie also shows Ryan as a public speaker, who takes sessions on explaining people how to work and how to fly. He comes up with this theory of packing the life in a single back-pack. The idea he lives by is that the higher the luggage, the slower you will be able to move. He goes on to say that emotional baggage is also a baggage, and carrying it will slow you down in life. As he says, "The slower we move, the faster we die."
Final Verdict:
To put it in short, this is a movie about Ryan, a downsizing expert, whose everyday brushes with people to be fired, their anguish and despair have left him falsely compassionate, living out of suitcase and loving every second of it, trying to protect his way of life from the prying eyes of Natalie, who wants to ground him by using Remote Access to do the job instead. And yet, the genre of the movie is comedy, in spite of all the layoffs and the depression the movie talks about.
Though the movie is not completely flawless, the movie comes with a beautiful message portraying the impact of lay off in the life of a person, but more importantly, the part, when in the post-layoff counseling, most of the people who were given the pink slip, speak up about the support and understanding of their families and friends, due to which they could sail over the trauma.
All in all, Up in the Air, is definitely a good watch, for the beautiful handling of a sensitive topic, which brings us closer to ourselves. By any chance, if you are going to travel by an International Airlines like Emirates, which give you a choice of movies to be watched, “Up in the Air” should definitely top the list of the movies to be watched while you are up in the air.
I am a happy-go-lucky Computer Engineer, who graduated from Institute of Technology, Nirma University in 2007.
Currently I work in the capacity of an R & D Engineer at Synopsys (India) Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad.
Today when I am far from home, trying to pursue my dreams and career,
I want to write more, but cannot find words to express this beautiful relationship. One of the best portrayals of this beautiful feeling in my life can be expressed by the above picture. It is the feeling of being safe and secure in your mother’s lap. Knowing that your mother is there to protect you keeps the kid strong and even against the fear of the razor.
