The End is Near

Yeah the end…not only is it here…but also near… no no I am not trying my hand at some cheap alliteration. It’s just a fallout of a long conversation with a friend who goes long back and is far away…a long way off the pacific so to speak.
Well, over ISD calls arguing the case of networking and or the need for small talk, we touched the topic whether the end is what matters or is it the journey? Quoting management theories my friend just reinforced the fact that all such theories are actually bullshit pointers filled with jargons and only serve the purpose of confusing the other person. The person at the receiving end, not making head or tail out of it ends up buying the theory often at an exorbitant cost (cash or kind) and falls into the trap of success, chaos and rat race.
But I digress; I am not here to do some MBA bashing (which incidentally is my favorite sport ;)) but to acknowledge the fact that this time it does make some sense.
Yes, in a way the ‘END’ is what everyone or say most people have in mind when they start a venture be it business, social or artistic in nature. But it’s not always the end that makes most people strive towards making the venture a success…sometime success lies in completing the journey, sometime the journey/process is so exciting that the end doesn’t matter.
We are all born with one certain thing… death… we know that it will happen, but does one fling himself off the 31st floor of a high-rise or sleep on railway tracks or send a personal invitation to the likes of Kasab to reach the end. No, we traverse each day learning new things, experiencing various emotions so that when we reach death we can find some other end. The journey towards death is what matters most, more than death itself.
When anything is given life, the end of that life is death…but the blooming of the flower, to the chirp of a bird, to the gush of a waterfall, to the roll of the sea, to the stoic silence of the mountains, to the bounding jump of the hare, to the rat race of the humans, is but only the by-product of that end. And if the flower attracts the pollen carrying bee to pass on the emotions along with the pollen, if the bird chirps forth a tune to the hearts of a lovelorn poet, if the waterfall excites the fish to swim in dangerous water, if the sea calls out to the surfers, if the mountains beckon the hermit…then they do so with the hope that their emotions, their intrinsic nature, their being doesn’t end with their physical death… that someday there will be some flower, some bird, some water fall, some sea, some mountain, some animal, some human somewhere which will not dwell on the impending death but will carry their legacy forward thereby making them mortal… thereby rubbishing the fear of the end.
Because, the end is always near…. but with each end comes a beginning as well.

Ape No More

Darwin has cracked his brains to answer questions about evolution....many have believed in it and equal number of people have rubbished this theory. Many theories, books and movies later, it is still a viable topic of discussion... we all want to know where we come from and where we will go.

But why?? Why is it so important to know about our origins...so that we can right the wrongs or is it just plain curiosity... or is it to live in a delusion of immortality?

According to some civilizations, all matter is made up of energy which vibrates at a certain frequency. Now there is a universal being (I refrain from using the word GOD here) which vibrates at a certain frequency also. This universal being (found across all microspheres and ecosystems) attracts similar frequencies towards itself to gobble it up (some call the process Nirvana). Now it is destiny (fact of life) that each and every matter will wind up being gobbled by this universal being (it’s kind of a food chain in the cosmospiritual sense) and will be reformed as some other matter with some other frequency, since matter can neither be created nor destroyed but changes its form from one to the other.

Our wise old men, didn't want to change...even if they knew that it was the ultimate truth....so they devised all kinds of schemes to keep the human mind occupied...these schemes were mainly the emotions of love, hate, jealousy, pride, etc and their subsequent actions of war, poetry, economics, entertainment. This prevented humans to focus on their vibrations and indeed our vibrations have been so muddled that we ourselves do not know about it.

We have started aping each other in terms of attitude, behavior and style and refuse that there is a certain job that we have to do.

It’s like the story of a toothbrush...with modern technologies, the toothbrush can flip back, come in attractive colours, have a part for cleaning the tongue and even is battery operated...but does it do what its empirical nature tells it to do...albeit brush the teeth? Until and unless a toothbrush doesn't do that, then it is not one.

In our rush to theorize evolution, have we forgotten that the current Darwinian theory of natural selection is keeping us from the bigger picture...maybe evolution means being gobbled into this universal being and reforming into a different matter, not re-engineering our DNA's to keep us immortal.

The Mayas and Incas understood this...and so the whole civilization vanished leaving behind the wonders that is Macchu Picchu...maybe someday I will. But what will I leave behind.....my blog??? ahem....

(Dedicated to Sumit Vaswani for starting this topic)

Not A Complete Loser

That's the only thought which is going through my head right now (thanks to the pep talk by Vatty)...on the day on which my parents, friends, siblings, colleagues and lots of other people, who may have had the misfortune of crossing my path, all come together and brace themselves to make an effort to be nice to me without actually cringing ... coz its that one day which I can totally claim to be my day (so what if I do have to share it with Vishal, Amrish, Hitler, Babita, Mamta Kulkarni to name a few)...its still my day... its the day that the Gods and my parents in their eternal wisdom decided to unleash me on this planet... so that I could spread some cheer (or so they thought) to this world... little did they know that I would completely disregard their plans and have my own agenda... only to realize that my agenda is not really an agenda ...its more of a reaction to this whole thing called "Life".

I cant but help reflecting on the years gone by (always happens when a few drops of old monk passes through my throat) and have come to the conclusion that I haven't done anything worthwhile....don't have a plan ahead... don't have a bank balance to impress anyone... haven't been there for my parents and family or friends... don't know where I am going professionally... love life is non-existent... don't believe in community service/social service... don't have a cause worth dying for... the list is actually endless... but have realized that I have done one thing right and that is, I have somehow managed to have really awesome friends... Friends who believe in me when I have given up all hope... Friends who trust me to always crack a bad joke and make the world a pleasant place... Friends who don't give up on me... Friends who push me to try harder, literally ... Friends who love me... Friends who plan a expected surprise bday bash with chocolate cake ...

I know I am not dying and one should reserve such sentiments for the last breath... but I actually want to thank all my friends for being my friends... coz I realized that I don't say it often... So, Pinky, Mousumi, Anu, Cyril, Shipra, Vatsala, Guddi, Serene, Siddhu, Mayur, Partha, Charu, Reema, Ruhi, Sunil, Shruti, Rachita, Ruchika, Sanga, Ashu, Sam, Ajat, Deepika, Neha, Vineet, Gaurav, Amrish, Amit, Sanju, Vishal, Preeti, Baba, Runa, Utkalika, Wayne, Sumit... thanks sooooooo much guys for being my Friend... Love you always.

Crap, this bday thingy really makes one senti and stuff... must be old age... or must be the Old Monk!

Happiness is Unhappiness in another form

Last night when a friend asked me to go on a weekend drive, and I refused it wasn’t a great deal to my otherwise unimportant life. I have no regrets going on the drive, it wasn’t a first for me nor will it change my life drastically. What was dramatic was the reason I cited for refusing the proposal. It went something like this “I don’t want to go because the drive will make me feel happy, and I want to feel sad which will propel me to shed my laziness and overcome my shortcomings”
I didn’t believe that these words were actually coming out from my mouth… who talks like this?? More importantly who reasons like this?? Do we actually crave unhappiness over happiness? Because that’s exactly what I was saying…to be happy later on, I need to be unhappy right now… but we all know that later on is always in the distant future…so effectively I was craving unhappiness and deriving some kind of pleasure from it.
We all know that Pathos forms the basic plot of any good story, but I had never imagined me to be at the center of all the wallowing and hedonism. We never say we are happy NOW…we always talk about it either in retrospect or in a futuristic manner.
We all say “I was happy as a Kid” or “Last week when I went to Gaurav’s Bday and met all my friends, it was the happiest day in my life” or “When I turn 35 and still have my good likes, I will be terribly happy with my beautician”.
So, all these marketing jargons that are lobbed on us in the name of advertising actually do not spell happiness, manufacturers are selling unhappiness and we are falling for it hook, line and sinker. Do we actually need that new LCD TV to remind us that our life will now be happier when our pockets are lighter and when we actually don’t need to be happy??
Why can’t there be a product that goes “Want to be really happy, buy our new energy drink that is made out of sewage and will give you thousands of diseases for that everlasting unhappiness”…or some such thing.
This is part of my series “Reflections” and will have many more revelations and insights into the wonderful process called Life.

Karthik Calling China

Finally Indian cinema has come of age… for we have finally started to acknowledge the impact of our tyrannical neighbors on our psyche. We have made an entire move all of 2 hrs some odd min to espouse the characteristics of a foreign made electronic instrument! Now that’s what I really call a great idea… who wants to watch wishy-washy sob stories of estranged families or revenge dramas or candy floss romances.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved this movie… it was shot well, acting was good and the music also left its mark… a well rounded off production… the story was actually ‘hatke’ ….but (ther is always a but isn’t ther ;)) I personally found it hard to believe that the main protagonist was a Chinese telephone (there…I’ve given the whole story away) and cant stop thinking about all the various spoofs that can be made… remembering my comedy show days… I should call Varun and tell him to spoof this on Jay Hind!