The rollercoaster ride called "Destiny"

An individual’s destiny is similar to a roller coaster ride. It takes you gently to the top but then pulls the trigger down sharply to your surprise. You still have the option of not taking the gamble of experiencing the rollercoaster ride, if you don’t have the heart for it. But destiny is an enforced never ending rollercoaster ride which cannot be escaped from. It is inevitable. It would be very late by the time you realize that you are in a labyrinth. And that the initial hiccups that you ignored in the mask of the confidence that you were basking in, were actually signs of the turbulent hurricane that were to come. And when the real deal is on, you never get back the time that you took to realize the shit that you were in.

As time progresses, the confidence, personified attitude, perseverance and intelligence that you were proud and breeding on while on the slow motion drive to the top, seems to gradually wither away as the tribulation deepens. There seems to be no hope for revival. All you see, hear and feel around you are the worst case scenarios; the ones that you had only visualized whenever you had nightmares. Reality seems like a delusion. Your thoughts seem to be on a plodding erosion. You start believing in ethics you never stood for. God becomes dearer and prayers seem the disguised hope. Hope again turns out to be narrow concept than a dynamic one, as it now turns out to be a factor dependent on luck. And luck is something that just keeps you in the pursuit of happiness but never allows you to kiss it. Every fool proof attempt gets foiled for absolutely no reason. Every genuine attempt to reach the top fails to retain you there for long. You don’t find logical answers to the simplest questions as logic seems to be deficient in this hallucinated wonderland. Your near and dear, who never doubted your capabilities, start to get anxious and interrogate your each and every move. Sentimental values die in this world of people who suddenly turn pragmatic. The few exclusive “allies” that you trusted, turn out to be either sympathetic to your situation or mere opportunists by cloaking their real identities just to seek attention and in the process, generate moral support for themselves. They behave naïve so that they can show that they don’t stand a chance in front of you because they can’t eradicate the fact that you looked out for them when they needed you in testing times. In nutshell, you end up being a loser in one way or the other.

The practical reasoning to the whole scenario is only limited to the fact that you never knew your weaknesses while you were flowing with the tide. The real challenge is not in speeding up with the tide but learning to swim against it. Trust your instincts rather than someone else’ words. Patience is the shield and inner determination is the weapon. No one can claim to know you more than yourself. Free advice against your will shouldn’t deter you from your goals. Aberrant time is only a temporary phenomenon if you have a strong foresight. You made it through the good times and if you can still make a blended product mix of your abilities and feelings, you can oar your way through to the bad times as well.

Strong Vision : Final Destination?.... I dont think so

A very good friend of mine once told me that if you had a vision for something, you will get it for sure. She termed it as “The Law of Attraction”. I did initially believe her ideology instantly as I could personally enumerate several examples wherein I aimed for a benchmark and ended up achieving it eventually. There was this phase in my pre mature life wherein I strongly presumed as if God was waiting to readily grant me any rational desire.

To name a few, I wished for a 70%+ score at the beginning of my final year while pursuing my undergraduation. As the journey to the examination hall drew closer, kissing 70% seemed a remote possibility. But, to my surprise, I found my desire fulfilled when the results were declared. An overseas professional experience, a career focus and an overseas education followed suit as my desires turned into reality. For a cushy person like me, all these events were just treasured gifts.

My life in such a favorable atmosphere boosted my “confidence”- a word that never existed in my dictionary in the past. I never believed in luck because I thought that a hard working individual doesn’t need luck to get the fruits of his toil. I was excited that finally I could prove to people that I am not skeptical about my aptitude. I was basking in the praise and respect of my peers. Riding high on confidence, I believed that “Impossible is nothing” and that with a robust profile like mine, I stand a propitious chance of healthy placements from the industry heavy weights. I even made tall claims of helping my buddies find a job for themselves. Well, things seemed ridiculously weird with a success ratio of 100% until destiny tosses itself to show me the other side of the coin… The Dark Side!!

In a country that boasted sturdy macro economic fundamentals and a premium growth rate in the not so distant past, surprisingly recession showed its ugly face. Recruitments froze and retrenchment became the obnoxious news of the city. I couldn’t convert the few opportunities that knocked my door into a potential career as a result of copious applications. It was not that I didn’t live up to the hype. On the contrary, the Dark Side got even weirder than my golden era.

In the four months span of seeking employment, I cashed on the selection process of most of the prospects that I had. But I was denied a professional role in their organization for either baseless reasons or for no reason at all. I was getting restless and running out of relevant options. I tried my references, friends, relatives and even foes for some leads in my quest for a suitable profession; all in vain. I was starting to feel a gradual loss of respect amongst my acquaintances within this lean patch of time. I felt betrayed by God who is now playing his dirty games with me. At one point of time, one of my friends even questioned my knowledge and regarded me inferior to a person who had no technical expertise in my area of specialization. My confidence was bruised, morale down and the bleeding continued.

Based on the incidents unfolding in my life, it was obvious on my part to think whether this was the end of the road to success? One thing I realized for sure was that happy endings happen only in story books and movies. Another question that bogged my mind was the relevance of hard work prevailing over tough luck. And even if luck existed, I have been brave enough to maintain my composure while facing the test of time. Yet, why doesn’t the proverb, “Luck favors the brave” hold true for me?

I guess, the so called "Law of Attraction" is more based on ceterus paribus assumptions, given my destiny as an exception to it. Or maybe my good old friend forgot to mention a time frame associated with the law. In nutshell, my stronger vision hasn't yielded me results.... yet!!

Jealousy or Self Pride – Which is more justified?

Jealousy, I believe, is a feeling of losing supremacy to somebody better than you. It makes you envious of the quality of somebody else and compels you to compete him/her to improve/increase your fan following. However, there is a thin foil of difference between being jealous of somebody and being proud about you, assuming the fact that both these feelings are derived from the same source.

Jealousy is more of an open broadcast of frustration with an element of private gain in it. Jealousy makes you lose your integrity and consciously drives you to defame your rival to gain your self-importance. It inculcates a proxy cold war attitude between you and your “opponent”, if I may say. On the other hand, Pride is a strong function of self respect not intimidated by the performance of your peers or adversaries. A performance backed pride is a stronger phenomenon than jealousy as it does not negatively impact your relationships with people and at the same time maintains your authenticity.

To be backed by examples, the feeling of jealousy in an employed person will always leave him unsatisfied given the fact that his antagonist is placed in a better position. Pride, on the other hand, will even leave an unemployed person relieved, for he will always believe that there is something larger in store for him given the fact that he is talented.

Many would dispute that pride is a negative factor and should never be a vital component of the human personality. I would like to reiterate that the pride that I am talking about is not a hyperbolic demonstration but an accomplishment motivated exhibit. Such pride would place you above others without being obsessed and at the same time maintain your innocence and character.

In nutshell, I could say that jealousy is an outcome of unhealthy comparison and hence responsive. But, pride, only if provoked from the individual’s perspective, is reactive.

Obduracy or Responsibility?

Life is a formal responsibility,
wherein you give a show
to perform what you know
by putting in your maximum ability

Responsibilities should never be underestimated
as it’s a deemed serious reality
where you witness unlimited assignments
without any remuneration in pay or pity

The tasks you do is your presumed duty
which undoubtedly has to be done
An effort goes withered for a task of quality
No appreciation and you’re always on the run.

Duties are like premiums
that your parents have to be paid
for insuring and safeguarding your life
and providing you sufficient aid.

So here’s how you commit your duties:
Sacrifice your dreams, interests and fun
And make your life your parents’ asset.
That’s the new mantra for earning the title
of an inobdurate, responsible son

Critics – Who are they anyways?

Critics have been stereotyped to be those set of individuals who always highlight and delineate the ‘bad’ in everything, whether moral or immoral. Their behaviour discharges arrogance, rudeness, humiliation and to be specific, demotivation. They are a pain in the neck and add more suffering to the wounds with their sick and cynical attitude. A resulting frustration, which is undoubtedly obvious, elevates a question in our minds, “Aren’t they supposed to mind their own businesses rather than poking their ugly noses into others’ affairs?” In such a scenario, it is apt to say that the thought in the mind of each individual with an irritating critic would be “Help me! I am cursed”.

In the light of these thoughts, let us imagine a situation where you, a lethargic graduate who boasts of successfully battling exams and are waiting for the right job to come your way, have been critically exclaimed by your father that you do not have the ability to win the race for jobs as a novice. Will you start hating your father for introducing the word “competition” to you and igniting that feeling in you? Consider another situation wherein your friend disgraces you who have to give a test that defines your career and you are too lazy to open the book, by challenging your aptitude to crack the test. Will you start hating your friend for provoking your intensity?

If you ask me, I would tell you that your critics are those set of individuals who know that you have the proficiency to perform better. They are motivators in a pessimistic camouflage that keeps on needling you and in the process, instigates your senses to rise against the odds. I may contradict my previous blog wherein I had mentioned a dialogue from the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” which went like “Don't ever let someone tell you, you can't do something. You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it”. This was exactly what Christopher Gardener felt when he was put down by critics. But what was left unexplored in the movie was that he felt that he had a statement to prove to these set of individuals and that geared him to pursue a profession that was remotely not meant for him and in the end, excel in it.

With this rehabilitated perspective, isn’t it rational to construe that critics are your true navigators in the disguise of an adversary? People who praise you when you are a nobody are flatterers. These flatterers whom you embrace as your friends most likely use you to climb the ladder to success and your critics are the bohemian ones who save you from committing such avoidable errors. However, their eccentric way of guiding you are repaid with hatred. We believe that their actions are not supportive and reckless, but the fact is that it’s only concern and their trust in your capabilities that triggers them to confront your attributes, when every other positive attempt to motivate you has failed. The whole point made is that a negative influence is the key behind a positive outcome.

Love – The Orthodox Feeling or the Unconventional Habit

The phenomenon called “Love” is everywhere and everyone has his or her own experiences to state on how good it feels to fall in love. There have been odes, phrases, thoughts and a lot of interpretations on the term “love”, the most common being referring it to be an intense feeling or a state of emotion. It is quoted by many to be an impulse that follows from the depth of the heart with clearly no role for the brain to play. The widespread belief amongst human species that fall in this popular experience known as “Love” is that it incites the mind to do all the moves that portray affection, intimacy and reciprocation towards the opposite/same sex. However, when we try to dig out the source of love between two individuals, we most often end up with weird and ambiguous justifications. If love is claimed to be an emotion or state of mind, so is anger, laughter and crying. The latter states of mind can be validated to be an immediate outcome of some provocation, but a similar conclusion cannot be derived about the former, thereby challenging the coherence of love as a feeling. So, if love is not a feeling, what is it and how does it happen?

The right way to understand the term “Love” is to consider it as less of a feeling and more of a habit. Most of you might have already started to think that associating love to be a habit sounds unconventional. In a way it is, but it cannot be deemed as incorrect, now that categorizing it as a feeling doesn’t make sense and in the end I am sure that we can come to amicable terms with whatever is established. To start with, we can eliminate the concept of “Love at first sight”. It makes no sense at all. Love at first sight is an uncertainty. I say that because a sane individual cannot speculate that he/she will be able to sustain, what he/she assumes to be love on the very first encounter, from a long term perspective. Moreover, the probability of the success of a life long commitment as a result of the first confrontation is very negligible, to be frank, nil. This uncertainty is known to the common man as infatuation which is a short term gamble that can have adverse effects in an unfavorable event. So as a smart investor in love, it is not worth investing your time and money on an event as risky as “Love at first sight”. Hence it makes sense to evade discussing something that is baseless.

That alleviates us to understand and make ceterus paribus assumptions for the moment that love is a long term commitment between two individuals who have vowed to be with each other in times of happiness and disparities। In other words, the outcome is known but the origin is undefined.

Moving forward, we try to establish a source to the occurrence of love from the point when two individuals meet. The first phase begins when they spend time together as friends. Initially either one of them is not resilient which interests them into entering the second phase, which is the part when they try to know each other. What starts as a pretty formal conversation gradually gets personal and as they talk, they get to share their opinions and ideas about events and stuff happening around them. They improvise on their conversational skills to know their interests and turn offs better. This automatically leads them to the third phase – the frequent phone calls and informal meetings. Now this stage is what I believe the turning point as in the process of making their friendship stronger, they unknowingly become susceptible to a relationship which is beyond the purview of friendship. They are bound by an attachment which they haven’t discovered at this stage. Longer duration of talks and frequently seeing each other makes them habituated to each other prompting them to take their present relationship to the next level. The fourth phase that follows as a result is obvious. This is the phase wherein both individuals set out to get intimate with each other as they believe that their behavior at this point is not at all outlandish. Thereafter, they perceive their relationship to be love and hold it responsible for all prospective events that occur between them. This relationship grows so stronger with time that the mere thought of separation haunts their minds.

Practically when we study this situation, we can observe a failure on their part to identify that all events that take place between them cannot be accounted to any feeling or emotion but it is the consequence of a prolonged togetherness between the two. A habit, as we all know, is also a human instinct of being regular to an event or act that occurs automatically without thinking about its morality. Now if that is what we mean of the term “habit”, then how different is love from it?

Emotional mind - in the context of Happiness

Somebody who went through this blog made a wonderful observation. She sought a reason for her observation as to why haven’t I penned good memories and focused only on negative aspects of life. It was then that I questioned my conscience, “Am I so unhappy?” If I leave alone myself and try to figure out the number of people across the globe who are actually content in their lives, will I be getting a whooping lot of people or will I end up finding up a majority number of people who share like minds with me. Before we actually ponder on this issue, we need to throw some light on how is happiness defined.

I quick searched on the internet and found a promising definition which goes like, “Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will elude you but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” With this explanation to the term, ‘Happiness’, I seek the answer to one simple question. Are you actually unhappy or are you evading happiness in its pursuit?

Happiness is just like a lamp,
which gives pleasure till its lit,
but loses its beauty the very instance
when it runs out of oil.

Happiness is just like a perfume,
which cannot be sprayed on everyone,
unless you try learning,
to spray it on yourself.

Happiness is just like a lightning,
followed by a deafening thunder.
Joy comes like an immediate flash
but following the loudest sorrow.

Happiness cannot be stored or preserved,
but need to be spread among fellow persons.
Happiness need not be a thing that lasts forever,
but a thing which gradually reduces with time.

Sanity

Tell me the meaning of life
Life is just like a sudden storm,
filled with lightning and thunder,
in which sank many a ships.

Tell me the meaning of life
Life is just like a weak paper boat,
which slowly and steadily sinks,
with every drop of water falling on it.

Life is just like a barren desert,
with lots of thorny heart breaks.
Life is just like an ocean full of water,
yet not a single drop to drink.

Life is nothing but a journey,
which is very dry and tiring.
Life is nothing but hunger for money,
leading to roads of fear and killing.

Life is just like a garden,
full of leafless thorns,
in which people get stuck up
and fall prey to death.

Tell me the meaning of death
Death is a long sleep,
which ends to find us in paradise,

where we begin a new life.

Ignorance – A gift in disguise

It doesn’t make sense at all as to why people have to interfere in other's well being. If there is nothing positive to be said about a person, then there should very well be an advantage to enumerate the defects of that person. And if there isn’t any, then what is the reason in pointing out the differences? Is it to show that you are stronger and successful than others, is it that you hate him/her to that very extent or is it sheer pleasure out of being rude to whom they consider weak and driving them nuts?

Psychologically, there is no answer to these questions. But there still exists a larger set of such people who can mock at others without remorse and still walk away from them without giving any explanations for their shameful acts. It is completely insane but the frequency of such events put light to some sanity in the happening of such events. A perfect day is ruined, a life troubled and a world devastated, just because somebody thought that it was fun in mocking others and proving them to be a dunce.
Why can’t lives be normal and less complicated? Why can’t they live their own lives and let others lead theirs. Is it so important to advertise your happiness at the cost of ruining somebody else'? But then if you are confident about yourself, strong enough to handle your critics and have been on the receiving end numerous times, why should these preposterous comments made by others, actually bother you?
The key to understanding the myth behind the botheration is that somebody who matters or have mattered to you in the recent past has the power to inflict so much pain into you that you can die if you lose the battle completely. The only way out of this situation is to strike back if you think you are equally powerful or else ignore them completely and make them realize that they are the one who have made a fool out of themselves by lowering themselves to the standards of a street toddler and in the process, losing their dignity and value. There is a cliché that “Ignorance is bliss” and it works on most occasions in the favor of the victim, if that’s the right terminology to be used in this context. As rightfully said in the movie 'The Pursuit of Happyness' by the character 'Christopher Gardener', "Don't ever let someone tell you, you can't do something. You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it".

This is exactly what you ought to tell your conscience. Let your achievements in due course prove to these set of people that you follow the saying “Fools dance where angels fear to walk”.

Survivor

In the chaos filled sky,
of a climate very hot and dry,
lay a glimpse on a wrecked boat,
waving for help with his torn coat.

Amidst the deep angry sea,
he pillared all alone to see,
any ship passing his way,
but luck unfavoured his whole day.

He knew he was on his own
and made him to a nearby beach.
Sighing and panting he began to moan
yet made it to his reach.

Sitting on the hot sand,
he recollected his own land,
from where he started his voyage,
to seek fame and an image.

His destination was almost near,
but fate had him to fear,
the most fiercest storm,
which had everybody to drown.

The storm gulped all but one
and proceeded on its way,
surviving him alone in the run.
with a wrecked boat on to lay.

He had no hopes in this sand,
all alone on a lonely island.
He needs help to remain alive.
He wants to live but no one survive.

Another day wasted....

I was my own self in my own prejudicial world - the equation of having a job, the train journey during rush hours, the market check and minting money wherever required. But then a stupid thinking ran through my mind to shape up my career, not here but somewhere in the first world. I went to the UK, with too much of force and less of coax from parents. Assuming it to be for my own good, I let them dominate my conscience and actually make it a slave to the owner of my body itself.

Well, since the day and till the end of the month that I reached there, I was only sight to the hell that I went through; trying to convince my mind about the prison like room, not friendly and rather racist country and expensive life in the UK. The pool of mixed emotions seemed to ruin my health and brains. But I didn’t want a disappointment and an embarrassment yet again at my hands to my parents, like I did way back when my dad placed me in his company for a job of which I had no idea or career focus. All he was concerned was about his efforts to get me there, but not about what I wish to pursue. But that time my mind shrugged its first guts to defy him and forced my body against him and much against anyone (for whom money was the only important diet in life), I came back to my world.

Coming back to the life which took a rather exciting mode after a disgusting start in the London life, I met new friends of my type and age, which made me realize that there’s more that meets the eye than your own self and family social life. I basked in their presence, did what they did, enjoyed like never before. I made my life change from the regular nerd boy to the lovely chocolate boy, ready to unleash. But disappointments kept showing its ugly face, when it seemed that everything was going my way. I did a blunder of coming on vacation in December 06, fresh from the UK party life, to face another sloth like life. Maybe I was demanding too much from too little. But I was adamant that I needed it badly and forced myself so hard that at least I got a partner to go places I never been before and sounds that I never heard before, even though I made enemy of my parents, I was beginning to experience a new phase of life where there are sights and sounds that is larger and greater than the 2x2 flat in the countryside or the company of my blood relatives. I started to believe more than what was written in my destiny - the destiny that was designed by my father and the destiny that has been followed by my forefathers. I defied the truth and reached a world of wonderland. The bottom line remained, no matter the odds, I was happy.
I returned with all my happiness to UK again but then again ugly faces of treachery and deceit threatened my enjoyment. Somehow, I tackled it all and stood strong. I never had anybody to celebrate my performances my entire life. So I made every little thing that I achieved, a big feather in my cap. I made an individual personality of myself which was independent of my parents, my relatives, my friends and every other acquaintance I knew. I had a world and I just created a new world of myself taking something good from everyone I knew. I got set in my own world and then another crime struck my mind. I finished my course and committed another mistake of rushing back to my motherland. Hasty, as it seemed, I still hedged my prior mistakes and made a plan so that things don’t go awkward. But the discipline I maintained in my life of 1 year abroad seemed so ridiculous once I landed here. I thought myself to be a genius and only I landed here, I have been made to look like a dunce. I understood one thing, plan or no plan; enjoyment always comes at a price. You pay the price of being an ideal son, a brother, a relative, its only then you will enjoy the privileges of enjoying your own life.

A Day Shall Come

A day shall come
when life would be all fun,
when all sorrows would end
in the rise of a new sun.

A day shall come
when the oceans will be blue,
when the paradise in our minds
would turn out to be true.

A day shall come
when peace would spread all over,
when all would forget their woes
in the embraced arms of each other.

A day shall come
when the poor would live,
when the hungry will eat
his share of rice and wheat.

A day shall come
when you will contribute something,
for which you will be rewarded
by some needy, with a blessing.

Silent Anger - Prejudicial solution or a suicide bomb

Anger or wrath is beyond the control of the mind and in some cases the body as well. However, it tends to become more dangerous when it is coupled with silence. A silent anger has its after effects on not only the person in himself but also affects the people around him. It takes only a second to raise anger in oneself but it takes a lot of time to pacify it, sometimes, even ages. Anger is the outcome of accumulated frustration, things going wrong on most occasions, an execution though proper but not giving the right results, strong ego et. al.

A silent anger escalates your ego and puts it above everybody else. At that point of time, you want everything and everyone to succumb to your prejudice. Every silly error seems like a big mistake when the mind is under the intoxication of anger. You don’t seem to understand the sanity of facts happening in and around you. As a matter of fact, you don’t actually care about sanity when your ire is at its peak. You just concentrate on what your mind keeps blabbering and which makes no sense at all in whatsoever manner. The body highly becomes aloof and seems to have no connection with the mind. It develops a 3/4:1/4 ratio of the mind to that of the body with relation to the brains. You wish to hear loud music, maybe walk miles aimlessly or hit somebody so hard that it becomes very difficult to recognize that person. A silent anger situation completely eradicates the third aspect of it. In such a stage, the body does something totally different and uncalled for. An angry mind doesn’t command its body to stay with it. The body in the absence of command does all kind of erroneous stuff like walk into a shop and buy the wrong stuff, do not realize a phone that’s ringing, do not feel the hunger in the whole day, stop on a green pedestrian signal, do not hear and react to other people cursing you for blocking their ways or for that matter do not even realize that a bus is about to run you down. And the mind; it still is busy calculating all possible equations, analyzing all axioms to derive inferences that are so very uncliched. But “who gives a fuck what others think! I am above others and I am the very best and everyone needs to accept what I say, what I do”, says the mind in the influence of the silent anger. You feel a fire within you that you want to aggravate and turn it into a flaming phenomenon. You want the fumes to dope your senses so much that they reach a state of trance. You don’t feel the burns of it and you want more heat at your own sweet discretion. You want yourself to be seen as a flaming torch ready to unleash on anyone that comes in his way.

In the state of silent anger, you might have locked yourself inside a room trying to distance yourself from others who you thought were on confronting terms. You want to lose everybody to the fire in you and the devil in your mind makes that possible for you and there you are; the lone survivor to your havoc. You had all your prey for your saddistic pleasure and flaming desire. But will that be the truth that will prevail? At the end of all this, when the flame disappears, it leaves only ashes and nothing else. As the anger subsides and the speech follows gradually, it is highly skeptical that there will be listeners in and around you now. Now at the end of everything, your eyes contract and wish to see everything normal in and around you. You wish to walk out of that door and maybe, grab something to eat as you are very hungry. But since you shopped for unwanted things, you didn’t get anything in particular to satisfy your hunger. You realize how dumb you were. You try and call your friends to check whether you can join them for lunch. But they don’t answer your calls since you ignored their phone calls when you were busy in your world of antipathy, thereby making an enemy of them. You curse them for holding a grudge against you but you completely disregard their patience in calling you when you were being seduced by your ludicrous and egoistic anger. As the day dawns, you realize your mistakes as a consequence of your silent anger; but is there somebody left to confess to? In the end you thought you stood as a victor to your bigotry, but you have cost your well wishers to your lust for self respect. Now you are left to think, was that what you wanted?