The weary sailor

Today, I turned 26. I haven't recorded anything on my pensieve for a while. I dont know why. I didnt feel like it. Seeing someone else's pensieve today reminded me of this one. Different people celebrate their birthdays in different ways. Somehow my birthdays make me thoughtful. I use them to reflect about what I did the previous year. Its a good time to be lonely. I hid from my friends today, like last year and the year before. IMO, It is ok to celebrate festivals together with people. Celebrating your own birth sounds facetious to me. Or is it the guilt that makes me hide. I dont wish my friends on their birthdays, not on intent, sometimes I forget. No big deal. But to be honest, it makes me guilty if people remember mine and wish me.

When I started this blog, I was 21, fresh out of college, so eager to live life, searching for my place in life. 5 years down the line, gone through a lot in life, lived some of it, wasted some of it. In retrospect life's been good to me, nah, kind to me, compared to some others. Yet the same feeling of restlessness prevails. The emptiness lingers like a bitter taste which lasts too long and the search continues; Yes, I am content with life, but not quite so, if that makes sense to you. Not that it does any to me.

I don't know why I bother to record my thoughts here anymore, because after a few months, few years, I look back at them and they seem silly. But in a way it records a snapshot of my thoughts at a point in life. A measure of progress(or is it?) in my thought process. From what I see, and I declare, I have grown a lot older and wiser since my first post. Wise seems to be a cool thing to be. But believe me, wisdom just puts your follies under the microscope and makes you squirm. And what seems wisdom to you today, seems so immature in another year. Instead of things getting clearer, they get murkier and you start seeing the gray shades in between black and white, which frankly I don't want to see. Every year, I think I have seen a lot in life, but the next year belittles the previous one. But let me remind myself how a good photograph is made. Too little exposure makes it too dark to see, too much ruins it. You want just the right amount of light. Yes, I want my life to be picture perfect, I am a mere mortal. I want the right amount of wisdom. Let me stop my ramblings here, before I go out of focus, if I haven't done so already. Oh wait, what was my focus? Nevermind. If you havent already, go read my disclaimer.

Hmm, so, what next? What do I want to do in the next year.

Nothing much, Just do the right thing. Uff, so easy to say. And I want to preserve the part of my heart which hopes for miracles and believes in God, because, if it stops believing, it starts decaying. Be good to people for whom I mean a lot, try not to show my stupidity, and yes, do the right thing. And be proud of what I am and not try too hard to be the 'ideal' person. Take everything in life, success or failure, with a pinch of salt. Ok life, bring it on. Lets see what you got!

Lessons learnt in life

These are the biggest lessons in my life but I still forget them quite often and have to learn them again the hard way. I dont want that to happen again. So I am recording them in my pensieve as I learn them.

1) Never judge anyone
2) You dont have the right to hurt anyone with words or with actions
3) There is no shortcut to success
4) Trust is the cornerstone of any relationship
5) Follow your inner instincts no matter what the world may think of you

6) Don't let success or failure get to you. Take both of them in your stride. Change, mah man, is the only thing that doesn't change in life.

Incoherent ramblings about Human life and relationships

I hear people saying 'She is intelligent', 'He is selfish', 'They are dumb'. I myself tend to categorize and stereotype people based on culture, race, nationality etc. But something bothers me when I do that.

I cant help wondering when I observe different people of the world, totally different from each other in race, lifestyle, food habits, language that they are all the same within. If you leave out people's characteristics like race, language, culture, lifestyle and just see their raw emotions like anger, happiness, pain etc. you would find how strikingly similar they are. It is like the same wheat that goes into making roti, tortilla, bread, cereals and whatnot. You could categorize food into proteins, carbs, minerals, vitamins too. Or you could categorize them as healthy or unhealthy. Organic and Inorganic.

Just like foods you can easily sort people into a few categories. But at the same time different social conditions, geography, historical happenings have played a role in making every one of them unique. They are not just what they are individually, but they are what they interact with each second of their life. Every moment in their life plays a part in their evolution. Every other person that they interact with make a difference to their individuality which keeps changing every moment of their life.

In the field of computer science random number generation is considered as a hard problem by researchers. Anyone would wonder why generating random number is so difficult, but machines are not like humans. They are mechanical ultimately and they are just dumb however complex you make them. Human beings are incredibly random and excitingly unpredictable. The so called 'seed' (simplest is timestamp in computers) to randomize human life is provided by nature in infinite utterly unpredictable ways. So next time you think your iPhone is cool, think again. You are cooler than anything else and that too without any effort from you. You were born cool !

So in this scenario, how could you say that someone is beautiful, intelligent, dumb or lazy. Anyone of that characteristics might change any moment. But this is the same trait which makes people wonderfully interesting and this is what makes life worth living. But this is the same human fraility which makes people so unpredictable, causes so many sufferings and insecurity.

Why did hitler cause the holocaust? What caused him to hate jews? Did he ever love anyone whole heartedly? How many people loved him unconditionally? What was he like as a person, if he was not the Fuhrer? Can we call him outright a 'bad' person? What about Mahathma Gandhi? Was he as good a person in all walks of his life or was he just a good leader? Can we just call him a 'good' person. What may be good for one might be bad for another. Didn't the British loathe Gandhi?

I will never have answers to these questions. I dont expect to. All I promise to myself now is that I will never ever judge a person. Not that I donot trust them or I want to give them a second chance, but simply because judging a person is a waste of time. A person is what he/she is at that moment. I might be a different person tomorrow when I read this again, but then I am what I am at a particular moment in my life and the rest is all, as they say, history.

If at all there ever were few words which conveyed great meaning, then these are those immortal words. 'Change alone is unchanging' - Heraclitus.

Searching for answers

1) Why do I have a lot of questions but no answers?
2) What is the purpose of my life?
3) How do one find one's purpose in life?
4) Does a life need purpose?
5) Does God exist?
6) What is love?
7) Can you truly love only one person in your life?

Things to do in my life ( in no particular order )

I am putting this down in here, lest I forget. Also when my mind (Mr.Hyde) plays games with me saying that I dont have anything to do, I would remember the backlog.

1) Try out sustainable living
2) Travel around the world (not just visit )
3) Write a book
4) Get a six-pack abs
5) Start a company
6) Have a dog, a Labrador
7) Build a home with my own hands
8) Plant a seed and watch it grow
9) Bungee jump
10) Shoot a machine gun
11) Make a big (+ve :) impact on the world

Non material things
1) Be able to win Jerry Springer's Nothing But the Truth without any embarrassment.
2) Be able to say the right thing at the right time.
3) Be able to be in total control of all my emotions at any point time.

Miracle and Me

Are you a believer of miracles? Has any miracle happened to you? Are miracles strictly for children? Well, I was thinking the same till very recently.
Last Sunday, at Trivandrum, it happened to me… Believe it or not that’s what I call this incident... A Miracle...
I watched a tamil movie with my friend and was returning back, when i suddenly missed my mobile... i remembered having it in my hand at the movie-house. So we went back to the theatre to check, incase it was still there, although i had no illusions whatsoever in my mind that the phone would be there. On the way back i planned to buy my next mobile, and even decided on the model to buy. We reached there and enquired at the gate. the watchman told us that a mobile was found and handed over to the office. Still unbelieving, i went to the office, my sagged spirits rising steadily and guardedly. There it was my good old companion lying serenely on the table before a bespectacled man, who when i approached smilingly gave away the mobile without any dramatics of any sort...!!! It was a humble guard at the cinema who has first spotted and returned the mobile to the manager. I met him and gave him a "reward" Rs.50!!! ooh, how magnimous...! 50 for a mobile of 5000... great bargain, eh? strangely, i felt sick... As i couldn't say anything else i said 'thank you' and walked off... happy and ashamed at the same time! Then slowly my mind began to explain all that happend that day...

'Why the hell are you dull?', it asked? 'You got your phone, rite? U should be happy? What do you know abt that man? Maybe he was in such a circumstance, that he had to return it... like maybe someone else was with him when he found it and so he had no other go... or maybe he had another better phone(?)... or maybe he got a mental satisfaction by returning it which is bigger than any other reward...yeah, i this is more feasible... Y do you care? All is well that ends well. Cheer up, buddy'

Yes, I agreed. and I was cheering up a bit, when i was asked by my fickle mind again 'What would you have done in his position? suppose u find an iPod in a theater?'. To my utter embarrasment and shame, I could not right away and with conviction say that i would have done what he did. That was when i realised the miracle that has happened to me. how often miracles go unnoticed... and i vowed to do a miracle for anybody who needs one and for whom i am capable of doing one...

It is easy to let go of a miracle unnoticed...so watch out for them... Miracles dont happen at all times... and when they do happen they leave a deep impact, like mine did to me... so maybe the things they say abt God keeping record of your good and bad turns is actually true...??? maybe watever good and bad you do will come back to you, not necessarily in that order and not necessarily from the same person...??? It is unanswered questions like these which make 'God' so powerful... we all have it in us to perform miracles... small or big but a miracle nontheless... so go out and do miracles and be 'God'... Yes, we all have it in us to be God...

The Launch

1...2.....3.....Boom. I declare MyPensieve Operational!!!
(applause)

got it?no? you din understand? That was my idea of a Grand Opening Ceremony...
Directions for readin my mind in my pensieve:
1) My mind, as i said, is a complex thing. So always try to get the bigger idea from whatever i write. never think about the bits and pieces of the zigzaw puzzle. the bigger picture is what that matters!

2) I should say, my mind must have been organised in a tree(tat one is for the techies) structure, coz when i think of a word, ten other words come to my mind and so on... till i forget wat i first thought... i represent such thoughts with nested brackets(nother one for the techies)

3) I believe in explaining with examples. Sitting in my cubicle i think, (this is my 4 sqfeet world(honey they shrunk my world(the world is not enough(as if you have the whole world(remember the world is a tiny dot viewed from a billion light years away(hey! it must be cool to be an astronomer(did kalpana chawla speak hindi?(i should learn to speak hindi(how will the world be today without language(language is the best thing that has ever happened to man(how did language happen to be?(it would never been there but for the human ability to think(cool, thought is the best gift that man has ever had(man, i have been wasting my thoughts all these years........(>>>>>>>>(******))))))))))))) Well where was i? ...!@#$% Yeah i know..... That was how this BLOG WAS BORN.

4) One final direction before you read my blog. MAKE YOUR WILL. May be this is too late to warn you. If you are still sane enough to read this line then i should say, you have passed the threshold with flying colors. Bravo!!!!!!!

To understand my mind you should understand me. Well, i am normally a level-headed guy with a decent reputation in the social front. But thats where the trouble starts... to be a level-headed guy you have to forego a lot of comforts of being insane... you waste a lot of time plotting and planning how to think like a level-headed guy. that means that you can never be yourself and do,speak, act-like a level-headed guy whom unfortunately nobody seems to have ever met. Well, to be level-headed you must stress yourself by trying to tweak your own mind. i say that how many most unlevel-headed men are made.

ugh! all this mind talk makes me sick! ok. thats more than enough dosage of my thoughts for now! but as arnie always keeps telling "I'll be back!" No wonder that potter guy is a wizard! how else did he come back undisturbed experiencing so many thoughts of so many encumbered minds?

Do come back again to delve more deeply into the mushy, bushy, hazy,mysterious confines of my mind. bye...

wait............

Why in the first place did i start writing this? no idea? well, never mind... i think this is wat they call "mind over matter".

whatever it is, i bid you good bye(at last) with a heavy heart. hey, wait a sec...
why is my heart heavy? shouldn't my head be heavy? where is my mind ? in my head or heart... I don think this would be fruitful...

Now i know i have chosen it correct... to be level-headed...
i have...

lemme go back to my thinking... God... to think that this was just a beginning...!!!

Bless'd be thou who come back for more...

Yuppie... Got it....! i just found out y Oliver Twist was reprimanded for asking more...





STATUTORY WARNING:
Reading my blog is injurious to your brain.