Category: Life Ordinary

  • Fake my life

    Funny Confession Ecard: I am no match for the perfect, carefully crafted online version of myself.The perfect life, that’s what I called it – the phenomenon that has spread across the two social networks I frequent. Facebook Photos is nothing new and has come up here as a subject for discussion earlier. But its rise has been meteoric, just like the social network. The best vacations, the coolest friends, the hottest parties, the snazziest gadgets, seems everyone can haz it. 🙂 Twitter is not far behind. People, almost like brands, out to show their best side. Made for Facebook/Made for Twitter/ Lies of Life, call it what you will. Of course condolences would pour in if someone had a distressing update. Either outrage against the wrongdoer if any, or at least a +1 to show solidarity. Unfollow, unfriend you’d say, but these are not bad people, they just have a perfect life. 🙂 Unfortunately, the networks work as emotion aggregators too, forcing me to vent once in a while. [image source Check it out for more awesomeness :)] And yes, I generalise. 🙂

    I have wondered about the motivation. Maybe we like to share happiness more than sadness by default. Maybe sadness is a private thing we choose only to share with dear ones. (do you think there’s a social network idea there? A mutant version of Path) Maybe the algorithms ensure I see only the happy ones. Or maybe it’s indeed true that our vanity stops us from showing that we have been humbled, beaten, saddened by a human hand or a twist of fate.

    A few minutes after I tweeted about the perfect life, I got a message on the blog (deleted now) from an old dear friend S, who had gotten in touch after quite a while. In the long years before a virtual home, when a real diary was a lifesaver, hers would probably be the name that was mentioned most, before the rise of the  thenceforth omnipresent D. 🙂

    S isn’t on twitter, so she would have no idea of the coincidence. She was happy about the progress I was making, doing the things I love to do and generally having fun. And that led me to wonder if I, in my own limited way, was also feeding the perfect life network. So here’s setting the record straight. In case you see my vacation photos, restaurant visits and general attempts at humour and think that the story begins and ends there, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

    As many of my posts would indicate, I have multiple ‘missed life crises’ – singer, author, theatre actor, h3ll, even cricketer, and perhaps a few more too, all skills I have either displayed to some degree or think I possess. 🙂 I think way too much for my own good and am forever irritated at the inequity of life (in terms of those more unfortunate) and not being able to do much about it. I am constantly trying to shed baggage and sometimes failing miserably. My feelings of insecurity would be legend if they were a published work. Thankfully D exists. There is more, but that’s enough fun at my expense. The silver lining is that I’m learning through it all. Meanwhile, all I’m trying to say is that the grass on the other side is probably photoshopped. If it’s not, they’ve probably worked hard to make it this way. And we can too, if we try. Please smile now, and mean it. Or I’ll have to ask you to Like the post 😉

    until next time, open source happiness

    PS: It was only recently that I gave off my fakemytrip.com domain to mygola. I had bought it thanks to an irritating status on FB, and had a 4sq based idea around it. 😀

  • The window seat….

    …at night. The sight of a person looking into infinity from within the confines of a moving vehicle. What sparked this memory was a single scene from a song in a movie (Malayalam) that I saw recently – Salt N’ Pepper. Not in this song, which is absolute foodpr0n, but in the other melodious song (2:50 – 3:05) You’ll probably not recognise Shwetha Menon. 🙂

    In trains, it works differently for me. The lights are much further away, and flicker, as though desperately trying to get me to imagine their story. In buses, the lights seem much closer, and so are the people outside. Returning from work, knowing they have a night ahead to recoup before they face the daily grind the next day. On their way to meet friends, hoping they’ll have a good time. Rushing home, eager to see a loved one, whom they have missed all day. Stories of hope, stories with a face.

    I don’t get to see this these days, but I remember when I was in engineering college and used to return home on weekends. My usual bus dropped me at home by 6, too early for this, but in case I got delayed, I’d be in a plodding bus, half empty, on a route and through a landscape that looked completely different when seen at night. Before I got the Kiney to Goa, the trip from Panjim to Ribandar at night felt just the same. The Mandovi just made it extra special. In my first job, there was a period during which I used to travel daily from Cochin to Paravur, about 20 km away. That was probably the last time I got the window seat in a bus, at night. Ironically, that was also the time I used to go back to an empty home. One of those times, when the spectator had his own story to tell. 🙂

    There is something about the window-seat-at-night experience – romantic/ nostalgic/ wistful that makes it special. A feeling that I was not alone in the crowd. It used to give me a sense of peace, a feeling that everything would be alright.

    until next time, the bus stops here.

  • Conscious choices

    I found this video shared by K (part of a series by Professor Russell Stannard) offering me a very interesting perspective on the free will vs determinism debate. (earlier post)

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8EI4obG5zM

    He starts with talking about the brain as a physical object which is governed by the physical/chemical/biological rules of nature – like a computer works within a  set of mechanical/electronic laws – and therefore predictable. So it should be possible to predict our choices. But it doesn’t work that way. Consciousness is different.

    He then talks about how some are trying to apply quantum theory to the free will – determinism debate. Apparently, at sub atomic level, the ‘future’ is not predictable with absolute certainty. It has a built-in uncertainty in it. What we can do, however, is predict the odds of various possible outcomes – the average behaviour of various items. So if this is applied to individual cells whose behaviour is unpredictable, it would be free will, say the proponents of this theory. But the prof refutes this, and says that this is one of the debates that can’t be solved to everyone’s satisfaction.

    [This prediction of group behaviour reminded me of Asimov’s Foundation series and specifically Hari Seldon‘s psychohistory, through which he predicts the future in probabilistic terms.]

    But more importantly, it made me think that if indeed, there is a creator, maybe he built the automaton inside our head to make us predictable. The automaton grows with us, making most of our decisions unconscious ones, based on baggage accumulated over time – conditioning. That could explain why those few who break out of it are able to attain a higher level of thinking in which they can bend the rules, predict the future and so on and the only advice they can give others is to be aware of every second.

    And when I think of predicting the odds of outcomes, I wonder if the results of all our free will choices are written, like a tree with infinite branches. And as we continue our journey of choices that is life, one by one the branches disappear, until on hindsight, they look like one straight line that was always meant to be that way.

     until next time, a predictable end

  • Halo Dilli

    No, I’m not shifting to Delhi.

    Lara Dutta is not an actress I’m a fan of, though I’ve not been able to fathom why. And this was long before she became part of Colgate’s Namak Harem (after Koel Puri and before Sonakshi Sinha), so that, though enough, can’t be the reason. However, Vinay Pathak is an actor I like, especially in roles in which he is a silent sufferer. (remember Dasvidaniya)

    Things thus balanced out, I decided to watch Chalo Dilli. Vinay’s Manu Gupta is awesome as ever, and Lara Dutta actually surprised me with a decent performance, and the ‘bhaisaab‘ and ‘behenji‘ shared an excellent chemistry throughout the road trip. Yana Gupta has always received an excellent chemistry from my side and that continued with her rendition of ‘Laila o Laila’. Since this isn’t a movie review, I’ll stop at that, and let you read a legit review by my favourite reviewer. Not a movie I’d fancy at a multiplex, but easily one that I’d buy a DVD of.

    Somewhere during the movie, probably the scene where Lara is surprised by the joy of seeing a sunrise, I had an epiphany of sorts – that I might have a better shot at joy if I didn’t pre-decide what could give me happiness. The templates that I form – movies, shopping, vacations, reading etc probably make me shrug off opportunities when they present themselves. In fact, I probably go out of my way to ignore them and prevent them from arising.

    It also made me think of the flip side – unhappiness/sorrow. Would I be better off if I decided what are the things that would really make me sad, instead of being upset over every minor derailment of plans? The ideal is to be able to treat happiness and sadness with the same calmness and even further, detachment, but until the time I get there, this is probably a good measure.

    until next time, chalo comment, don’t dilly dally 😉

  • Food for Soul week

    The Lovedale Foundation sent me a mail about an initiative called Food for Soul Week, which they’re organising in association with several restaurants across Bangalore (list below) as part of the Joy of Giving week, from the 2nd – 8th October. Details from their Facebook Page –

    The objective of this event is to create awareness and raise funds for Lovedale Foundation, an NGO which provides holistic education to under-privileged children from granite quarries in suburban Bangalore. In this initiative, all the participating restaurants are reserving a table ‘Food for Soul Table’ for Lovedale Foundation. Proceeds from that table will be donated by the restaurant towards supporting Lovedale Foundation. The funds raised through this event will be used to procure a school bus for the children of Lovedale Foundation. 

    When you are thinking about where to lunch or dine during this week (2nd-8th October), think about the children who will benefit from your decision. Head straight to one of the participating restaurants and do not forget to ask for the special ‘Food for Soul’ table.

    Enjoy a sumptuous meal and experience the little joys of life, the ‘Joy of Giving’!

    List of participating restaurants and hotels: 
    • Fava (UB City – 22117444) 
    • Mocha (Lavelle Road – 42110094/95) 
    • Mocha (Koramangala – 41570437)
    • Mast Kalandar (all 25 outlets across Bangalore) 
    • The Biere Club (42124383/84/86)
    • Opus (23442580)
    • The Gateway Hotel, Residency Road (66604545)

    Do spread the word and if possible, take part.