Category: Purpose

  • Of Missions and Missionaries

    Consider your general position in life…:) with a title like that, thought i’ll start with that statement myself before one of you smart ones decided to comment… but the statement wasnt just for the sake of it..
    what we do in life as a profession has very little to do with what we really want to do in life.. having said that, we are part of a timeframe when this is being realised, and more and more people are setting out to do their own thing… but different things like finance, peer pressure and the sheer lethargy of moving out of a comfort zone prevents the majority from starting all over again…which is where we come to the subject of people who walk a path that they have voluntarily seeked out… missionaries so to speak.. not just those of religion, but with various other purposes like saving the narmada or setting up old age homes… does their single mindedness ever fade, do they ever begin to doubt the cause? or is their faith so strong that they go through their life without questioning the purpose at all? maybe, just maybe, its perhaps better not to have too many options…
    i have always believed that to every life there is a reason.. every person is here to do something that wouldnt have happened without him.. he is a link – big or small, in a chain of events that when seen it totality, makes a profound impact… pravin mahajan is a case in example.. by himself he might have been a nothing… but by his action, he has altered the course of a national party, and perhaps the nation itself..each of us is a case in example, some of us realise our action and its effects, and some of us will be left wondering at the end of it all, what difference did we make?
    until next time, a different position, a different life 🙂

  • Fix you…

    Once again, so what exactly is it that we would love to do.. while it is an interesting debate whether we would stop loving things if we began to get paid for it, are there still things that fall outside that set, and which we would love doing irrespective of anything else…
    I, for one, would love to sing for a living, not at concerts, but more of a wandering bard…would love to write a book, and be happy if 5 people read it, loved it and felt it had made a difference in their lives.. would love to have my own chat shows and crack the kind of PJs that would help create homicidal maniacs..:).. some of the above are stuff which i might be able to pull off, and some i might realise that i wasnt quite cut out for…maybe thats what living a full life is all about… doing all these and being able to say that i tried everything.. maybe thats what makes happiness…
    or maybe its about knowing exactly what is it that you can do and want to do.. and then setting about achieving it whatever be the odds…which is perhaps what makes alonso world champion at 24, or sachin a treat to watch after more than decade of watching him… or an amitabh bachchan a star twice over.. maybe thats what makes happiness….
    maybe its about finding love, and keeping it, and knowing that whatever else happens, that person will always be by your side.. maybe thats what makes happiness…
    and meanwhile we walk the paths, some common, some uncommon and hope that God is singing to us(instead of Coldplay)
    Lights will guide you home..
    and ignite your bones…
    and i will try and fix you…

    until next time, are we in a fix??

  • For what i came…..

    I finished reading a book recently, ‘vertigo’ by ashok banker… set in mumbai a little over a decade back, it explores the existence of a guy in the initial stages of his career, battling career debacles, an alcoholic mother and a stormy love life… no, i am not good at reviews, coz i rarely read objectively, which i think, is absolutely necessary to write a good review, but the book is definitely worth a read…
    there was a quote in it, which appealed a lot to me, and which, if delved into, could give a lot of clarity to our existence… ‘What i do is me, for that i came’…. we are what we do in life, from a personal as well as professional point of view.. to debate it further, in a perfect existence, our actions are such that there is hardly a difference between work and personal life…we enjoy doing it so much that it is no longer ‘work’, at least not in the way we treat it now.. imagine someone paying you for listening to music, reading, blogging, sleeping…yup, a very utopian kind of existence, but it sure would be wonderful, but i guess like all utopian theories, this one fails too, because i dont think there would be too many people who would enjoy cleaning public infrastructure, or pizza delivery, for that matter.. which i guess is why things are the way it is right now…
    but its a good thought nevertheless, each of us doing exactly what we love to do, and therefore feeling that we have made a difference by our existence.. the first key being finding out exactly what it is that we would love to do.. and since that doesnt throw up too many practical answers (in the current scheme of things, that is) i suggest we get back to what we regularly do…
    until next time, a post is what you came for, right? 😉

  • Word’s Worth

    i will not be getting poetic….yes, thank god…:)…. this is more to do with a movie i saw last weekend.. “The word is Lakshya”, so is the movie… Farhan Akhtar, i think, is using emotions he felt during different phases of his life, in his movies, and that increases the ‘reality effect’… i am not good at reviews, so i’ll just say its definitely worth a watch…
    Hrihik Roshan’s internal conflicts made me think of the concept of an individual’s ‘lakshya’…. that which manifests  itself in different forms, from answers to uncles’/aunts’ questions of “what do you want to be when you grow up”, to the “career objective” in the resume…and that which propels us to do a whole lot of things , some for good/ some for worse?..and is it, finally, worth all that we do for it… so whats the word’s worth?
    the needs that mom and dad gave up so that the child got the best education, the agony of learning the multiplication tables, playing time spent in studying (or made to spend studying..hehe) to retain the first rank in class, the heartache when one realises that music/dumb charades/quizzing/scrabbles/monopoly/cricket are not viewed upon as conventional viable careers or rather , the heartache when one decides to be conventional, having to change ‘lakshya’ at some point of time, disappointing loved ones when one decides to do an unconventional thing for once, playing mindgames and having mindgames played on you in the corporate world, pressure tactics from above and to below so that dadlines are met, losing friends and family because of time constraints, losing friends and family and not being able to be there even to say goodbye…..
    and then, after all the gains and losses, judging yourself and wondering what is true joy- having a happy family, being able to see smiling people, sharing the smile with them, dying when their thoughts about you die; or appearing on the cover of “Time’, being the role model for millions, and perhaps a legend, and therefore almost immortal……or something in between, and whether an in-between state is possible … wondering whether you had it in you and you let it go…wondering whether you had a ‘lakshya’ or not, ever…..and wondering whether it mattered…ever..
    and thinking that floyd had rightly sung, albeit in a different context “And did you exchange , A walk on part in the war, For a lead role in a cage? “…also thinking that you thought the same kinda lines, but floyd is famous and you are not…hehe… and wondering how much the word is worth and how much is worth the word……..
    and wondering if this should do for

    manuscrypts trivia
    a quote
    “Galaxies…numerous, like the grains of sand on a seashore…yet our vanity reigns supreme ! ” ~ Unknown
    and seen
    In a Laundromat:AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT.
    Notice in a farmer’s field:THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE, BUT THE BULL CHARGES.

  • What dreams may come

    i have a hypothesis, is it possible that god has given a quota of dreams per person, maybe as small as one dream, that can come true..this is not about the dreams you have at night, this is more the aspirational kind of dreams…… that after you have achieved that one goal, god believes you have done the work you came down here for, and now your life will be a monotony of unachieved dreams, and the rest of your existence will be spent following them…..sort of like the donkey and the carrot…….or maybe He takes the passion/drive that is required to pursue a dream and bring it to its culmination….I was also wondering about the male of the species’ attraction to the T&A of the opposite gender….. another hypothesis now, could it be because it is always covered….imagine a scenario where lets say the ears were always covered and the above mentioned accessories always left open…..would the attraction be now directed towards the ears???
    goodbye, and heres manuscrypts trivia
    a lil paki bashing, because i am peeved that the indian government is sponsoring the surgery of three paki kids…. as far as pakistan is concerned, i have no humanity left in me…An Indian is having breakfast one morning (coffee, bread, butter and jam) when a Pakistani, chewing gum, sits down next to him. The Indian ignores the Pakistani who, nevertheless, starts a conversation. Pakistani man: “You Indian folk eat the whole bread??”Indian (in a bad mood): “Of course.”Pakistani: (after blowing a huge bubble) “We don’t. In Pakistan, we only eat what’s inside. The crusts we collect in a container, recycle it, transform them into bread and sell them to India .” The Pakistani has a smirk on his face. The Indian listens in silence. The Pakistani persists: “Do you eat jelly with the bread??” Indian: “Of Course.”Pakistani: (cracking his gum between his teeth and chuckling). “We don’t. In Pakistan we eat fresh fruit for breakfast, then we put all the peels, seeds, and leftovers in containers, recycle them, transform them into jam and sell the jam to the India.”The Indian then asks: “Do you have sex in Pakistan?”Pakistani: “Why of course we do”, he says with a big smirk. Indian: “And what do you do with the condoms once you’ve used them?”Pakistani: “We throw them away, of course.”Indian: “We don’t. In India, we put them in a container, recycle them, melt them down into chewing gum and sell them to Pakistan.”