Chase the destiny

“Live everyday to the fullest, as if it’s your last day!”, a well said adage. Well, I never actually cared too much to go into the depth of it. But as they say, time is the best teacher, and it was indeed for me too. The natural sense of it obviously inspires us to do all we want to do in our entire life as quickly as possible, so that there would not be any regret to have few things left over by the end. But over the time, I have realized that the adage is also connected to the path which leads us to our destinies. It probably also makes the point that we are ought to put our best efforts in every single day's routine, to reach to the destiny that we carve for ourselves. Who knows how long we would get the chance. Well, I have personally experienced that the factors which flash every now and then in the journey to our final destiny, being Talent, Attitude and Failure.

Talent is considered to be one of the crucial key to success and success indeed minimizes the distance between an individual and his final destiny. But, on the contrary, my view on the role that talent plays, slightly differs from the conventional belief. I never found myself tremendously talented in any particular field; neither did I ever depend on the some or little talent which could possibly be present within me. What I have believed in, is the fact that the talent can not always take you to the top of the world but it’s always the attitude towards utilizing the talent you have got. Even if you haven’t got any, still how do you survive in the life's battlefield, is altogether decided by the attitude you carry towards life. Your attitude always has the potential to open the door to success for you or to get you the tons of accolades. Someone indeed phrased it nicely, “Talent can only open the first doorstep to the success but after that it’s always the attitude”.

When Lata Mangeshkar, was born, no one told her mother that here is the greatest voice ever; neither did any such comment come as, here is the heap of world records, when Sachin Tendulkar was born. It was not just their talent which got them to the pinnacle of their respective fields. The talent might have got them the focus of the world at the first place, but to retain it forever, the attitude to push their capabilities or the talent for that matter, harder and harder, across the limits, indeed had played the crucial role in their lives. There have been a number of many more such great people in the history who failed at the very initial and trivial stages of their lives but still managed to enrich the world with their great contributions mainly because of their attitude towards self commitments.

An IIM alumnus starts merchandising vegetables; an investment banker turns to be a novelist, not because of their failure in one field or interest in the other. It’s all because the zeal to chase and the intense attitude to reach to the destiny that they would have carved for themselves.

When I got into the IIT, it was the happiest moment of my life by then. It was not just because it feels great to be an IITian but also because the commitment I made to myself, to my family, and many more, became the reality. Trust me, you can not be more satisfied than you get when you achieve what you commit to yourself. Be it a trivial task or anything with great degree of difficulties. Moreover it was the outcome of the physical, emotional, and psychological battles I had been fighting with myself at that time. Honestly I never thought that it was meant to be my destiny. It was only my attitude to get over all the battle-effects and let the commitment become reality. So the result overwhelmed my heart in and out.

Failures are the next important chapters which play a major role to land us to our destinies. Most of the time, they taste bitter, hard to accept, and no one welcomes them. But it’s very important to face them with open heart and it’s even more important to acquire the correct lesson out of them. I guess some of you might not agree with this argument that until you fail, you would not know how to deal with it. But I have strongly believed in this fact. Every single failure tells me that there is long way to go to be perfect and also that no one can reach to their ultimate destiny without sailing the ship of failures through out the life. Sometimes they are also meant to melt down the adamant attitude of individuals. Until the lifetime isn’t over, no matter how perfect you become over the time, failures are bound to see you on the way to the ultimate destiny, the final hibernation of the body and freedom of the soul.

I have been a strong believer of two facts through out my life which turned out to be pretty much conflicting at times in my case. One of them being, “Everything happens for some good reason”; and the other being “God leads everyone to their destiny by the end”. Sometimes you want something so badly that the life feels to be a complete bizarre unless you get it. You start considering it to certainly be your destiny and you put the best efforts to reach to it. But my friend, if that’s not your real destiny, you are meant to be failed. I have always found it abstruse problem to understand how the agglomeration of such failures which I would never expect to see, could possibly be leading me to my destiny; how such a linked list of acerbic failures could be treated with warmth! But as the matter of fact, I am bound to use the 1st faith of mine to calm myself down and accelerate my enthusiasm and elevate my moral for the future.

In our personal and professional lives, there come times when we are bound to swallow the acerbity, bear the boorishness, and unreasonable attitude exhibited by people around us. In such scenarios, you must ask the captain of the brain-ship to just remain Mr. Cool rather than just being carried away with whatever natural instinct drags you at that time. Whether you fail in an exam or fail in a relationship or fail to get any damn thing which you desire for, you don’t need to think that it was not meant to be your destiny. It might not look like to be, at the first place but it certainly could be in subsequent attempts.

Life does not remain smooth and painless for too long. It treats you with pleasure only to get you the energy to face the future waiting for you with more conundrums. It’s always going to be a sinusoidal curve of good and bad times with uneven frequency of each. One has to accept this fact. When you are at one of the extremum, always be aware of the strength of the other. Never forget how happy you can possibly be when you feel low and how low your heart could possibly sink when you are happy. This realization will always help you to deal with the situation with balance and forbid yourself to let flow with flood of emotions or feelings.

In the nutshell, I must say, never abdicate chasing your destiny that you have carved for yourself, because the moment you start losing the zest to achieve it, you simply start architecting another one for yourself which even you would never want for yourself even in the weirdest dream. Neither being over dependent on the talent nor fearing from the failures, but to possess the right attitude to deal with both is what I would call the best way to chase the destiny.

Road Movie: Well……..what the hell!!!

A couple of months ago, I happened to watch the trailer of this movie. It seemed pretty much an offbeat, Abhay Deol kinda movie…I seriously admired the first look of the movie…Plus I have always been able to appreciate the work this guys has done. He had never let me down with his story and script choosing ability. So with the existing impression about the film and its crew, I got along with a bunch of enthusiastic friends who were more or less on the same page about the movie as me. After all lazy lamhe of this boring Sunday, we finally moved our backs to the theatre…

The movie belongs to “Road Movie” genre, a bildungsroman, where the protagonist travels all the way to some destination and witnesses the whole new changes, growth or improvements in his character over the course of the story...

The movie starts with a supposedly hip looking guy named Vishnu, wearing aviators, listening music on a rooftop of an ancient looking city of Rajasthan ( I instantly imagined the real Lord Vishnu in the same getup in his constituency…LOL ), and his daddy calling for him to get him smell the “Tel”(Oil) and sell it calling it his future..Phew, how typical this dad is…!!

Naturally, the dude has no interest to be a “tel-salesman” having aviators and ipod ;-) and is looking for a different carrier opportunity for himself. Suddenly, he hits on an old chap to deliver the Oil bottles. This old fellow definitely misbelieve that the oil keeps his “budhhapa” away from him…Man, how long you can expect some creepy oil massage can keep you “young” in all aspects… This Buddha was gonna drive a 1942 model truck filled with probably even older machineries used to show motion pictures of the time of “Alam Ara”, to some goddamn place which is insanely far!!! Anyways, the dude Vishnu, offers him to drive the jumbo just to pass his time and escape from the “tel” business…and he gets the deal…YaaaaY..!! Here the daddy cool, assigns him last moment tasks which is to sell some cartons of tel-bottles during his journey…Aaww mann, he was so similar to your typical managers who don’t leave your ass till the last fraction of moment when you are about to leave for a break…

So here starts the journey, ohh and it halts so soon on a dhaba in the middle of the desert where the dude is proved to be a driver by a witty little worker, who wants to escape and switch to another job (May be because of recession, no hike, no girls around, or may be fed up of a long distance relationship or whatsoever…) So the little guy gets along with “truck driver” on his journey…

Oops, the internals of the big mean machine gave up somewhere where even Google maps can’t reach, and here is our dude trying to catch up with some freaking Indian cellular service provider’s network…No big deal for the little Johny, who gets onto a donkey ride and seemed to escape…But no, the dude gets lucky and the little comes back with a mechanic, portrayed by Satish Kaushik, a well known actor-director, but definitely not suited for the character he was given. This mechanic signed a MoU with chhotu that he would get the lift to the hypothetical Mela (Fair) if he gets the jumbo well…
A. Where on the earth, you can catch a freelancer mechanic in a desert?
B. Couldn’t he demand for something better than that?

So naturally he does his part and adds himself to the team…The “jumbo going ill, mechanic gets him well", scene repeats for no reason. Little Johny and mechanic steals the dude’s “Maa ke hath ka khana” while he is asleep. Dude gets his “Dimaag kharab” on the two, leaves them behind and escapes…but his jumbo loves the mechanic way too much, and the fat mechanic catches up with him again too fast…I had no clue how quickly this fat guy could catch the truck with the dude...Probably he might have used GPS…But oops, I doubted that…!!!

After some time I kinda got my consciousness back (which of course means I was bound to lose my control over my consciousness and got half-asleep) and found there is one newbie gal too in their truck who is an individual water-seeker (usually they go in a group) Finally the team reaches to the Fair’s place where you would expect ……ummmmm… nothing!!! Seriously this place is having nothing but the infinite white sand meeting with the sky at horizon….Damn you, mechanic guy…!!!

Anyways it’s a romantic place for our dude!!! And here our hero goes romantic in the dream with the village chick under the truck’s body, between the front and rear wheel. Could you have ever imagined such a romantic place!!! The fatty guy does not lose the hope and decides to show the movie there and make the place a Fair, which happens to be reality in the dude’s dream. Wait a second, what the hell is going on here…??? Dude, you have an affair in your dream, does not mean that everybody gets to have a Fair where you dream…

Now let’s come to reality, the babe seemed to be getting pretty much cozy with the hero after his dream (I have no clue about the connection between the reality and dream). Probably she forgets that you should not involve in such activities while one is driving, otherwise you might accidently hit to something like...ummmm…ohhh sorry here you have nothing to hit on…so carry on guys…

Now a twist with a twister comes up and the crew gets caught by a bunch of so called “Daakus”, supposedly water mafia of thirsty Rajasthan. The Sardar proves by contradiction that he runs his company better than the MNCs who label the rain water with their names and fools the public…He kinda kidnaps the crew (as if he could get a big ransom for this team…khee khee khee) And oh boy, here comes the biggest hit of the millennium. Guess what our dude could argue when the gunda tries to misbehave his gal??? Here it is, “Hey you, you think you are a Mard, misbehaving with a weaker woman, no my friend you are wrong. Let me tell you how you can become that…”, He runs to his truck gets the Tel bottles, and here it is…Daaku gets a Tel Champi(Oil head massage) by his co-worker…Think how would you feel when your manager would ask you to this kind of favor or service, definitely a human right violation case…Wow this daaku guy is more than happy to see himself in the water with his hair oiled and combed… But our dude is so clever and brave…He won’t let the Sardar and his team becomes “Mard” for free. So he puts a deal to get the lots of water in place of a bunch of Oil bottles. And guess what, he get the deal approved…Shame on you, you hopeless, coward daaku guy…

So the team is relaxed and our kind hero donates the whole water to the Team-WaterSeeker and gets a kiss from his lady love for this…what a mastermind, nai??? Everybody leaves him hereon to carry on…Guy gets to reach the destination, delivers the theatrical truck and gets a bike for his journey back home…And I am done…phew…

I mean, I was looking for any damn thing which I could consider logical throughout the movie. But boy, I failed. Acting wise, everybody did their part decently but there had to be SOME scope of acting ;-) The only thing nice about the movie was its length. Just 90 mins of crap and you are out of the shit saying, “Ohhhh Myyyyy Goddddd!!!”

I say No to crackers on Diwali and colors on Holi…

Diwali is considered to be the biggest festival of Hindus but it is celebrated all over India without any cast or religion barrier. One way to celebrate this auspicious festival is, burning fire crackers. Why people opt for this way of “enlightenment”? May be, to get thrilled by watching the fireworks and enjoying the patterns created by the light. While the darker side of it emphasizes that, the joy comes with enormous amount of noise, pollution of all parts of our environment, potential increase in global warming, risk of people getting burnt or injured, huge quantity of waste material including industrial waste to be recycled and so on… Doesn’t it feel like just burning money to get mesmerized by the fire and sound work? In my opinion, it certainly does.

I believe, this money could be and can be saved for lots and lots of better purposes. Those who have lower or medium financial status can save this money for betterment of their families, and those who are financially more capable of spending money on such things could rather donate the money for the betterment of the society and the environment. There are like infinite needy people and places out there in our country which could be benefitted by such contributions. Think about a family which burns some money on moderate amount of crackers, move on to a good number of such families in a medium sized colony, moving further to a bunch of such colonies in one city, then more cities, states and so on. If you even try to estimate the kind of money spent in one day by the whole country, you would probably realize yourself that how better such money could have been used…

There is one counter argument usually given that cracker’s manufacturing gives employment and business to a lot of people in our country where sources of living and the opportunities are pretty lesser than the number of people seeking for them. Well my argument is, the sources such as crackers can benefit in terms of business, mainly once a year or may be few more occasions like marriages etc. Why do the people into this business have to wait for such events or festivals and remain unemployed for the rest of the time? I doubt that this would be most likely the case. Such people would definitely be involved or dependent in other sources of living in non-seasonal times, then why those ways can’t be continued at even the special seasons?

Now let’s talk about the Holi. Whole India becomes colorful when the festival of Holi comes up. It is considered to be the festival of colors. The traditional ways to celebrate this festival used to be Gulals and colors. But human brain is something which always tries to find out new ways of doing everything. With time, there have been nasty ways being and have been developed by human brains to color ourselves. The side effects are many; ranging from skin problems which most of us just ignore with the thinking that if there is a problem it would be for some time or may be few days, to the wastage of water and electricity which are the next biggies. Again if you think about the consumption of these resources by whole country on this very single day on non-regular cleaning work to clean up the mess created during this day, the whole idea could be easily figured out.

There can be many more arguments to support or oppose these issues but one should always think before that what all can we do to improve the situation of our country, our environment and our families? Probably utilizing the resources and money we have in most appropriates places and minimizing the wastage in all dimensions could be the way to start with…