The Whatsapp Stories...

Well, this isn't something out of the blue and I am sure that most of us have done it. May be out of sheer boredom or may be because you would do almost anything to get your mind off a presentation that is screaming "DEADLINE AHEAD" but you are in no way able to get the next slide in shape.

(Dear employers, I am not saying I am too over-worked but you know how it is!!!)

Whatsapp has become a part of our life-story

Nevertheless, I find a peculiar joy in scrolling through my contact list on whatsapp and  trying to read any status or enlarge any display picture that catches my attention. It is hilariously calming to see some happy faces while there might be ones that may dilute that joy. All in all, an interesting 10 to 15 minutes are consumed and you may think of getting back to what you had been doing.

I do not claim that the exercise is rejuvenating or mood altering all the time. In fact, if you are someone who keeps looking at your Ex's/a long lost friend's whatsapp profile and keep doing the 'math' to decode the 'philosophy' behind the words written in their statuses, you know you are going to end up draining quite a lot of energy and time in vain. Your mathematics can 'almost' never decipher the the lurking 'philosophy' simply because it doesn't work that way. That is probably the most visible side effect of the activity. Either have the courage to let go of your ego and send a Hello or don't bother drooling over their statuses/ citing 'online' on those chat windows. If you are mature enough, you can simply enjoy to melancholic feeling oozing out at that moment and smile away the fact that the name/ names was/were always at the top of your live chat list.

However, there is another aspect which is more comforting and joyous in nature. I would rather emphasize on these ones. They are the stories that make you smile. Most of the time, they are more comprehensible with just a look at the display picture and/ or reading a status. There are many life stories that are hidden in our whatsapp list and they divulge multi-faceted snippets from the lives of our peers or even acquaintances.

Since I just finished scrolling my whatsapp list, I would rather happily share some of the snippets with you and I am sure most of you would relate to these in your own list in some way or the other...

• Friends shifting to new cities, expressing their joy over the expected fun that might unfold or miss the life they have just decided to leave behind. Some are smart enough to put up their new contact numbers as a status. A smart way to dodge "Yaar tune number badal diya tha toh share toh kar deta.."
• The 'Newly married' or 'About to get married' are most easily spotted. 'The Couple' could be seen uninterrupted on their display picture with supporting statuses oozing all kinds of romantic expressions. Also, you feel that the person has suddenly donned a new personality which is way more attractive than what you could ever imagine when he/she was single.
• Also there are cousins, seniors and even younger teachers whose number are stored just because they were 'stored'. You suddenly see a cute new-born's pic with them and its a happy excuse just to drop in a kind word and congratulate them for the life changing event.
• A special category is of those who simply cannot resist to share with the world the feats that they have achieved in their flair for the hobby/ passion that they pursue. Be it the gym or the bike ride, you would know their latest regime or the new destination that they have set their eyes on/ recently visited. On the other hand, some simply express their love for the activity by strong emotional quotes and an appealing photograph. You know it in your bones whether these are just expressions of narcissism or genuine patronage.
• Please don't try and seek a story out of 'Pout-y selfies' and connected statuses like 'In Love with myself'. Although I like the oomph factor and the vibrations of positivism exuding out of such profiles, there is hardly any sense of achievement. The fact that the person is having a good time with the comrade of theirs whose pout is even more revealing theirs and I happy to see them happy, there is hardly anything else that I can say.
  (Yes, I know they don't give a damn about it and I have no right to judge them, which I am not either; but 'right to expression' gives me the liberty to express my opinion. Kudos that they are able to achieve the hardest feat on this earth, 'Stay happy' and 'Pout-y' atleast in the display picture. PEACE)
• And lastly there would be those (I guess not more than a couple of people in a contact list) who would change their statuses and display pics so often that you wonder if they are being paid on an hourly basis for this. I think it would be a mistake to link this activity to their mood swings although they might claim that there is always a connection. 

Towards the end, I am sure if you have shown the patience to read this, you either already have the habit of being a harmless stalker of 'The Whatsapp stories' (congrats if you have just realized it!) or would end up trying it. Try and be as open minded as possible while observing such phenomenon and you would wonder how much can a whatsapp profile say about a person...

Best,

SS...

Reasoning the actual meaning of the term 'REASON'

When is the best time to write a blog post?



Just when there is a deadline hovering over your head and you are so bored of the task at hand that you hardly care anymore.



So, what is this one about?



This one is yet another piece of the jibber-jabber that goes on in a dull mind. And yes, this is the first one from my office desk at 1:45 AM in the night!!!
Hence, I stand justified for all the meaningless blab that I may pour out today(not that I give a damn about anyone's judgement!)



The word REASON brings three different thoughts in my mind. The first being the song by the band Hoobastank which is one of the most pleasant rhymes by the band.



The second is the verb form of the word which means to 'think, understand and form judgement logically'



The third and the most important thought is the most common usage of the word as a noun which means 'a cause, explanation,or justification for an action or event'



Mostly, its easy to use reason as a verb and a noun. Also, the reference of usage as a noun is with reference to answering a question which aims at delivering the required clarification with a definitive cause.

However, there are questions which either do not have a definitive cause or may be it is beyond our comprehension. The worst case scenario is however totally different and is the most misleading of them all.

The third scenario occurs when an action or an event has occurred which has a clear reason behind it and yet we as humans; due to our selfish, egotistical whims simply deny to appreciate the root cause of the event/action.

The trap laid by one's own subconscious is very conspicuous yet if not paid close attention to; the 'reason' capriciously morphs into a masqueraded version of one of the many manifestations of the root cause; which may very well connect to the consequence but will never let you probe the actual cause and hence no matter how much you reason about the concerned situation, the 'reason' will be safely abstracted while your intuition keeps bugging you about the incompleteness of the investigated cause.

Usually the enquirer has to be content with a reason which not only feels incomplete but at times totally unrelated to the string of events in the past. Hence, one of the most prominent signs of identifying the escapist attitude of the person accountable for answering and sighting the loophole in a cooked up or unclear reason is the discord between the presented reason and the events in the past.

The actions of today have their reasons hidden in the past and the reasons of today are the outcome of the actions of the past.

So be reasonable enough to provide the right and complete reasons for the actions or events in your life. Its okay if one can't find them despite genuine efforts; as not everything can be comprehended by us. However, at the same time; do not fall prey to the 'fake to escape' route.

Always try reasoning the 'reason' that you have come up with and be very assured that it is the single last layer that can ultimately square up all the unanswered clarifications of the enquirer.

BEST !!!
SS

Forgiving to an apology never made!!!

All right people, it has been quite sometime that I have been asking myself that even if I did nothing wrong and was rather wronged by someone, is it ever going to be a possibility that I would be able to forgive the person even when the wrong doer hasn't exactly made any efforts to make an apology.
Further more, the third person who is pivotal to the whole incident would not exactly take my side rather(i didn't say the concerned person was against me!) would make it very clear that its not possible to take sides and choosing one would mean the other was wrong.

The above spiel is not meant to make the wrongdoer guilty, nor is it for the third person to decide and take sides. It is just to make one understand that a midst all this, I was left clueless and asking questions to myself with no answers.

On one side I was angry with a dear friend who did the stupidest thing in the world and would not even realize it and even if the friend in question had realized it, its just a bit too much for the friend to actually step up and admit the folly and apologize.
On the other hand,the trust that was once cemented solid between the friend pivotal to incident(the third person) and myself was shattered to pieces when there was an upfront denial of taking sides / prioritizing.

I would wonder how can anything be greater than the friendship? Don't you prioritize your friend-list? How else can one say that "We are each other's best friends!!". It has always been a dictum to choose your friends carefully hence leaving no scope for "I want all of you to be a close friend of mine." It has always been a very dangerous proposition to consider.

Anyways, I would wish each day that the wrongdoer would realize the wrong and we can atleast talk, solve and try to put it all behind us if not forget it.
Also I would expect the third person to choose the 'right' as that would bring some respite, but in vain as 'choosing one would mean the other was wrong' and that would lead to a cut-off from either the wrongdoer or me.

The conclusion: There I was, with my trust shattered from two ends, a grudge that was eating me from the inside and anger that would dissolve all the happiness.

I'm sure the other two people involved too must be experiencing something similar but I can't be too sure except for the probability of some guilt that might have encroached their conscience(I said I'm not too sure of the guilt too as none of the activities post the incidents have given enough proof of the same). The third person, although gave a shot at trying to patch up things but its pointless to try and keep two repulsive forces together and would only lead to a waste of time and energy.

Finally, after a lot of deliberations and efforts to set myself free from the bondage of the grudge that has almost made me hollow, I have decided to let myself be free. It might sound too idealistic, but I am not going to wait for an apology that is not going to come anyway and hence I may be captivated for the rest of my life.

I HAVE DECIDED TO FORGIVE YOU DEAR WRONGDOER!!!
(in whatever small capacity that I can and if at all it affects you in anyway!)
&
YOU ARE NO LONGER EXPECTED TO CHOOSE ANYONE AS A PRIORITY, THE THIRD PERSON!!!
(its your life, live it the way you want it but you can’t have best of both the worlds as that would be very unfair to the one who deserves 'all' of the either worlds!)

BUT MARK MY WORDS AND BE REST ASSURED THAT THIS DOESN'T MEAN:(Read the link!!)
https://marshill.com/2010/09/27/10-things-forgiveness-is-not

THE ESSENCE OF ALL MYSTERY

THE ESSENCE OF ALL MYSTERY

3 AM and awake?
Could be one of the reasons for me:
-Chit chatting over the phone (WITH ‘FRIENDS’, NOT SPECIFICALLY GF)
-Watching a movie/ TV series
-Trippy while experiencing a digi high and building up on my insomnia
-Its ‘that phase again when your mind is on a roller coaster ride’ and a lucky day to write something.

If I look into break up in terms of frequency of occurrence, the last two have virtually been wiped out of occurrence.
Ok..
Those who know me well enough, once they read this, will disagree in unison about me not being trippy because to some, I always am high. However, its been ages since I have actually jotted down the trajectory of emotions that are in random Brownian Motion.
I sound scientific because I heard in the news that GSLV-D5 has been successfully launched. It is India’s first self made cryogenic rocket. 20 years and Rs. 200 crore is what it took to finally achieve success.

Lately, i feel i certainly have lost my touch to write. Not that I was a Shakespeare or a Frost earlier, but the “effortlessness”  that once provided the Midas touch, the butter smooth flow has been missing, or may be, has vanished altogether. So, I decided to revive the same by actually writing about this very feeling of loss.

 The thing that remains unchanged is that my blog has been my outlet when even the best of friends have gone to sleep or are too occupied to handle my cribs. So, yet again, like every time, its a loss that prompted me to write. That way, I think I like these intermittent, sporadic waves of losses that prompt me to get back to jugglery with words. But this time its different. This time I am not focussing on words that I juggle with but the overall process of jugglery. This time, its like the doctor himself is the patient looking for a cure.

So, like a good doctor I have set out to look for the diagnosis. Its hard. Really hard.

You know you have lost something but you don’t know what. To worsen the situation, you have nowhere to look but grope in the pitch dark. What would you do?

The dilemma?

Since you don’t know what you have lost, you don’t know what to look for and since its dark you cant look at anything anyway. So from one perspective it hardly matters whether you know what you have lost because you cant look for it and from another, even if you could look at things it wont matter because you don’t know what have you lost.

There is a third choice. Choices beyond being grumble some about not knowing what is lost and complaining about the darkness that surrounds.

ACCEPTANCE.

The first step is to accept that you don’t know what you don’t and you cant change what you cant. That is the moment when you ‘will know’ about ‘the changes you can make’ in your approach to find atleast something in the darkness.

Grope and touch things that you stumble upon in the black dark, keeping a faith that you will find something that will make you feel that the loss has been mitigated. Make friends with uncertainties and the consequences that follow. Dont be afraid to take chances. Actually, you haven’t lost anything but only injected with an idea of having lost something. That is the essence of all the mystery.

As I end this piece, I feel I have found something to mitigate this feeling of loss by just touching and feeling anything that I came across in this darkness. I actually hadn’t lost anything; I was simply out of touch. It was effortless to write about the perception of having lost the ‘effortlessness’.

The Enigma of Being ME!!!!...

Somebody asked me, what is it that appeals to you?, what car do you dream of?, what is the pay package you are aiming for?

Ironically, I had no straight answers!!

I only have a vague idea about what really appeals to me, becoz unlike great people, who love to do what they do again and again, I dont. May be thats why I kinda like doing things like a ppt or may be talk n discuss because thats not monotonous.

I dont like to study for hours to be a top of class.I dont even mind not studying at all if a frend calls up after a long time and is one of those with whom i was dying to talk to for ages.....

Preparing for the exam next day and postponing the talk??... May be I'm not even an inch close to being a pragmatist let go of being an idealist....

Every body loves movies and music, but i dont devote my time to them for entertainment, I do it becoz thats one of the best ways of killing time while I learn to pick out some dialogue or a lyric that could inspire me not to kill the forthcoming period.

I am always looking for motivation but hardly put it to use for myself .
Yes,I can motivate you! Thats probably where all my motivation is consumed.

Talk of my achievements?
Well,none that I could be certified for but yes there are some intangible awards that make me feel good.
It makes me feel good when someone, after achieving his dream comes to me and says... "Man, you played a big role in my success"
It feels good when someone says, "I cannot share this mental burden with anyone but you, becoz i know u'll understand"
It feels good when your friend helps you in the time of desperate need even if it costs him his parents ire.

I know its all philosophical and its nothing extra-ordinary.All such intangible achievements are achieved by everyone.But ask yourselves, do we really care about them in the long run?

I like to nurture them... treat them as an investment that would reap long term benefits.

What do I( or even you) learn from all this?
Isnt this all just some idealistic bull-shit?

Well, not to me.
I learnt to let go and still hold on, unlike most others who either totally let go or meagerly cling onto, what they cant but should have forgone.
I learnt that I am not the one in control and hence unlike many others, who shall die fighting their lives out to take control of life itself,I dont try too hard.Believe me, at times its better not to try too hard, just to mitigate the disappointment that might follow.And yes, I misjudge, I'm lazy and dont want to work my ass off, so there are a lot of disappointments.

But still I HAVE to achieve something.Its preposterous to see that happiness today is valued materialistically. Heavier pockets ensure better affordability of a smile,a better capacity to win over a heart.It has become a parameter for meeting expectations, a norm for social acceptability and worst, your own conscious' acceptance of your being.                        I know one thing that I like, for sure. Living in the moment. I dont like to think much about what might follow. Yes, I too have expectations from my future and NO I'm not doing enough to make sure they are met.But, its ok. I somehow have this strong belief that at the end of it all, everythings gonna be just fine and its your prerogative to either smile your way through the journey of life or keep grumbling under your breath for one failure or the other,coz failure is inevitable.But so is success and success,somewhat like greatness, no matter how brief stays with the man forever(courtesy The Replacements)

As for the thing that I would love to do whole my life like Steve Jobs wanted us to find, I would like to answer him by saying, "I am still looking for it, and I wont 'settle' till I find it" .(in a hope that eventually something will strike me for sure.....)

Till then, I'll live content in a life where I try to make ends meet, the ends between how I want my life to be and how it should be.

The thing that excites me the most as well as scares me and my family the most is that I may never 'settle'...I may never be able to pick up that one great work and do it again and again...not even writing another article like this one, atleast for a long.. long time to come.....

:) :)
Sam.......

INSPIRATION

I was never born a prodigy, but somehow I was bestowed with some other characteristic. I was always a good protégé. Right from my childhood days, I was more of a follower than a leader. The elderly would direct me and I would simply follow. Call it grasping power, or the ability to comprehend, people usually appreciated my simple approach to pick and follow and everything went as smooth as a warm butter.

Usually, people would designate the inspiring moments of their lives with accolades and accomplishments. However, my span of being a “good boy” (as per the social norms) was extremely short lived and was invaded by shadows of lows and darkness intermittently.

But as I usually put it, “Goodness is silhouetted best in the darkness of badness”.

So, my inspiration story has an unusual shade of grey against which my accomplishments shall finally shine brightly. Even I was oblivious of the outcomes that were to follow.

Without much ado, I would simply state the most inspiring moment of my life. The moments when I felt most inspired were when I was beaten to the ground and the world around me had started to crumble. Every morning, I would wake up, look at myself in the mirror and told myself, “This doesn’t feel right, I need to change it.” And then, I would set myself to the task of wondering how to go about it. That very process of self-inspection and exploration exposed me to a new realm of inspiration.

That ‘pensive’ state was most inspiring for me. I was tagged as a perfect euphemism for “looser” and I was relieved of the burden of expectations from the society. Although it looked as if life was nothing more than a morbid game, there was something lurking inside. Something was waiting for just the right time to explode, and overturn the tide. My inspiring moment was not a blink of an eye , it was a series of insomnious nights when the eyelids won’t blink.

Previously, every effort to absorb inspiration from the external world failed.

But, now I know the path of success, simply because I have met many failures on the way. I have learnt not to grope for inspiration in perishable moments of incidents but make them a state of mind.

-SAM..

CREATIVITY- The most important ingredient of thr recipe called GREATNESS!!

Yet again I find myself among tides unknown, among challenges that are so peculiar that to comprehend their true nature and to prepare a strategy against them is a challenge in itself. The colossal task of going through it all and finally being triumphant is nothing less than a journey to the inferno.

But hope flickers and will always do. It might be dim and running out of our grip like golden particles of amorphous sand, swaying in the winds of distress, still the endeavours must be made to get through this travail.

Creativity is the key.

Ironically, the solution is the real problem. The bigger picture lurks inside the tiny ones and that is the beauty of it. The real success lies not in accomplishing feats that are distinct from your soul but in finding the clandestine affair that was there since the inception of this universe.

It is a regular to know what you don’t know. The experiment is to twist and turn the known. In the process of inheritance, one forgets to put a filter between the influx of unknown and the acceptance of what finally becomes the part of our knowledge treasure.

Why accept it all? Why nod our heads to the condescending dictate?

Where is the creativity in it?

But knowledge is important. It makes us wise. It makes us successful. Better, it makes us rich.

Was Swami Vivekananda rich? Was Gautam Buddha successful? Was Mahatama Gandhi wise?

NO.

Dont take me to be wrong. The nexus does not implicate irreverence to any of the above GODLY figures. They were all beyond such demarcations of human society.

History is the witness to the fact that greatness is not inborn as is so wrongly perceived by many. It is self-realised. Dig a little deeper into the lives of Great Souls and you shall find that greatness was not bestowed upon them right from the time they took their first breath. Of-course prodigies do happen, but they, in my point of view are restricted to a specific talent or skill that we usually tag as a God-Gift. But greatness is altogether a different realm. Many are a mix of prodigious abilities and carry inherent greatness. They are the ones to look out for as they are the ones who, in the words of Steven Paul Jobs, create a ‘dent in the universe’.

They are the ones who personify creativity. They do not tread upon a path less taken (again a misconception of many).They twist and turn and hop and jump on the same path. They have an unknown gait that is looked at by everyone in wonder. Walking in troops is not in their persona.

They are great simply because they experiment with the established norms and thus creatively simulate an aura that can only be fathomed by souls that match their understanding.

The rest of us?.... well, the rest of us are busy absorbing their experiments as mind slaves, oblivious that there is so much more wrapped in those values that still needs to be creatively surfaced in time to come.