Against all odds

Chilling ruthless winter of Pilani. 2 degree centigrade. 

I want something. I want something very badly.

I'm with my friends. Good friends - A,B at Connaught place inside the campus.

I: Friends, I want to go ahead. Please don't stop me.

A: No you can't. Are you insane?
B: C'mon man, just stop it. Don't be mad. (And then the same question - ) Are you insane?

I: No, I'm not, but I just can't stop myself.

A: What's wrong with you? Why can't you behave like you know.... normal?
B: Yea... this guy is gone nuts. Dude, don't be stupid for heavens sake.

I: I'm not being stupid. It's as simple as I want something very badly and I want to get it. If not, I don't know what will happen to me. I can't resist myself.

A: But dude, look around. There are people. What will they think of you? This is just not done.

I: I can't resist the temptation. I'm too tempted.

B: Oh boy, I never thought you had such intentions tonight. If I had known this before, I would have never come with you. What a shame for me !! I want to save my face. I just want to get back to my room. 

A: Chi chi... you have no control over yourself at all. God save you. I'm out of here as well. Let's go, leave this cracko here. Let him do what he wants to do.

I: But guys, why don't you too join. We can have fun together.

A: Just shut up, will you? At least do it with presence of mind. You know what i mean. 
B: Do you have enough money?

I: Don't you worry. I will see you later.

A and B: We dont want to see you any more. Bye.

I walked towards the end of the road, a 100 m walk. It sent shivers down my spine. At the same time, there was this feeling of excitement of being the first one to actually DO it.

I asked "HOW MUCH" ? (without any fear)

10 Rs, came the answer. Which flavour do you want sir? Vanilla, Strawberry, Chocolate....
Chocolate I said and gave him 10 Rs.

Yes, I had Chocolate ice-cream in the month of December in Pilani. 
Mission Accomplished !! 

Confusion

Slept at 1 in the night yesterday. Now the time is 6.30 in the morning. 5 and 1/2 hrs of sleep.


Was it sleep? Not sure. I have a confusion. Did I not sleep OR did I sleep and was dreaming that I was not sleeping. What is happening to me? Never thought this could happen to me. 


Am I being cornered by my own life?

What keeps us going?

How Important you really are? 
I keep asking this question once in a while, just to keep a check on myself. Or may be to keep myself grounded. In this fast paced world, where success is almost a neccesity, where does one stand if he is not successful? Well, what is success anyway? To me, Success is something that makes you feel important, even if you really aren't. So the more apt question should be how do you make yourself feel important, feel special, feel good about yourself? While it is too spiritual and boring to answer such questions, it is really important to understand it. What makes me happy, what makes me feel important, what gives me the push to go ahead, are in fact very simple things.


The other day when I was coming back from work late night on my bike, I passed through a narrow road stretch of about half a km, fully decked by lightings all through. The lighting ended at some temple. Some auspicious occasion nexy day i suppose. Since it was late night, the road was empty. With the gentle, cool breeze striking my face and with those wonderful lightings giving a royal reception, I felt like a king, being welcomed in his kingdom after having won a war. That 5 min experience was so good that I actually took a reverse turn at the end of the road and came along the same road again, only to be felt like a king once more. It was a great experience indeed !! 


While this might sound very simple and stupid, things like these are the real turn ons in life. We tend to ignore these minor short-lived moments which actually make our lives interesting. Once we start appreciating these moments, we will realize how interesting life can be.


With this little philanthropic note, I take off for now.

Delightfully High

Time: 2:45 AM

Day: Friday night (Saturday early hours)

State: Drunk (4 pegs of 60 ml each - Blender's Pride)

Conscious? - Yes, very much.

Why blog now? - Not getting sleep

Not getting sleep after getting drunk, weird. Why is that so? - Check my blog's tag line

How does it feel after getting drunk - Delightfully high

What kind of songs do you prefer listening to, when you are drunk? - Any song that doesn't get the crap out of me.

Oh, by the way, I'm being treated to some wonderful songs being played by my wonderful roomie (who plays good songs only upon request, otherwise he plays Gagan'ish songs)

List some songs plz - Ok, here's the list of songs played so far:

Papa Kehte Hain (QSQT)

Panchi Pavan Nadiyan Aur Jhonke (Refugee)

Mein Kabhi Batlata Nahi (TZP)

Bulla Ki Jana mein Kaun (Rabbi Shergill's private album)

Kuch Is Terah Teri Palke (Doori - Atif Aslam)

Ok, enough. These are boring songs man !! Aren't you into Rock n all? - NO. I don't like Rock. I don't understand Rock. I can even go to the extent of saying I hate people who love Rock.

That's a provocative statement. How can you say that? - I don't know. I don't care. I like being this way.

Here goes the next song...

Batein Kuch Ankehee Si Kuch Ansuni si (Life in a Metro)

Beautiful song. There is no limit to awesomeness. Nice one-liner, but I can't take the credit for it. Credit goes to "Secrets of the Furious Five" - Semi sequel to Kung Fu Panda.

My friend pings me in GTalk, asking the expected question.... "Hey dude, not sleeping?"

My answer:

No, I don't sleep after getting drunk

coz this is the time when I'm at my creative best, I don't want to waste my interesting time by sleeping and let go my creative side unutilized

Ok, guys/gals/others, while i listen to the next song which is "Kabhi Dhoor Jab Din Dal Jaye", I'm taking off. Will come back soon.

What a movie !!

There are some movies which take your breath away with their sheer brilliance. Brilliance in script, brilliance in acting, brilliance in being brilliant.

Last week, I happened to see a movie which did exactly that.

Well, what is so special about this movie?

Not even a single name being used through out the movie;

Entire movie shot in one room, barring two short scenes, one at the beginning and one at the end;

Wonderfully well articulated deliberation among 12 intellectual people;

Digging into the not-so-obvious things hidden under the so-called "facts";

Powerful and "provocative" performances by all 12 Men; enough to keep you spellbound

This is a timeless classic. Released way back in 1957. This is called "12 Angry Men".

"What's up" - It's not Cool

Too many cliches in our daily conversation. While I don't have any problem with "How are you" and "How is life", which are supposed to be conversation starters and people having acknowledged these with no disregard, I have a problem with "What's up". This is so commonly used now a days and with no real intent that I can't refrain myself from calling it - The lazy man's resort. If you disagree, search for "whats up" in your GTalk chat history and the results are there for you to see. It has become so so so common that you feel like you are missing something if you haven't asked what's up to somebody when you meet him/her.

I have 2 problems with this question.

One, when you know the person whom you have asked this wonderful (supposedly 'Cool') question, is going to say 'Nothing', why do you have to ask such a question in the first place? In fact, with a great degree of certainty, I can say that 'Nothing' is the most common response. 99% of people say that.

Two, when you have simple words like "Hello" and "Hi", which are less irritating and more polite (less 'Cool' though), why on Earth would you want to use "What's up"? If you are greeting somebody just for the sake of it, wouldn't one of these two simple words do?

For full effect, "What's up" is best delivered while walking past someone at about 90 m.p.h. so the person you're talking to has no time to respond, and in a tone that suggests you really don't give a shit about "what's up" with them.
Dude 1: "Hey man, What's up?"
Dude 2: "Ah..." (what he managed to get out before Dude 1 was already too far away to hear the rest of what he was going to say)

Some smart people answer it by responding to "What's up" by saying "The sky" or "da roof" (which was actually intended to make fun of the question). In spite of this, these bunch of "What's up" guys never seem to give up their habit of asking the most famous useless question. I wonder why people always ask each other the same question over and over again. Are we really that dull?

I'm just so irritated with this extremely overused question that the next time someone asks me "What's up?", I'll say "Nothing. If you ask me again I'll roast you"

Documenting Dreams

Dreams – The most wonderful thing (if I may say so) I have come across. I dream a lot and I enjoy doing it. While Microsoft gives synonyms to dream as delusion, reverie, hallucination, trance, vision; all these words fall short in defining what a dream is. Wikipedia says “Dreams are a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history”. No wonder then, this has been a field of study for years for people anxious to know what-why-how of dreams. It’s called oneirology. There are many studies done on this already and the results are available on the net. One such interesting study which I came across is “Expectation fulfillment study of dreaming”. It says dreams are need based. They have a relationship with individual’s aspirations, fantasies and daily experiences – good or bad. They regulate mood. Many a time, it so happens that you find it difficult (or impossible) to recollect your dreams. It stays on with you for short period of time when there is an abrupt ending to a dream. After that, it fades away and in spite of making valiant efforts, you never succeed in recollecting the exact sequence of events that you encountered in the dream.

How about documenting your dreams? Sounds silly huh?

Well, not really if you actually do. It’s been nearly a year that I have been documenting my dreams. I’m finding this experience absolutely terrific. When you revisit your documented dreams, you will be amazed at your creative subconscious mind. You will realize that human mind can be so powerful and limitless in its thoughts. Keep a book and a pen by your side while you go to sleep. When you experience an abrupt ending of your dream, just jot down what ever you remember of the dream. Don’t start penning down the sequence of events. List the characters/things that you recollect. This listing should be done quickly, else these will get erased from your mind faster than one would imagine. Once you do this, you can revisit these characters/things/events and connect these. This will turn out to be an unbelievable script.

Dreaming while sleeping is a normal phenomenon. Everyone does that, unknowingly. There is another kind of dreaming that can be experienced with some effort. Before you decide to take a nap, fill your mind with certain thoughts on which you want to dream. Make a conscious effort of thinking about certain thing for some time that your mind refuses to accept any offer except the one that you are feeding. I call this style of dreaming as Intentional dreaming. It might sound stupid, but this really works. You can fine tune your mind in your conscious self that you can succeed in forcing your mind to dream about only certain things. This happens in the subconscious mode of course. We can consciously make an effort in controlling our sub conscious mind. This is not a straight task. It needs consistent effort. Once this starts working, there is nothing like it. Instead of dreams regulating your mood, you yourself regulate your mood and you will have a better control over yourself.

The other day, my friend was complaining that he was dreaming a lot of weird dreams now-a-days and they were bothering his sleep. He is the same person who was once taken away by his own creative dreams and started a community called “Dreamers Club” in Orkut and the response that he got in that community was astounding indeed. My advice to him was simple.

Document your dreams!!