First step towards change

I read somewhere that the first step to success is to change. Repeating the same routine, going through the same motions day after day cannot achieve anything. “Every day is exactly the same” by Nine Inch Nails has echoed through my mind for the past year. I just did exactly what I had been told and lacked the will to change my schedule. I simply waited for a miracle to happen.

Well a year on that miracle has yet to happen. And today I just can’t get myself to listen to that song anymore. I hate the lyrics and know that I need to initiate the change. At work I have become more organized and that’s helped me to get more done. But work isn’t the end of my lives and I refuse to let the change be limited to that. The next steps in my life need to address other aspects. There are a lot of nice “To-Do” items that I have wanted to get around to. My problems are procrastination and ADD. I just can’t seem to focus on anything long enough to get it done. Well hopefully that changes today.

My list of “To-Do” items will now have a priority and time line by which they must finish. Once I get One Note access at work, I will also keep tabs on how the progress of each is coming along. Wish me luck.

Eureka - Does it happen

Disclaimer: It’s the middle of the night (3:09 AM to be precise). I cannot be held responsible for writing something that makes no sense.

When do we reach our limits? Does one have a eureka moment of enlightenment?

Back in the day I decided that I would be better than the rest. That I would not participate in the rat race but would rather excel and chart my path. Somewhere along that journey I got lost. Not only did I lose directions but I also lost my destination.

There is only hope today. Hope of finding my way back. The problem – Hope is not a plan.

The following questions need an answer

- What

- Why

- How

When is not an issue. Once I know the what and how, the why will dictate the when automatically.

Future holds a lot of things for us. Sadness I hope plan is not one of them. Tomorrow brings a new day, a new light. Sounds cliché doesn’t it. The first reaction of anyone hearing that would be tomorrow will be no different. Stop kidding yourself. Things won’t change in a day just because you want them to.

[This is the part of the article where I would write something profound to shut those pessimists up. But I don’t care to. I write this because I want to and not because someone needs to read]

Tomorrow will bring a change for me. Simply because I choose so. Before EOD tomorrow, I will have a plan for the next week. The what and the how will be decided. I can’t decide why as yet because the what needs to be significant enough to decide the why. For now this will have to do.

What should we chase?

It's been a while since I wrote. These are just some random thoughts

What is important enough to us to chase?

Financial Security -
As I look at my life, I am well settled for a 25 year old. Having a reasonably well paying secured job, I have the luxury to spend money if I want to. Not that I can buy a Lexus tomorrow, but I don’t need to rethink my finances if I spend $1,000 on something I want. The problem – I don’t think is a significant achievement. There seems to be more to life than making ends meet. May be it’s just the fact that I have never experienced financial hardships, but to me life is more than just worrying about what is the source of your next pay check.

Dreams -
During this trip back to India, I met two friends who chased their dreams in two different ways. L was working in a call center and decided to make the most of his dreams there. When I had known him, he was working as the floor operation manager at one of the Mumbai call centers. 5 years on, he is now the VP of a call center (I don’t know if it’s at the same call center). He is only a couple of years elder to me, and though working in an industry traditional looked down upon, nobody can deny his achievements. And he is happy.
The second case is T. He is working as a freelancer for a media graphics start up. His life lacks everything that mine has. He lives in literally in a slum in Bandra in an area that I didn’t know existed (he lives close to where I lived during my engineering, but I never knew there was a slum there). Honestly saying, I don’t know if I could struggle through those conditions to achieve my dreams. But he is.

Prestige –
All of us want to feel important. We want to believe that our existence makes a difference. I believe I have reached that position at my current employer. I am the SME (subject matter expert) for my part of the application and regularly help others. But look beyond the small world of my employer and I don’t exist. If I look to what I think I want to do in life, my current work is not contributing to me being able to make that transition. If I were to search for job profiles of what I want, I do not make the requirements.
It may be a mix of these. I don’t think an individual can be happy unless he chases his dreams. Getting up each morning, you should feel like you want to go to work. The sad part, most of us don’t. Though my sample set is a small one (only my friends), over 90% of them don’t like what they are doing. They do so only to make ends meet or because society expects them to do so.
I still think I want to risk it. At the risk of ending up in the financial position of T, I want to reach the mark that L is at (my friends).

A lost soul

As I walk through the jungle, I realize I am alone. I seem to have left my group behind. Don't really remember which at which turn it happened; but as I kept moving forward, they did not seem to keep up. I should have looked behind. Should have told them - "here is where I'm heading". But then again, I never knew where is it I was going. As I traversed through the horde of paths available to me, I kept trying to find my way forward. Left at this juncture, I am faced with the choice again. I could traverse back a bit hoping to find the rest of them but the uncertainty of success scares me. I think I want to just keep moving forward. Sometime, somewhere this path will lead me to... To what I do not know. May be I'm destined to be a traveler all my life. In any case, I can't stand still. Let me pack my bag pack and move, for now with uncertainty.

A Torn Soul

A broken heart, a shattered goal. All that remains is the final blow. You know you’re in deep shit when your life seems to have been reduced to a mere existence; reduced to a routine that you follow every day. This year has been harsh on you. You lost your love, you lost your will, hell you even lost yourself. All you wanted was to be happy. To share a smile with someone; with someone who left you crying alone. You know you need to win, but how does one win against oneself. This fight seems to be a lost cause. From the looks of everything around you; from the look of the existence known as your life, it seems you’re destined to lose. Destined to not achieve your goal.

Destiny is playing a cruel game and you seem to be the preferred choice for the role of guinea pig. If sadness was an entity, then the lyrics from Alan Seeger’s rendezvous come to mind.
“It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath--
It may be I shall pass him still.”

Its new year’s today. A fresh start, a new resolution, may be even a new dream. So hold my hand, and stand by me. Look sadness in the eye and walk into to the light. To survive is to endure and prosper; take an oath to survive. I don’t believe in petty resolutions. Things that you forget after you recover from the hangover. I know you want to survive. As I sit by my bed to say grace, I wish that you do the same.

Aim-less direction

We all have a routine that we daily adhere to. We get up, get ready and then head out to our job, school or just stay at home and repeat the routine of cleaning up the house etc. The same activities are done over and over again, just the content associated with the activity changes. A typical sentence in an SD’s (software developer) vocabulary is “I already fixed bug #X,Y,Z last week, this week there are bigger issues bug #A,B need to be addressed while a new bug – bug number #C has come up.” That’s all that we have become. Earlier our routine was a part of our lives, now our lives have become a part of our routine. We move your lives around to fit these pre-set “schedule”. Very few fight the paradigm anymore. Those who do are either revered as “mavericks” if they succeed or “losers” if they fail. Richard Fuld was hailed as a maverick when he brought Lehman brothers out of crisis, and now as the investment banking giant crumbles people question his judgment and his ability to lead.

As we grow, we kill our ability to learn. Lethargy and lack of self belief lead us to mindless and aimlessly follow the path ahead of us. With little or no idea behind what our objective is, we travel the path set to us by the bounds of society. Slowly we change. We accept that our existence is to traverse that path. We believe that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is what we really want. (After all, most if not all paths that society has defined for us, have their goal set as money). We crush our dreams and then set these goals as our dreams instead. In a seminar held at my company, the speaker asked us “what is the one thing that you really want to do but just can’t time for?” Different people had different answers but one thing remained common, most of them knew that they really wouldn’t be pursuing that goal anytime soon. He asked us to, many agreed but I am sure if you ask them now, most of them would not have acted upon it.

I did. Thanks to a friend of mine – Miranda - I did. A month later I was jumping out of a plane and experiencing the thrill of a gravity free fall over 10,000 feet in the air. I owe that to her. Consider it whatever you want (lethargy, busy schedule) but I didn’t know where to begin and somehow I just wasn’t making enough efforts to find out. But she knew. She gave us the info and a month later Eric, Molly and me were jumping out of a plane.

I tend to question my existence a lot. Perhaps more than what is healthy. But now I stand at the juncture again where I want to know “where am I heading?” or slightly re-phrased “am I where I wanted to be?” Most people wouldn’t know the answer to that question, some will. I don’t. And again I don’t know where to start looking. All I know is that this time I don’t want to be lazy and let life dictate its terms. This time I want to stand up, take notice and decide what I want. I might make a wrong decision, I might make a mistake but this time I don’t want to let circumstances lead my life, I want to lead it. You can be scared of making a wrong decision and never take one, but to me no decision is wrong unless proven so. I know what will happen if my decision ends up being a wrong one – absolutely nothing. No one decision can dictate what happens to my life and what happens to me. Shit happens, but I am a fighter – I’ll always make it through.

Hmmm – the most useless word in the English dictionary

I really want to find and beat up the guy that added the word [/sound] hmmm to the English dictionary. It adds nothing to a conversation at the same time signifying nothing. It could mean the person is just trying to grasp what you say, but more often than not just means the other person has nothing to contribute to the current discussion and wants you to either change the topic [without the other person contribution to the change, lazy as he/she is] or end the conversation. Repeated usages have caused more conversation to be ruined than any other word in the English dictionary. I just hate that word.

Doesn’t work automatically

Through our lives we share a diverse set of relationships with even a more diverse set of individuals. Some based out of the roles that we play [son, daughter, brother, sister, colleague, classmate, husband, wife] and some because of who we are [friends, partners, lovers]. The later are relationships we choose, relationships that are not bound by constraints of society; relationships that work because we want them to work and fail the day we stop caring.

The sad part of life is that the second set of relationships are the most difficult to maintain. You can play the role of a perfect sibling without thinking twice, it comes naturally. But to play the role of a meaningful and caring friend requires you to question “Is the person worth it?” These questions get even tougher when the relationship involved is that of a partner. The person is evaluated on everything at every occasion. Till the relationship moves from the second set to the first, it just keeps demanding more and more effort. And all it takes is one mistake, one inconsiderate thought, one act of indiscretion and months and even years of good deeds seem so insignificant. It’s really sad to see something so beautiful be so fragile.

Sometimes it’s not a mistake. It’s just lack of communication. Whether it’s between friends or between partners, most relationships fall through simple because they don’t spend enough time being a part of the others life. Distances, lifestyles, new people, current priorities etc are just some of the things that can contribute towards the spiral of a relationship towards its eventual doom. Not spending enough time letting the other know “hey I care about you? I care about how you’re doing.” has been the biggest reasons for the best of relationships to drift apart. None of us have time, with our busy schedules it’s impossible for even think about fitting others in our lives, isn’t it. It’s not that hard, try it.

“Partner” is probably the most beautiful relationship amongst the lot. It’s most enchanting part being the fact that it belongs in the second set, the fact that we are in this not because we have to be, but because we want to be. There are couples who are partners first, and spouses later. According to me, that is the best way to be. Every day or every thought might not give you a reason to be together, but every breath taking moment and every cherished memory should. Just like the world keeps hurling reasons at individuals for them to fail, there is no shortage of reasons for relationships to fail in this world either. They take a lot of effort but therein lay the reason for their existence – “because they’re worth it”

That also has a counterpart. What happens when you ask yourself “Is the other person worth it?” and can’t seem to get a positive answer. Some relationships are not meant to be, it’s better to let them die. But what’s important is to judge correctly whether the relationship is worth fighting for. To judge beyond current circumstances [which are as interim as the life span of a gastrotich], beyond current distances. Each relationship is beautiful and special, and one should only be put to rest if it’s truly beyond restoration and beyond resurrection. But the day a relationship reaches there, it’s time to let it go.

Life

“Life’s a bitch, learn to live with it”. This cliché has been passed through generations and drilled by society into our heads. And most male chauvinistic pigs define a bitch to be someone who has sex with everyone but them. Just like life seems to work out for everyone but us. Problems never seem to end, and just as we get through handling one set of them, life hurls another set at us. And as we see “the other guy” just sail through what seems to be a walk on a flower bed, we keep wondering why it has to be a bed of thorns for us.

Well, I like to believe in another cliché about life. “Life is a bitter sweet symphony”. Not sure if this is a cliché or the lyrics of some song that a rock star decided to share with us. In any case, in my eyes it’s the truth of life. Life can be as bitter or as sweet as you want it to be. It’s not like the other guy has an easier life than you do, look deeper; all of us are buried in our own shit. Shit that we keep dumping to make our life bitterer and more miserable than what it already is. Learn to live above it. Life will never stop. No one decision can do that, and no one event can do that. [Exception may include the decision of consuming poison, cyanide or walking in front of a train/bus hoping that it will move out of the way.] We grow with our experiences. We learn from them. The dictionary [well in today’s age I used answers.com] defines the word experience as “The apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind”. The word itself signifies a growth in our understanding of a situation, of ourselves and those crazy forces that drive us to do what we do.

Don’t ever fear a choice or its consequent result. It’s just a choice. If I give you two random choices and ask you to choose A or B, and promise you that both are good choices, will you be able to choose either. You don’t even know what they are, or what result they will bring. Almost always we eliminate the bad choices at the start itself and what we’re left with are the choices amongst which no one answer is the correct answer. The act of procrastination of the choice may be the worst choice, but it’s still just one choice. You’ll never know what the result of any choice will be till you make that choice.

As far as results and consequences go, they seem to be the single most driving factor in our lives. “What will happen?” this might be the most frequently asked question to oneself. Why fear the consequence so much. It’s just one event in your life, it’s not the end all of your existence. Depending on its relevance, it may shape the direction your life takes for a few hours, days, weeks, months or even years but it’s not going to shape who you are. Where you go in life and who you are will not be dependent on one decision or one result. Remember to decide to keep yourself happy, it’s the single most important decision you can take in your life.

No purpose in mind

Unlike my other articles, this has no purpose. It’s just the collection of some thoughts in my head. There was no reason why I thought about this or why I wrote it.

What does a person want? All of us have an ultimate calling that we search throughout our lives, and for most of us the search bears no fruit. The flow of our lives ends being dictated by the need to be a part of the rat race rather than being dictated by us. There are two breeds of “smart” people that are able to conclude their search. One consists of those who give up and accept the fate of an existence within the rat race, and the other of those who’re fortunate enough to find their “purpose” in life. The most unfortunate souls are those who realize that they want to find their calling but keep struggling with little or no success. Well for now, I fall into this category. If you fall into either of the first two categories then don’t read – this won’t make any sense to you.

There might be loads of situations where we are confused about a choice. There seem to be two paths, each with its pros and cons but each equally enticing. And more often than not the pros of a choice are the cons of the other. What makes us inclined towards both? After all we’re humans - supposedly the most intelligent species. Well according to me, it’s this intelligence that causes the dual wants. I could think of no better illustration of this than the movie “The Mask”. Don’t go “huh?” just yet. What the movie depicted was quite brilliant. It showcased the fact that our brain is intelligent enough to process two alter egos and that’s not a small feat. Stanley Ipkiss and the Mask was the same person [the superhuman abilities of mask put aside]. Our brain is able to process the same options from two different perspectives. You might even from the perspective of two different individuals. Individuals with different wants, different goals and different approaches to this journey called life.

Personally, I have chosen to accept this duality of life with an alter ego approach. I call him Maverick. Harsh is the nice guy who appreciates all the people existing in his life, fights in the rat race hoping to win it someday, and makes sure that he has a smile on his face when he greets the people around him [professional/social commitments after all] no matter how crappy he may be feeling. Maverick on the other hand appreciates his friends and family only, knows he’s capable of moving above the rat race and conquer his dreams, and isn’t two faced with what he feels. The only thing probably common in them is the love for my family. It’s not like they have different goals in mind, after all their eventual goal is my happiness. Their approach is what differentiates them. They each define different paths and different sets of intermediate goals to their eventual aim.

Well therein lays the fact that makes the third category of people the unfortunate souls they become. Unfortunate not becomes they are miserable/unhappy/dying for attention, but unfortunate because their confused. And this confusion is the biggest deterrent to them achieving either of their goals. The contradictory wants end up diminishing the success possible on either of the paths. You never truly take a path because you’re unsure and English has enough axioms that prove that success is not possible if you’re on contradictory paths.

Unlike my other articles, there are no suggestions or solutions for this. I am myself caught up in the struggle to understand myself.

As I close my eyes today

As I close my eyes today,
All I think about is you,
When I turn myself around,
All I feel around is you

Life takes us full circle,
It just goes round and round,
Misery eats us away,
Like a blood thirsty hound

The memories you gave,
Are the reasons behind my smile,
As I close my eyes today,
All I think about is you

I lost a hundred chances,
May ask for a thousand more,
But I’ll always be there,
With an open heart’s door

The touch of your kiss,
A feeling so sublime,
Your dreams are mine to hold,
Till the end of time

As I close my eyes today,
I promise I’ll be there,
There through every life’s hurt,
Your pain is mine to heal.

Today I move on

I saw her standing there across the mall
thought I would go say hi
some time ago my best friend
now just a face in the crowd that I recognize

it won’t be awkward
I convinced myself
after all why should it be?

we’ll have so much to talk about
after all it’s been so long
I told myself

just then I saw my reason to fear
she was with her friends
surrounded by her new life and her new friends
she looked complete without needing me there

I gathered my wits and all my guts
and slowly moved towards her
determined to find my old friend
to find solace in our friendship again

I said hi and she replied excitedly
it’s been so long, she said
she excused herself from her friends
and choose to sit with me for coffee instead

happy, excited and a bit anxious
we chatted for a good hour
the wavelengths matched and so did the moods
but what did not were our lives

it had indeed been a long time
the more we spoke the more I realized
our lives didn’t intertwine anymore
We had each moved into a new realm of reality

the realization struck hard
it saddened me a bit
but then I realized I had been stuck too long
Today I finally move on…

What makes you happy?

What makes a person happy? What makes us want to smile? Most of us search our entire lives for that magic formula that adds self-contentment and zeal; transforming our existence into life.

Putting aside all the cliché answers, any true patron of the movie “Fight Club” would say that it can be anything that makes you tick. As Tyler Durden taught us, there is no limitation on the outlandish nature of our mood controller. For the uninitiated, Tyler got kicks out of ‘selling rich women their fat [that they got removed through liposuction] back as soaps’, ‘fucking Marla till the end of eternity’ and ‘venting out his frustration by fighting’. Strange as it may sound to some; but these things kept him happy. These things ensured that when he got up he had a smile on his face and looked forward to each day like it was his last; consequently living it to the fullest.

Though there are some basic needs that all humans have [e.g. the need for sex], there is one cliché that holds true for most of us – ‘You are unique, just like everyone else’. Each of us have some uniqueness in what drives us, what keeps us happy and what motivates us to do the unimaginable. For ages countless studies have been done to try and decipher what makes someone be him or her. But most if not all have resulted in inadequate conclusions. The sole reasoning behind this, in my mind, is the fact that nobody except the individual can decipher what makes him/her happy.

Friends and family are just travelers who stand beside you to provide any help if needed be, but only an individual himself can figure out the reasoning behind his grieving nature. A forward I read stated that “Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full ofgarbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they'll dump it on you.” That choice also remains with you.

Most of us spend our time just putting the pieces of our lives together. Trying hard and hoping that someday it’ll make the beautiful picture that we dream of. But just putting the pieces together will never make them stay in place; we need a glue to keep it together. And no one else can provide that to us. Spouses can help us put the glue in the right places, but the glue needs to come from us. This glue is the magic formula that we look for, the list of things that’ll make us happy. Well learning this magic should be the easiest thing in the world especially considering that the spell is within us, we only have to cast it and it has to be casted on us.

But we’re humans and not magicians. We can’t just cast a spell and make everything in our lives fine. Yet, I have chosen to take small steps. Discover things that make me happy. Every day I want to give myself at least one reason to look forward to the next day. It’s not to say I’ll leave aside all planning for a long beautiful life but I need to give myself reasons to ‘live’ it that long. A mere existence for 70 years carries little with it except pain and grief.

Some Quotes I live by

Law of the Garbage Truck - Unknown
Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they'll dump it on you.

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause - Unknown

The curtain is lifting. We can have triumph, or tragedy, for we are the play-wrights, the actors and the audience. Let us book our seats for triumph. Theworld is sickened of tragedy.
- John Macauley, Chairman, League of Red Cross, accepting Nobel Peace Prize

Go Out

GO OUT ...

"Damn, I feel like dancing". Most of us associate the want of dancing with happiness. Whenever we are blessed with a reason to add more curves to our smile, we feel the urge to share the happiness. In an internet survey, 8 out of every 10 people have similar events happening to them after this feeling. They go to share their happiness with someone, and invariably that person has something to crib about and blows out their bubble of happiness. How many times has this happened to each of us, all of a sudden we are forced to crash from cloud # 9 flat down to the ground reality of someone else's sadness.

So what do the remaining 2 people do differently? Are the just lucky or are they loved more by the almighty lord. Well though luck sometimes helps us select the right people, to make the correct selection all the time we need to change our thoughts. Those 2 people choose to be happy; they choose to share their happiness with someone who they know will either join them in dance or ask them to come for bungee jumping to celebrate. These are the people who are able to either share your happiness or help elevate you to a higher level of ecstasy. All of us have a big bag of eclectic selection to pick from - our collection of friends - but invariably we choose to select from a very limited set. We constrict our choices to those who we believe should be performing a certain role in our lives. And we may not always be lucky enough to find people who match our hopes. So what do we do then, do we persists with the same hope and often suffer the same disappointment. According to me, the answer to that is " F$#K%$G HELL NO".

GO OUT and you'll be surprised. Explore around, talk to people who you haven't bothered speaking with. Call up an old friend, step out of the normal conversation that you share with a current friend. Don't let your friendship become mundane by the same type of conversation; give him/her and yourself a surprise. Discuss something new; grow your friendship by exploring the new avenues. You may find that there is a lot more common between you and your friend(s). Sometimes we need our relationship with people to be resurrected. Whether you let a friend ferment for sometime [Give space to each other to think] or actively add vigor and spice to give birth to a new equations [Between old friends or with new friends]. Don't let yourself and others ever get bogged down with petty issues, there are 6 billion+ people in this world and you can surely find 10 friends for yourself. And just maybe 1 or 2 [More if you're lucky] of them who will be the ones' asking you to dance for the rest of your life.

Threads of a Relationship - Broken

A: Hi, long time how have you been
B: Good. What about you.
…
…
…
…
A: Why are you being this way
B: Because I can’t think of behaving with you anyother way. What do u expect me to do.
A: Common yaar I haven’t done anything
B: May be that’s whats wrong. Figure it out yourself.


Conversation ends


How many times have you had such conversations with your friends? Where one person just doesn’t realize what’s wrong and the other can’t understand why “it” is wrong.

Below are my point of views on some of the common situations and reasons behind relationships falling apart.

Note:
1. The views expressed below are strictly mine.
2. Review and criticism are always welcomed
3. “He” will be henceforth be used in a general context referring to either of the sexes. Kindly don’t mail back saying that “women” can also be part of I.I.
4. Relationship is used in a generic sense not referring to the relationship between lovers only but also between friends/siblings etc.
5. The word you has been used very loosely, this is not to point fingers but if you feel that you fall in one of those categories then get to thinking.

How can he expect that for me
A relationship should be defined by similar expectations set for both the people involved. Never let anyone expect something from you that you are not willing to give. You may feel like “What can I do, he keeps having such unrealistic demands/expectations”, but no this you and only you are responsible for what kind of expectations an individual has from you. Although the inherent nature of a person - ‘Clingy’, ‘Detached’ etc- will be instrumental in what expectation he may want to set, its only you that are responsible for what expectations he sets

I know he did it for me but I don’t want to
Don’t ever let anyone do something for you that you wouldn’t be willing to do for him. It’s not fair for that individual to spend his heart doing something for you and later realize that you wouldn’t have done it for him. Always remember by letting someone do something for you, you give him a chance to raise his expectations from you.

I don’t care
If you have to ask yourself the question “Why should I care” then the thread will get strained and broken. Personally I believe that if such an occasion arises you should probably take active steps to make the other person understand that he should not expect you to care. That may be you are not the right person he should be coming back to and discussing. Give him the chance to find people who do care.

Hi, I need help.
If you call a person only when you need something, please stop. For all the times that he has been there for you, do him a favor. Don’t be a part of his life, if all you can add to it is your misery. If you can’t add to his happiness then the least you can do is not add to his baggage. Everyone has enough happening in his life to fill his quota of hardships.
That is not to say that you should not count on your friends, that you should not expect your friend to be the shoulder that you can cry on if needed be. Just that if someone is contributing towards the smile on your face, one should return the favor and add to the smile on his face.

Oh he started again
Never pretend to be listening. If you really care enough then sit there, but if you would rather run away tell the person that. Nothing can hurt more than realizing that the person you confided in never cared.

I just don’t have the time
Never make a person believe that you will give him more time than what you are willing to give. This contributes most to a strained relationship. If he is not on your priority list amongst the persons to attend to, don’t make him believe he is. Don’t tell him hey I was just thinking about calling you yesterday when his thought hasn’t registered in your mind for weeks.

Listen I can’t think of this now. [My career is important/I am not looking for a relationship right now etc]
Don’t ever tell a person that you don’t want to be with him now. Most of us know that “now” is not what is the problem. One of the worst things that you can do to another is to leave them with hopes when you don’t want a relationship. Do him a favor, tell him an outright “No, I don’t see us as lovers, I don’t want to be with you”. He’ll be hurt but it’ll give him a chance to find someone else and be happy. He may actually be a friend to you again someday.

I.I. – Idiots Incorporated
If you fell that you fall under the category of what I was refer as “he”, then you need help. Your own help. You need to talk to the person concerned, work out why the differences exist and bridge the gap by either reducing your expectation or increasing their commitment. Consensus can only be reached with communication. The biggest hurdle in a successful relationship is a communication gap. And if you believe that the person is still bluffing you, please move on. Life is beautiful and there are thousands of beautiful and genuine people out there. Don’t get stuck up on someone who can’t even tell you their true intentions about you.

Convicted by the Media

“A mockery of justice”, “Guilty escape with minor punishment”, these were the headlines of various news articles when Alistair Pereira was given a jail sentence of 6 months.

Today’s media has taken upon itself the task of convicting the accused. I am not qualified to give judgment on whether Alistair is guilty or not, but I don’t think the media is qualified either. It had pronounced judgment even before the courts did.

In its endeavor to be the voice of the people, it has become a criminal itself. Its crime is to assassinate the responsibilities associated with journalism. Today it doesn’t showcase what the masses believe in but instead forces its opinion down the throat of the masses. I would like to highlight some of the latest breaking news showcased by various news channels, which showcase the hypocritical nature of the media houses.

Narayan Murthy dishonoring the country. Now, here is a son of India who has arguably brought more dignity to his motherland in the International arena than any other Indian. And I say this with all due respects to the Tatas, Birlas, and other great Indians like Mother Teresa etc. The media had pronounced judgment on his patriotism without any regards to the man himself. And for what? For following an international norm. Take any sport (Football, Formula 1 etc), it is always the instrumental version of the nation anthem that is played. They went on tarnishing his image and saying how he was not fit for the post for President of India. Not withstanding the fact that I believe he would be one of the best candidates for the job, they didn’t even care to showcase the fact that he didn’t want the post in the first place.

Another story making headlines in the recent past is been the state of Indian cricket. The media has done a 360 - from accusing the players of a lack of commitment, to blaming Greg Chappel for not understanding the Indian crickets’ needs and most recently calling the BCCI a bully. Nobody seems to be doing their job except the media. Maybe if the media had not been so judgmental in their approach, they could have actually helped the BCCI and the Indian masses discover what the actual problem is.

The list goes on and on. From the Gujrat “Fake” encounter case, involving IPS officer Vanzara, to blaming the government for hiding details about Naxal activities. It’s just so appalling.

Some of the people may argue that only the outcry in media resulted in the justice for Priyadarshini Matoo. That media was responsible for Subash getting aid. Lets take each of the cases individually.

Priyadarshini Matoo’s case showcased the loopholes present in our judiciary system. But is the media competent enough to plug those loopholes, I think not. The media is an important pillar of our democratic system. Even then, it should not try and interfere in the running of the other pillars. The judiciary and the executive are independent bodies, and that independence needs to be respected. The media cannot take on itself to be the monitor over both the judiciary and the executive. Otherwise we will reach a state of anarchy where there is nobody to monitor the media.

As far as the plight of 5 year old Subash is concerned. There are hundreds of Subashes that die everyday. I don’t believe that the media would have bothered highlighting his plight if they can any other “breaking” news to show. It was just because they had nothing else to fill into their airtime did they bother being so thoughtful. The day these media houses care enough to devote airtime to Subash on a packed news day is when I will bow before them in respect.

Very recently some of the responsible journalist have acknowledge that the media is becoming more and more irresponsible everyday. But sadly most of the journalists just don’t care. TRP and exclusive breaking news seems to be the order of the day. And all this hype and competition has resulted in is the death of responsible journalism.

It’s my sincere request, to the media houses running these news channels, get a life. Learn the responsibility associated with the job of a journalist and spare us from your opinions.

Note: The above passage is strictly the opinion of the author, namely me.