The best thing about music

ज़िंदगी  का सफर, है ये कैसा सफर 

कोई समझा नहीं, कोई जाना नहीं !

है ये कैसी डगर , चलते हैं सब मगर 

कोई समझा नहीं, कोई जाना नही...

What did you first think of when you read the above words in Hindi? Most likely you didn't read them, you actually sang them. That's a thing about music, it sticks with you. One takes forever to learn mathematical equations or other stuff, but it's so simple to remember the lyrics and the tone and the rhythm and the pace of so many songs. We remember these songs so well, in fact, that we can start singing them even in our sleep. 

Doesn't it make you wonder why it's so easy to remember songs? Why is it that music stays with us so comfortably when all other words are shortly forgotten?

'Now' is all there is!

I am reading the book “History of the Universe” by Wyken Seagrave. The book talks about the evolution of the Universe, and how it changed from absolute nothingness into everything that we see around us. The story of evolution is interesting and awe-inspiring. But evolution is the study of the present more than it is of the past. In some weird way, we are a part of the evolution! Well, people living on this planet a million years from now would definitely think so.

Lost in this thought, I am sitting by my window at 2 AM in the night as I write this. Mumbai looks unbelievably calm. Across the road I can see the beautifully engineered Indiabulls building. It is more special to me than one could imagine. It was precisely here that I had started my first job about two years ago. How naïve I had been then! At the risk of sounding conceited, I say that I have changed over time.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Whenever we read about Nirbhaya, our insides shout with anguish and hate. It disturbs our mental peace. And whenever some disturbing statements of the rapists come to the fore, we want to distance ourselves from the reality of it… We cannot allow that to happen! They have to be killed! How can they even think like this? We begin to curse the rapists; we clench our fists and wish that they die a painful death. But we are frustrated with our helplessness.

The public furor against these unsettling thoughts is good, but that doesn’t seem to put a stop to it. The whole country was shocked with the extreme acts of injustice against that girl, and for a moment we thought we could actually bring about some change. But then the horror came to the surface. It’s a travesty that rapists are still out there large in numbers. People who blame the victims for a rape are also still roaming around, having fun by poking around their disgusting thoughts in the media.

It is uncomfortable, but it is the truth.

Failed in CA Final, as usual...

You work hard for the CA examination. You are overwhelmed with the surmounting expectations bestowed upon you by relatives and friends. But you like it basically. Therefore, you feel good about yourself and keep working to achieve your target. You appear for the exams brimming with confidence and wait for the result.

You fail.

Life is a chaos!

Nobody knows if there's a God. Theists and atheists may argue alike. I was never much interested in this question. Given my way, I would let everyone find their own beliefs in life. However, there is something which intrigues me the most. So much, in fact, that it's creepy.

The Other Point of View...

I am not a very good communicator. Often, I make stupid mistakes while interacting with others. It is essential to understand the implications of what we’re saying and how it affects people. For instance, once I had an argument with a colleague in office. I needed something from him. He didn’t refuse outright, but was always delaying the work. Consequently, I lost my temper.

Procrastination... and how I got over it!

I have a ‘task-list’ on my computer. When it is completed, I simply have to click on the icon next to it and the task disappears. When some task has passed its due date, it changes colour to red and is thus highlighted. For about two weeks by my calendar – the whole list was red.

Is anybody truly happy?

I was watching from my room when the little girl was sweeping the street. Her father, also a sweeper, is a drunkard. Almost always he smells of alcohol whenever he asks for money. His wife sometimes asks in his stead. The whole family sweeps the streets and lives on meagre payments.

The Power of Music!

Have you ever felt the tingling sensation that grabs you after listening to a beautiful music? Or have you tried singing along with a song, with your friends shouting behind you, “Stop singing; let’s listen to the song!”? Ever wondered what is in that disco music that leaves you with an urge to start tapping your feet… and dancing on the floor… and shaking your body in sync with the drum beats?

The Power of Accepting Criticisms...

Let me begin by recounting a couple of incidents from my life.

The first is from my college time. In my classes, I used to stay rather away from most of my classmates and was rarely connected with people. Today I realise that it is important to stay connected. Back then, I was much more stubborn. One of my friends told me that I must change. Stupid as I was, instead of giving heed to what he had to say, I reacted badly. And I told him many justifications in support of my nature.

Injustice is a blessing in disguise...

We all know the story of Mahabharata. There are so many lessons we can learn from the story that if I start making a list of them, I would probably never finish. This is because the epic story touches every part of a man’s life, probably experiences that I have not even felt hitherto. Therefore, with every passing incident in life, the story of Mahabharata sounds more meaningful. Let me share one part of the story for a beginning.

A conversation with an auto driver...

That day everything was just as usual. I hailed an auto-rickshaw from the road after leaving office and sat inside.

“Chembur,” I announced. And he drove off.

Usually my ride back home is about an hour. So I sat back and figured out what to do. Normally, I read random stuff on mobile or any book if I carry one. I took out my cell phone when the auto driver started –

“Sir, do you smoke?”

I was taken aback by this sudden question. “No, I don’t.”

How to do something we don’t like?

Oh! That overwhelming feeling when you have to do something that you just don’t want to do!

However hard we may try to avoid, there will be such situations. For example, having to attend the wedding of some auntie’s daughter just because our mummy wants it, and we can’t hate it more. Or having to finish an assignment which belongs to our boss, only because he wants us to do it and we don’t want to hamper our impression with him.

Being happy with our decisions...

“It is our choices that show who we really are, far more than our abilities”

This nice quote from Harry Potter says that our choices leave a profound impact on who we become as a person. It does not matter what we can do and cannot do; rather what we decide to do and what we decide not to do. I’m sure we all agree that there is a big difference. But a more relevant question is this – are we able to stick to the decisions we make?

3 ways in which writing helps us!

There is something magical about writing. I say this out of my own experiences. In this blog-post, I have tried to put forth my views about why writing helps us beautifully. 

Are we biased towards ourselves?

I think we naturally believe that what we do is the best. Theoretically this is true, because if we really believed there was something better that could be done, then why would not we do it in the first place? But then, truth is obviously stranger than fiction. And the truth is that we may not always be right.

The Power of Humility...

I will begin by sharing with you one incident from my life. This relates to the time when I started studying for my CA-Final. The classes had just begun and all the people were new to each other. So there was a boy sitting next to me in the hall. We started discussing about how the teachers of these coaching institutions are busy as there are so many students studying for CA. Then he said that it is quite impossible for these teachers to even know the names of all the students.

What we should learn from the election story…

Mahatma Gandhi had said, “We should be the change that we wish to see in the world.”

For all practical reasons, the recent elections remind me of this dictum. I am included in the lakhs and crores of people who had always criticised the Indian political system. We all constantly maintained that politics is but a shady and treacherous quicksand which is a no-place for educated people like us. What right then do we have of criticising the systems?

God helps those who help themselves...

Once, two frogs accidently fell into a tank full of hot milk. While they both tried hard to swim and come out of it, they could just not find a way out. One of the frogs told the other, “Listen brother, there is no use trying. I am very exhausted of swimming continuously. I think we should just give up! Our end has come… there is no way out!” Saying this, he stopped swimming and died. The other did not give up…

Moving out of our comfort zone…

It was more than three months ago. I had come to know that I will have to travel to South Korea for a project. I had not heard much about this country, except in context of the famous companies Samsung and Hyundai. So naturally I started exploring more about it. And some of the facts that I came to know had depressed me.