What I want

I have been asking this question myself for quite sometime now. What do I really want to do in life? Apart from the natural want of having a nice full life with my lady. I have now started to question my purpose in life. I want to be part of something, which I can be proud of later in my life. I do not know if what I have is ambition or aspiration. In my definition, the difference between the two is very simple. In the former one wants to make it big at all costs and in the later one wants to make a difference at all cost. I am unable to make out the distinction because I don’t know what cost am I willing to bear to achieve what I pursue.
I am at a very crucial juncture in life when I need to decide the amount of sacrifice I am willing to do now and later in life. This is one of the stages when I have been reminded the absence of someone to guide and mentor me in my life. Probably the situation of ‘a kind man talking to a stubborn man’ has been with me because I never appreciated the credibility of people who gave me the unsolicited advice.
I have started to believe I need to modify my principle in life to ‘If you cannot be first, be the best. If you cannot be the best, be the first’. I need to work harder to create my own destiny.

Need to own

Humans have this insatiable desire to own. We have this craze to own the biggest house, most luxurious cars, and costly jewelry to name a few. This need to own things is not limited to just humans, it has crossed individual boundaries. Now it’s the groups, trusts, State and Countries which want to own more and more land. If owning is not a possibility, we try to atleast control it with hugely complex systems of understanding and diplomatic manipulations.
I am not saying I am a saint and have no such cravings. I also want all the materialistic benefits I can get. I would love to get my woman all the expensive materialistic things. For some reason I value other non-materialistic things we humans can give each other. The love, companionship, trust and other such intangible stuff we give each other is worth a lot than the value attributed to them.
I read sometime back about the fight on the ownership of North Pole. Strange I always thought South Pole and North Pole is not part of any country they are international territory. Now I know that there is a dispute on its ownership. I always thought the disputes were for things like oil lands like Iraq, strategic place like Afghanistan, and historic significance like Israel. The war on North Pole’s ownership is due to the possible resources that may be under South / North poles. The strongest get to become stronger, world’s Monopoly game is in full swing in some place I did not even consider before.
If we look back in our history, Mongols, Turks and then Europeans defeated Indians for the land, Americans / Europeans made Africans slaves in the quest for land, the Native Indians of North and South America massacred for land by the European settlers. It does not stop at this for the sake of land multiple generations of children (Stolen generation) separated from their parents – Aborigines in Australia. Will this ever stop? NO WAY. As long as the quest for owning exists in humans these atrocities by one group on another will flourish. What does it really mean to "own" land? Why is it that every culture, allow a person to draw lines and then have almost complete control over what goes on inside those boundaries? What are the advantages, the disadvantages, and the alternatives? How might a humane and sustainable culture re-invent the "ownership" connection between people and the land? Our sense of "land ownership" is embedded deep in our fundamental cultural assumptions that we never stop to consider its implications or alternatives. Most people are at best only aware of two choices - private ownership (Democracy) and state ownership (Communism). Both of these patterns are full of problems and paradoxes. So where is the third alternative?

Dreams

Having dreams is what makes life tolerable. I don’t know if I will have to walk alone in the pursuit of my dreams. I know there is one person who will stand with me, but not sure, how long that person is going to stand by me. I keep getting the advice that, chasing a stupid dream causes you and people around you heart ache. Does anyone know how much my heartache I get by not chasing it? Am I being selfish in ensuring, that it aches no more, it may very well be. I have been selfish all my life and a few more years like that ain’t gonna hurt anyone. I can have a good life by just being what I am now. My guardian angel has bestowed me with sufficient resources to enjoy my life. All my life, I have had this dream of studying in a very well known and respected Univ. I have no idea of which Univ, in my dreams all I see is just huge monumental structures depicting the college. It is not about just studying in that Univ, it’s about what sort of perspective and increase in my horizon it will give me, not to mention how much I will grow in my own eyes.
I know I have nothing to prove in the world to anybody, but I need to prove it to myself that I am worth something, I am worth being someone with a name. Some one gave me an example that achievers like Bill Gates / Ellison / Premji / Steve jobs never completed college. Are these people not missing something? Are they not ignoring the fact that these great achievers did get into the college and not complete it by choice? Here I am struggling to even get in, forget the part of completing or not.
I am writing this watching a very good movie RUDY this was like a medicine for the state I was in. It is about how one man fulfills his dreams against all odds. It is about how his perseverance pays off. Dedication of any individual will definitely win over supporters in the strangest of places, which effectively turn out to be the most crucial. I have this belief; one has to be either lucky or patient in life to get what he/she wants. I know for one thing I am not lucky so it’s pretty obvious, I have to be patient for my time to come. Until then I just need to persist and continue to follow my dreams. It’s not just the destination but also the journey that matters. There was this article in TIME sometime back, which talked about over achievers and under-achievers. It mentioned that over-achievers have this fire in their belly to do something significant. I hope I have some amount of fire to have sufficient impact on the lives of people who love me. I hope I can achieve what I dream of, get my MBA and go on to implement all my ideas.

Dreams

Addiction

I feel I am addicted to the urge to find something to get addicted. It is like this never-ending quest to find the ultimate addiction. If my close family reads this, they may feel a bit let down but I was addicted and I wanted to know every vice on this planet. The interesting part about the constant search is I would come out of addictions with relatively no after affect. The only reason I can attribute to the ease with which I can come out of it other than the apparent reason of my will power is the reverse order of my addictions. Some may say I was never addicted but I know better about myself than any other mortal on this planet.
Let me chronicle what all I have been addicted to till now. The first addiction I can recollect is my need to torture; I would torch an entire anthill. Then it turned to the addiction to get into fights, anything I touch would bruise. As I grew, it went into substance abuse (non-alcoholic). This moved onto girls in the later stages of my teenage life. When a girl started spreading rumor of having my baby and suspecting it might eventually happen I stopped. Probably that was the turning point and moved me to another of my addictions, liquor. Man I have guzzled so many bottles that I am still struggling to get the concentrate semi liquid collection off my belly! This stopped around the time I found true love in my Bambi whom I eventually married. I am addicted to the need to love her. For the past few months, I feel I am slowly succumbing to my need to be addicted to something new. It started of as a very innocuous research for my future study plans. I started doing a lot of research on the internet. Now hooked like a fish on bait, I am going down the path I have taken so many times again, addicted to internet.
I feel like I am losing my head. This is the first time I have had more then one strong addiction in parallel. I feel ripped apart in three ways. One says stick with your girlfriend (I prefer to call my wife my girlfriend); the other says I need net more than anything. There is one other self of mine which is saying boy break out of this vicious cycle, get out of the need to be addicted if you need to go on to make something of your life. Let me end this by a poem (poet unknown) I came across,
Behind now stretches the fertile fields of known
Tested and sure
Great piles of textured memories
Dripping with love, passion and pain
Fear, want and need: starts and finishes
Safe haven barely understood
Evil thoughts grown from holy desires
Death and destruction

When I stare ahead
From the now
Life stretches across the dark abyss
To the setting sun
Highlighted with maybes
Addiction

Waiting

I have the desire and have been trying to do my MBA for quiet sometime now. I have had multiple hits at this dream of mine. If anyone knows what is the taste of failure and the depth of despair it brings, it has to be ME and only ME. Once I got so close to getting the coveted British Chevening full scholarship and I messed it up. How did I mess it up? Man I am even ashamed to think about it. That incident clearly showed me how immature I was. It is a different topic to discuss on how mature I am now! Some people say everything that happens, happens for the good. I am of the opinion this is just a solace for people who fear looking at life’s reality in the eye.

Recently I read some speech by Steve Jobs, he talked about connecting the dots. He says, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma”, whatever. Now how will the incident of probably being rejected an admit into an university-MBA fit into my life later? At this point with the limited view, of the future I stand no chance at connecting anything that is happening in my life forget the dots. However, being the person Steve Job is, I will give him the benefit of doubt and probably look at this later in my life and see how I will be able to connect these dots!

As for now I am waiting, and waiting for the Ad comm. to respond to my application and mail. I have been waiting for something or the other all my life. During my waits, I sometimes feel I have been doing nothing but waiting all my life. Even before I was born, I had to wait for my parents to decide it was time for them to get their last progeny on this planet. After being born, I had to wait for my nanny to change my diapers. I had to wait for my mom to come back from work and spend time with me. I had to wait for my sister to come out of the bathroom in the morning. I had to wait for the school days to get over to join college. I had to wait until the movie ended to stop laughing when I saw ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’(Indian movie). I had to wait for my girlfriend at the coffee shop. I had to wait for my overseas opportunity, now I am waiting for the response from the Ad comm. Will I ever stop waiting?

Let me end this rant with my version of Steve jobs ending statement. ‘Stay Hungry Stay Selfish and try not to wait’

Waiting

Home

Where is HOME for me? I have lost sense of feeling of home for a very very long time now. I consider myself Homeless. I have had this feeling from the time I got my first salary way back in 1996 and realized I am responsible for myself. There is no relation whatsoever to the incident but after that I have felt like I am not at home. I have stayed in many places over the past 10 years, but I do not feel and consider any of the places my home. Every place was just an apartment or a house to stay in never a home. There was something missing always.
"Home is where we start from, but home is also where we are bound for, the place we always seek." – David Steindl-Rast
So what is home? Is it just a place with bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and obviously roof! No, I don’t consider that home; there must be some sort of attachment to the place. Each city or a town will have its own characteristics, as New York is forever awake, Boston is academically oriented, Pune has such lively young crowd, and Bangalore has the pot-holed roads! So any person if he/she considers that city as home gets used to that characteristic. If there is a need to move to a different city there is some amount of inertia to move. Compare this to my state; I had no qualms in moving from one place to the other, Boston is my sixth base. Not once have I had any kind of inertia to move, without a second thought I have moved. I have liked every place I have visited, but I was not able to identify myself with anything. This point’s at the fact that I am a lost soul looking for his identity. Where does my identity lie, that I can decipher only when I reach home. Trapped in this vicious maze not knowing where I am running to in this marathon called life, I shudder at the thought of not knowing my own identity until the last leg of the marathon. I just hope I get to relish the taste of sipping a hot cup of coffee looking into the horizon from the balcony of my HOME.

Home

Small or Big

There are only few instances where I have ever felt smaller things are more important. I know anyone who reads ‘Size does not matter’ will think of only one thing. All of us have a one-track mind and we have the guts to comment on others having a single track! Tsk tsk
So now coming to why I made my point above. I have always faced this situation when you do a big task to the expectation or beyond expectation whatever it does not really make a big impression. However, when a small task performed outstandingly receives a huge amount of recognition. The same task you do bad voila, you are associated to the group of underachieving, inefficient, worthless, drain on the company’s payroll scum. I have come to a point where I really concentrate on the small details in the past year or so. Man, have I had some real good progress because of this decision of mine? U betcha.
I have had this one experience, which may help you see my point of view. It was some event to celebrate and we had gone to some restaurant. The food was good, it was better than we (I & my girl) can cook. That is the reason we go to a restaurant right to eat food better then you normally have don’t we? It was an Indian restaurant for a change and we had some rice entrée, which comes with some yogurt-based curry (raitha). The combination of the rice with all its spices and curry was very good. I requested for an extra serving of that curry and those people charged me extra for it. If we go to any restaurant and I am charged extra for a extra slice of bread how do you feel? Now coming back to my main point, even thou the food was great, ambience was acceptable, waiters were polite, that small thing of being charged extra put me off. It was just 85 cents so it did not attract my attention; it was the gesture of charging for it that did.
I rest my argument :>)

The ultimate VIRUS

CHILDREN / KIDS
I loathe children. A few days back on Halloween, I found them much less terrifying, when they were dressed as scary monsters, than at other times, when they are dressed as themselves. The only explanation I had is, I was able to associate them to their costumes and this probably gave me some comfort. It’s a typical response I think, it is all about appearances and our mental associations!

Let me put my thoughts on why I have such a aversion towards children,

1. For most part children are an abstract solution to fill a emotional void, or simply accidents or even worst a status in the all important socialite existence
2. Children are a huge drain on the resources - time and money. Not that a sexy lady is not!
3. I am jealous of the innocence in a child. This is probably because I feel my innocence was lost quite early in life
4. I feel deprived of the freedom they have to do whatever they feel like. The whole infinite set of option in life is still wide open for them
5. I consider them wailing, screaming, pissing, feces spewing pet humans. A pet dog is better than a child is, dogs can be trained faster than a kid!
6. Child brings a huge load on the relationship between the mother and the father
7. The mother and father are severely restricted by the child, they in all probability stop concentrating on their individual hobbies, interests and activities they were doing together before the child was part of the picture
8. They squeal a lot, and cry a lot which is a pain on my ears. Have you ever been disturbed by a wailing child while watching a movie very intently? Alternatively, have you ever traveled in a flight with a baby in the next seat?
9. In past, having children made practical/economical sense. More babies meant more hands on the farm, more scouts to explore the land beyond. In current times, atleast in my country there is shortage of almost every resource ever needed by man. It is very clear having children is a direct act of social, economic and environmental terrorism

The above points may seem trivial to most immature people. It is not an exhaustive list of reasons thou. I keep finding new and innovative reasons for doing it. I have conveyed and mutually agreed to keep a child out of the relation I have with my girl. I do have my own doubts as to how long she will stick to that understanding. I believe it is just a matter of time before we both have standoffs on this topic. When that happens I am pretty sure I will go nuts!!! Just imagine a child in the house with a child hater like me around. There are endless possibilities on what could happen to me or to the child as well.
I feel I have Pedophobia - fear or dislike of children. I did not know the word existed until I wrote this post. I feel the suffix -phobia relates more to fear than hate, the prefix –‘miso’ directly relates to hate. The dictionaries give us misogyny" (hatred of women) – which I am definitely not and "misogamy" (hatred of marriage) – which I was once. On this model, we have misopedy (hatred of children) – this I feel I am.
Most people think it’s their primary right or obligation to produce the worst virus ever let lose on this planet; Children. Not only does this particular organism grows and uses more and more resources, but it feels the constant need to come in contact with more organisms, procreate more exponentially. In spite of all the myriad ways we humans have invented to cure the earth of ourselves the rate at which the virus is coming to life the future looks bleak.
So conclusion is I have ‘Misopedy’ and to a certain extent ‘Pedophobia’. I am healthy and I definitely do not want to be infected with the virus - child.
Virus Children misogyny Pedophobia misogamy misopedy

To Love or to be Loved?

Love is such a weird thing. After being in love for the past 5 yrs with my girl, I think I can comment on love out of personal experience. I feel one must be grateful if there is a person who he/she can love. To love compared with to be loved is more rewarding and gives a feeling of completeness. The soul feels full to make someone your at most priority in life. I know a lot many out there will not agree on my point, most people on this planet would want to be loved than to love someone. This is because the materialistic benefits the person who is loved gets is far too much than in the other alternative! But at the end of the day the feeling of being full which I value more is had only by loving not by being loved. I do not expect anyone to agree with me, comments are welcome thou.
I also feel very strange about my relation because I do not feel jealous. I will try to explain my state rationally. I feel the absence of jealousy is because, I have faith in my love for her will be the same, immaterial of what she or anyone else does. "Jealousy stems from desire", so does this mean I do not desire for her? Now that is a very interesting development of my argument. The fact is I desire her, I lust for her, and the only difference is I am not satisfied with getting only her body. I want her soul, and I feel that the act of making love with both body and soul can happen only with one person in ones lifetime. I know I am that person for my girl. Therefore, I am sure that there can be no other person who can have my girl like the way I do. This gives me no reason to be jealous of anyone she knows or I know.
Am I not lucky?
Love

Meaning

Let me add to my first post by writing about the root of a word I have slowly grown to dislike,
Giridhar
In southern part of India its another name for Lord Shiva. It means the God on top of the Mountain(Gir). The god of Destruction, he is usually depicted sitting in meditation, his locks matted atop his head with a crescent moon decorating it, an eye in the middle of his forehead, a serpent coiled around his neck, a trident beside him. His neck is blue, a reminder of the time he drank the poison that emerged while gods and demons competed to churn the milk ocean.
In other parts of India, Giridhar means Krishna the Casanova god! This deity is another incarnation of Lord Vishnu. Among other things he was a known lurer of women, prankster etc. He is also regarded as the person who gave the Bhagavad Gita (the Divine Song) that magnificent philosophical guide to the world.
Recently I got to know it has a meaning in Japanese. The literal meaning of the two kanji characters used to represent Giri is "Right reason". It meant pure and simple duty. The principle of Giri was formulated to serve as a severe taskmaster, a motivator to make one do what is right, when love is not the prevailing reason to do what is right.
I know of no other dialect in which there is a literal meaning for the word "Giri".

First fire ball

I have been using a diary to put in my rantings for the past few years. These days im very lazy to pick up my diary and pen. Typing my thoughts in seem to be more convenient. So hoping this will be first among the never ending ramblings of a lost soul.