Random Randomness #39

Random blog talk:
When I began the other blog of mine, pure pursuits, it was meant mainly for the “Body or soul” series, but later I decided to keep the blog alive and post things which really does not fit ramblings over here. I am not sure what I was thinking, anything which can occupy my mind should fit in here, anyways, I kind of feel sad that I have neglected that blog of mine very much. Some wise woman also mentioned about cross posting here and there, and how bad idea it was, I think I agree with her. Just I began with here, I should just stop thinking about if people want to read, what I scribble out there, instead just write what I think fits pure pursuits. I promise there wont be any cross posting any more. Instead I just put up a box in the side bar here, which shows updates if any.

Random conversations in head:
Lately I have become lazy when it comes to blogging, from a time where I used to be too eager to key in what I am thinking, I havy?“.
M – “yeah got to write this, but then who the hell is waiting toe reached a stage where many days I force myself in front of the computer to key in the thought which I had on mind. Mostly this is what goes on in my head.

Voice[V]- “hey remember in the morning, when you were in the cab, you were thinking about “X”, don’t you feel like writing that in the blog“
me[M] – “oh that“!, *
*begins to wonder about the same topic*
“yeah that needs to go in, but let me listen to this song first…“
30 minutes later…
V- “wont you write anything at all toda read this anyway“
V-“oh common, did you ever have people waiting to read what you say here“
M-“well you have a point. This last one episode of weeds on DVD, then I will be back” some time later..
V- “you know what you have become too lazy, didn’t you dream of reading these may be some 20 years from now, and just comparing the self?“
M-“oh yeah, right, may be this thought is worth remembering later.“
And the post goes in.
M thinking *20 years ha, lets hope V is long dead before that*

Random interesting comment:
One of my blogger friends wrote “your posts are becoming too personal these days“.
In a way love and hate myself for this, for the first time I have been able to unveil the mask effectively. People have identified its personal, that made me happy.
On the other had, my thoughts have become too much me centric, no more of the stupid useless stuff going on in my head, not so happy. most probably just a phase and the other things will be back again.

Random foodie:
Speaking of useless stuff, foodie weekends are back, totally happy on that front.
Thursday evening was an awesome trip to “Vidyarthi bhavan” an old timers “masala dosa” Paradise. God bless the award season at office, an excuse to celebrate.
Friday afternoon was a Chinese buffet at a place called “The great wall”, well have been cribbing about Chinese food for long, and now, have lost appetite for that, anyways food is food, not so good but a nice lunch
Friday night was a trip to the cramped “Grameen”, have been avoiding that place from long because of the huge crowds and the cramped space, But excellent food and Brilliant starters.
More on this story coming up down the post.
Saturday was totally home sweet home, with home cooked special kichdi from mom, nothing as stomach settling as this dish.
Sunday afternoon was parsi time, with crisp potato omelette’s with the buttered bun for the side, and the chicoo kulfi for desert.
So guys if any one interested in knowing more about these food, please email me, will be very happy to discuss 🙂

Random happiness:
So as I said before, Friday night was out for dinner at grameen, I was not so keen on going out after the heavy lunch at the Chinese place, and had loads of work to finish. So I cancel the dinner plans, and my friend agrees for it, so may be Saturday or Sunday, thats when we were supposed to go out.
Suddenly she calls up at around 9pm, asking to go out for dinner, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer, forget about no, she did not want to hear anything :), sounds annoying?..
nah she wasn’t, I liked this a lot, not many can compel me to do stuff, and when some does it with this much authority I simply love it :)..

Random matinée:
It had been a long time, since I had been to the movies, Sunday after a long hard debate we decided to go to “Chak de“, a not so new movie. I didn’t expect much from the movie, even after many told me its a good one, well with Shah rukh Khan you can never believe something can come out good :)..
For a change,the movie was refreshing, in places I could see him ham as usual, but in most places he was good, more than him the story is so inspiring that you tend to forget flaws in it. For the first time, someone portrayed the equality the way I see it, I call it “assuming” equality, no more asking for it, just claim that you are equal. The battle of sexes, here you get to see both sides of it, women opposing women, men supporting women, and the cliched versions where men oppose women, and women supporting each other. Somewhere down below we have to realize, equality is just in minds, as long as we don’t feel superior or inferior no one can take anything away from us.
I loved the scene when the Punjabi girl slaps a guy, when 10 people try to support him, she does not look for help, instead she fights alone and others volunteer.Isn’t this what men have been shown to do on screen always, small things which shows the mature director/story writer.
Really the movie is worth a watch.

Random blow out:
Speaking of movies, I have been spending crazily over last two weeks, first it was my birthday expenditure, couple of eat outs, couple of trousers, and again couple of more t shirts, the list goes on and on. But the most satisfying purchase was made today. As expected by you guys, I finally ended up doing some serious book shopping today. I had a huge list of things which I wanted to buy, and I hoped at least I find couple of books from the list. I was fed up of returning from book shops empty handed or with substitute books.
I wanted to buy few travelogues, it turned out that I bought just one travelogue and couple of others, which I had been searching for months.
Here’s what I bought.
“Perks of being a wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
“Dry, A memoir” by Augusten Burrroughs
“Made in America” by Bill Bryson
and also found out that they do have copies of “Possible side effects” by Augusten Burroughs, just the huge crowd, and busy staff meant that I Couldn’t get hold of the copy, soon I might make another trip to buy the rest of the books.

Random disgust:
How can people be so inconsiderate?, they just disgust me. As I was searching for “possible side effects” at landmark, I saw this person sitting in the literature section reading, the space between the two racks are very small, so I had to excuse myself couple of times walking up and down, finally found out that the “P” section is right behind the place where he was sitting, so I go stand in front of him in the cramped place and start searching, I politely say “excuse me” couple of times, thinking that he would give me some place, as he had already found the book and was seriously reading there. Even after a loud not so polite “EXCUSE ME” he would not move, I decide to go the staff instead, a lady comes there to help me, and she has to face the same music as me, this idiot sees both of us struggling and he would NOT move, finally the lady gave up too
and went to look inside into their store place to see if there is a copy. People when will you grow up?..

Random Fortune:
Guys I was fortunate enough to read my fortune on orkut, this week, and this is what it had to say.

I could not stop myself laughing out loud .

Finally I would like to thank all people who wished me on my birthday, I Did say that it had lost significance, but still wishes are always welcome. Once again thanks a lot guys.

Did I say "LEARN"!

Not long ago I was a student, even though our learning process never ends, the life of academic learning is almost over in my case. From outsider’s perspective, I have been an excellent student, I am sure most of my teachers would feel similar about me. I cannot blame them nor myself, we all have grown up with the same school of thought, thought being, a student is good or bad being judged by the score he gets.

When I entered school may be even before first grade, the only question people used to ask me was, so did you do well in school, did you stand first in class, and obviously my impression of purpose of school was to compete, stand first in the class, score the highest, and somewhere inbetween all this the focus on learning got lost. I really dont blame my parents on this one, in a vast country like India or may be any other country for that matter, the only hope for a middle class family is a good paying job, and as they are scarce, people are left with nothing but to compete for the top spot.

The sole focus of middle and high school was to score high enough to get into a decent pre-university college, actually decent was not good enough, we had to aim big, may be the best
college in Bangalore south, and in our times, it was National College Jayangar, [though highly debatable], anyways what I wanted to say here, is that how the priorities during schooling gets easily screwed up, all I wanted is it to get into NCJ, as it was popularly known.

Actually I was learning, not that you can score without really learning, but what I want to say is, If I had focussed on learning, I could have learnt a lot more than I actually did, and if teachers had not focussed on making us score maximum in the board exams, they could have thaught a lot more.

When I landed into university to do my bachelors, I had just missed a rank in pre-university, the fact that I did everything I could, but still failed to end up in the top had really hurt me, so my bachelors had to have that extra zing in there, an extra hard attempt to get to the top, which I had accidentally stumbled upon during high school.

I had huge plans as to how my Bachelors course would be, a lot to learn in the area I was very interested in, computers, I used to think the degree as it is called a professional course, should be more profession oriented, so we “HAVE” to learn, get to experiment, and try our hands in learning to the depths. In a way the extra determination to get to the top, ruined that entirely for me.

I was indeed learning a lot of new things, interesting ones, the logic associated with many subjects we studied was something which was extremly satisfying, but then somewhere instead of reaching the depths, I put the boundries to it, the boundry called syllabus, when I found something really interesting, instead of actually doing more research on it, I just pushed them aside,as it was not important for the course. Now If I had given more importance to those, somewhere I had to give up on some topics in syllabus, which would reduce my score, which was not at all acceptable, you had to be consistant to have a high average, and which ended with a high probability of a high paying job during on campus selections. I really don’t blame myself for any of those decisions I took, not that I couldn’t have survived without high score, just thats what was really expected out of us, we all needed a good paying job.

Somewhere all along the way learning took a back seat.

Just the other day was reading about the concept of gradeless education, which was tried as a revolution in various universities in the states during 1970s, how there used to be no evaluation of the student at all. Even though I am not sure how practical that would have been, but something really fascinating, something worth fantasising about.No evaluation would mean, that students have only one goal, thats to please themselves, something which we think is very easy, believe me, its not, we always set high standards for ourselves, and the best part is there needs to be no external force to push you onto do stuff, only you will set what is good for you, and work towards it.

This part of defining whats good for the self, whats the best I can do, is something which really fascinates me, I cant imagine anyone who would like to underestimate oneself. I guess with grades there comes a lot of complacency, and fixed targets, we aim for a top 10%, or a first class, or just to scrape through as our goals. Now when there will be no bracket goals, we tend to focus more on, what would benifit us more, where we would have more fun, and what will give us maximum satisfaction.

Something which I badly ignored during my college days was literature, I knew it was not important to get into a good college, I was so much interested in the languages, I still am, no I have never been a big reader of books, again one of the choices you need to make when you set some goals, which though look materialistic, are absolutely practical. How much would I give, to go back, and give more importance to those subjects back during pre-university.

After a long time I am thinking of pursuing one of those passions, or may be you can call craze, of mine. I finally got my lazy ass to go upto a foriegn language centre, though it turned out to be an anti-climax with it being closed for the day, I did leave my number with them, looks like they might get back to me soon on this one. Hoping to really “learn” this time around.

Suggestions please..

If you have seen my sidebars, you might have a fairly good idea about the kind of books I read, I am currently juggling with two books, “The Zahir” by Paulo Coelho and “Zen and The art of motorcyle maintainance” by Robert Pirsig, As I am reading through the Zen, I am getting drawn more and more to travelougues, I have never read one before, and have not much clue which ones are really good.
So guys please help me out here, any suggestions for travelogues?

The walk.

Early in the morning,
Just around dawn,
On a hot summer day,
The baby crawled around.
Naive was he, almost innocent,
Living life to the fullest,
No fear for the future,
Not caring what may come next.
The crawl felt wonderful,
and the people around, amusing.

Couple of steps, straight into noon,
Sun right top of he head,
But clouds all around,
Adulthood making him run.
smart was he, almost cunning,
pulling along the life, struggling,
worried about the future,
totally buried amidst present,
with glimpse of memories from past.
The run, always painful, wishing to slowdown,
and the people around, just cruel.

Running along, into the night,
The time of silver moonlight,
cool breeze blowing across,
as though soothing with the old age.
Wise he had become, almost peaceful,
enjoying the life, savoring happiness,
With no need to think about the future,
content with the life’s past,
Loving every moment of past, present and future.
Finally settling into the walk,
Finally finding the right pace.

Another day, always a new beginning,
The walk thats life, the life thats walk.

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posted for the traveling poetry Thursday, this week at Tracie Lyn.
And this week’s poetry prompt was “walk”

Trading professions

Not many get to trade their professions, but who prevents us from dreaming right 🙂
Just was thinking 5 professions which I can never see myself In, and 5 which I am ready to switch to any day.

Lets start with ones which I see myself in………….

1. Chef
Awesome profession, no I just didn’t come out watching Ratatouille, just a big fan of eating, so naturally a little fan of cooking. I am sure if If my dishes don’t find takers, I am there to eat myself 🙂

2. Rocket scientist
Oh so what If I dont impress Shania Twain, would love to work for NASA, or our own Indian space research program, just wonder if there are any takers for me out there though.

3. Doodhwala, newspaper wala
Love to wake up early, so what better profession then these to be compelled to wake up and get to see the early morning mist.

4. Lyricist/songwriter
Not because of talent, because of pure admiration. Day after day we see so many people come out with absolutely brilliant work, If only I had the talent.

5. Bodyguards
what better work to stay close to beautiful people :),

Professions which I cant imagine myself in, they are good on their own, but I would be worst suited for.

1. Call Center[BPO].
Oh am too bad with keeping myself awake through nights, though after working in a tiring job for last four years, my sleep cycle is totally screwed up, still somewhere I want my old sleepy days back, so Call centers no way.

2.Teacher
I am terribly impatient, so teaching is damn difficult for me, and I find it really tough to keep my spirit up if the person does not understand even after my 3rd attempt at teaching them, thats my limit. So Teacher, I am sure they wont let me become one

3. Lawyer
I argue so much, my mom still thinks I could have been a good lawyer, jokes aside, how much ever I argue, and even with my good memory I could have never remembered the amount of rules they have to, and the constant verbal fights would so much disturb my silence :).

4.Traffic policemen
Poor guys have to stand in so much pollution, and have to listen to so much noise, guess I will be found in a mental institute after a days work as traffic police, the honks would drive me crazy. Lot of respect for the people who do this.

5.Celebrity
Can you imagine the loss of privacy, social visibility and popularity. If we would call this a profession I would never ever get near that one…

So any body else wants to try this list?

In mood for some…

Photo courtesy ilikesee0711

Pet Peeve, thats what this is – Heads or Tails #7

This weeks topic for heads or tails over at Skittles is “Pet Peeves”, I was just thinking, when I have so many of peeves what constitutes as a pet peeve, or what it is that makes it the pet peeve. Thats when It stuck me, that when you are battling something very hardly yourself, when you have realized something is very wrong, when you are making sure you don’t do that mistake, and you see someone else doing that, it makes you very angry, extremely annoying and that for me, becomes a pet peeve.

Born in a religious Hindu family, I have grown up being very religious, following Hinduism to the core, I am not sure if the philosophy of the religion was ever told to me, it was just the rituals which formed my concept of a religion. Invariably it means Hindu means anti-muslim, not sure why this concept came into picture, but thats how it is. Growing up these principles of liking a religion or hating one, is very common among your elders, and peers. so one thing you always see around you is descrimination based on religion, and of course intolerance towards the other.

At one point very recently, I began to realize how good the concepts are in other religions, their theories though slightly different, the principles are pretty much the same. There are innumerable things in philosophy of other religions which is totally worth thinking about, understanding and of course gaining knowledge from. Most of it was mainly due to the books I read, there are so many interesting things in religions like Zen, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Islam, and Christianity. Unfortunately its not the philosophy behind the religion which is being talked about, rather its the rituals and the rules.

Anyways coming back to the pet peeve, once my perspective changed about the religion, I began to notice that very few people are making effort to increase their tolerance, and In my opinion its not because they are not tolerant, or not because they don’t want to, its because the society does want them to, nor the media, this is something which is annoying me to the core. Politicians are misusing secular principles and making people fight for smaller things, and even literate people are behaving like uneducated failing to realize the mistake they are doing, even when they try to correct themselves, so called religious pundits walk in to gain undue advantage.

Recently a popular Bollywood star was considered to be a traitor in his religion for attending a Hindu festival, you can read the full story here. Seriously what were people thinking?, festivals are there so that people enjoy and spread the happiness, so what if he attended a Hindu festival?, does he become a traitor?. Media needs to be blamed as well, they made a huge hungama out of this small thing, now every one will think twice before actually enjoying each other’s festival.

Same thing with politicians trying to gain political mileage leading to religious violence, a former chief minister of southern state of Tamilnadu seems to have said Lord Rama was a drunkard, because of which there was a huge violence in Bangalore killing 3 people, also some religious leader has given order for the minister to be beheaded I believe, check it out here. What kind of educated fools we are. Falling prey to such age old cheap tactics by certain people.

Its my sincere appeal to people, if you cannot encourage religious camaraderie and tolerance, atleast don’t hinder people who are finally beginning to cross the bridge.

"The Key"

He had erected huge walls all around him,
Thick walls to back them up,
Not much visible beyond,
emotions well hidden.

Doors all waiting to be opened,
Not many willing to try.

He did have bunch of keys out there,
some trying their luck,
patterns matched,
clues cracked,
“The Key” finally found

Disappointed was he, and shocked were they
an anti-climax they wrote,
Key there,
but no keyhole

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Just the last week skittles had us thinking about the “key” and this was my key to a success story. As it turns out the topic for this week at the Writers Island happens to be “Key” again, hopefully I make some sense out of my second attempt.

Here it is another attempt at 55 charmers for

Random randomness #38

Random ramblings:
When the clock struck 0:00 on of the nights last week, factually I turned 26. Now I say it factually because, over the years I have lost the significance of the birthdays. Every year from last few years seem to be exactly the same, nothing new nothing old.

On the other hand in a different point of view, nothing has remained the same, neither me, nor people around me, nor the world.

I generally don’t like these days which I term as “Socially visible days”, where people tend to put on a smile, and in most cases a fake one, and you end up reciprocating a fake one back. All said and done, it was a good one, not many embarrassments, and on the contrary some nice things to remember this year with.

Firstly my good friend gave me this nice gift. I liked the thought she put into in finding this one. If you are reading this, thanks again.

I also got a beautiful card from my parents, I liked the wordings a lot, I wont write the whole stuff here, but just two lines which I liked a lot.

“From your naughty pranks to the grown-up advices, dear son, my days are filled with precious memories“
“And, I’m proud the way you have grown up“

sometimes greeting card people do get the notes right.

Random humor:
Friday was supposed to be a meeting with two of my close friends, even though one was doubtful of making it, finally everything was settled and a meeting set up. We started wondering with not much idea what to do, and finally decided to go to a pub nearby. Its been ages since visited one, I generally avoid pubs because of the smoke. I just had a mug of beer and chatting was on in full swing. And it happened.
I suddenly blurted out a random girl’s name instead of my friend’s, and they caught that, yep the expression on my face was really funny too. I hardly speak to the girl whose name I said, not sure why that came out too, was kind of really funny situation.
I could almost imagine the scene from Friends where Ross says the wrong name 🙂

Random Foodie:
My foodie escapades have got a real bad beating, nothing in last few weeks at all, except for small stuff here and there, nothing which has really fascinated me.
This week too, had been to a good looking expensive Chinese restaurant on Friday for lunch, even though the food was ok, didn’t enjoy much, the fact is I think I don’t like Chinese that much.
Friday evening as mentioned before was a pub, so we hardly had anything other than few fries and a corn snack, no mood too after that to have dinner.
At the home front too, not much happening except for a forceful preparation of “dhokla” a gujrati snack before my granny left. apart from that pretty pale weekend :(.

Anybody for dinner this week? anybody?

Random effects:
People in any cricket playing country would be aware of the world cup going on in South Africa, this time its the exciting shorter version of the game, and of course we are all thrilled to watch the game, for the first time, we are seeing the spirit in the Indian team, and they are winning.
The sad part being all the matches with India in it are starting at 9:30 PM India time and go on till like 1:00AM, now sleeping that late everyday and waking up at 6:00 AM is taking an effect on me. Almost headache everyday, not good, and also the easily irritating mood, which I hate.
Anyways looks like all this was totally worth, looking at the games I have seen.

Random Quotes:
Have been missing these random quotes recently, looks like people have stopped entertaining me :), just kidding. This week more than humor I had two interesting quotes from the same person.
We were walking by the book store with me telling her that I have a good list of books to buy now, all taken out from shelfari, and I began to say, that you can really pick up books being fairly sure you would like them, because I came across these from people I know. she hits me back with this.
“How do you define people you know, you hardly know any person on your friends list“
Something totally worth thinking about.

Talking about thinking, my friend had written a post about the deep thinkers and abstract thinkers, which I thought I fitted into the latter category and she thought I was in the former category.
Anyways I have forgotten the context, we were walking out of the pub when she hit me with
“**********************************, and thats why I said you are a deep thinker“
well may be yes, I might think a little bit

Random happenings:
In my friend’s would put it “You might have ended up being electrocuted today !”, we were walking on the sidewalks of one the busy Bangalore streets, me usually gazing into some unknown point, and suddenly I hear couple of people asking a guy to stop, I was thinking something and didn’t listen to them, later one of them came and pulled me back, and it turns out they were stopping me, and the pole which I was ridiculously close to, had touched the live wire, and was with high live voltage.
Actually after knowing how close I was to it, I thought, may be it was lucky day 🙂

Random feelings:
I was in two minds all week whether to write about this or not, finally decided to do it in parts, I screwed something royally on Monday, and I hate myself for doing this, I can’t blame anybody for that, not even me, just that it happened. All the uncling, not care stuff I am writing about was with that incident, and I just hope it gets alright one day, at least I get a chance to finish it in a proper way. I know I shouldn’t take it so personally nor try to bother this much, but I can’t help it thats the way I am.
as of now I think I just am left with a beautiful song from a TV series called “Tere Yaadein”.

Care to know me a little more…

My blogger friend paisley who writes had put up this post some days back about her interview,
as per the meme she asked people if they were interested she would interview them with a set of 5 questions. Just knowing how good she writes, I was sure she would come up with awesome questions, so just left a comment saying I would be interested.

so here it goes instructions what to do next
1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the
questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the
questions. And a link to my profile or blog as your interviewer.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone
else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five
questions.

So anybody interested guys?
please leave me a comment .

——————————————————————————————-

Paisley sent me a set of questions couple of days back, I couldn’t answer them right away, they needed a little bit of thinking before I answer them. So here it goes her set of questions and my attempts at answering them

1. due to the fact that we exist on two different continents,, and our cultural differences are vast,, i feel compelled to first ask you a question or two about your culture… i was first really “introduced” to you, when you asked me if i would submit a guest post to your series on body and soul….it was there i first became impressed with the extreme differences in the societal norms in India and here in the states… if you had your choice,, abounding freedom,, or cultural constraints,, which would you choose??? and why?? and no,, your parents aren’t going to read this so please be frank……

Read the rest of the post here on pure pursuits.