Rush

“A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.”

I must have watched “The pursuit of Happyness” a lot of times. Its definitely amongst my favorite movies. It’s a movie which holds a special place – as it has been the movie which I always watched when I felt sad. It has been the movie which helped me by motivating me during a bad phase in my life.

But off late I have not watched this movie. Its not that there have not been times in last year when I needed an external push to get back to my normal self, its just that I think the kind of motivation I now need is not given by this movie anymore. Thankfully, I don’t need any more motivation to understand that life is good, I don’t need any more motivation to understand that there is always a light at the end of tunnel (I have seen that already). And above all, I don’t feel any need to remind me that life needs to be valued.

I guess recently the movie which makes me feel motivated is “RUSH” for two reasons : 1) It is a sports movie (F1), 2) It is a very different movie in the sense that it shows both the characters in a positive way and leaves you with a thought to decide who actually you want to be like. It inspires you to follow your dreams, it instills an urge to go after it and not allow anyone/anything to come in between. It makes you understand that you need to stop worrying about others who are inconsequential in my life.

The movie is amazingly directed, the background music is great. The beginning and end of the movie is spectacular. I actually felt surprised when it was not nominated for Oscars but later on realized that a movie of rivalry between an Austrian and British has no place in Oscars.

Watch it if you haven’t seen it yet – its definitely worth it.

“You are... but trust me: watching you win those races, while I was fighting for my life, you were equally responsible for getting me back in the car.”

The strange world

One of the things about which I talked before also (http://unknownrahul.blogspot.in/2013/11/the-little-human-inside-me.html) is related to treatment of animals. Over the last few days, I have read lot of news articles related to ill-treatment of animals, the prominent ones which an sure even you would have heard of are – killing of dolphins in Japan and giraffe in Denmark. It irks me to read about all these atrocities committed on animals. Don’t know how people gather strength to do this. How can you have a festival to kill Dolphins and how can you kill a giraffe just because you want to control their number in your zoo. Totally ridiculous and I seriously wish that next life the people who did this end up on the other side.

The other thing that is disturbing is the future of our country. I have been off late watching “The News Hour” on Times Now and am seriously surprised to see comments made by Congressmen and BJP leaders on that show. I don’t want to take a political side – so let me rephrase it to all the politicians as so far I have not come across even one intelligent person. The worst thing was to see the Derek O’brien (who hosted quiz show when I was a kid and that point of time I used to think he is the smartest person on the planet) defending Mamata Banerjee for anything and everything. Common Mr Derek you have let so many people like me down who followed you as kids.

I always said that the we will get a chance to do something for the country after 15-20 years when someone amongst us will be a leader. But last few days, I read quite of my friends posts on FB related to politics, I was proved wrong. I saw people taking one side (BJP or AAP – so far haven’t come across even one post defending Congress) and ridiculing the other party. I  They are not ready to accept that either of the party have done something wrong. They are behaving like members of the party and not ready to listen to anything against it. This clearly shows that people are not thinking neutrally for the nation – they have become blind supporters.

God bless the world and India.

Out of comfort zone – III

Even though how much confident you portray yourself to be, there is a sense of nervousness inside once you try to move out of the comfort zone. The fear that what if things go wrong stays with you for some time. The anxiety if I miscalculated the move. The doubt if things will change for worse.

I guess this all adds to make the decision to move out of comfort zone so tough 

(http://unknownrahul.blogspot.in/2013/11/out-of-comfort-zone-ii.html). But the difficult part does not end here, its just the beginning. Once you implement the decision, you then start to judge your decision each and every day. You don’t give enough time before inferring if the move was right or wrong. I think that’s where everyone including me make mistake. Every decision should be given some time before one can categorize it right or wrong.

Once you come out of comfort zone, it takes time for you to adjust to the surroundings and even the surroundings to accept you. Many of times you jump to a conclusion that this is not the one for you much before things have even settled down. A lot of people make this mistake and start thinking of next move then itself. This is where life gets crazy and turns up down.

“Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to to keep a good attitude while waiting”

Shadows of the past

You can never run away from your past. Its like a shadow, which will follow you wherever you go. It does not matter how fast you run, how much you try to hide – it is going to stay with you forever.

There is only one solution – you learn to live with it. And the first step to do is to accept it. Accept it with the smile. No point in crying over what happened. What matters is what is happening now and what is going to happen in future.

I guess I have understood over the last few years that one can never run away from the past. I tried my level best – every time I felt I was done and over with it, it somehow managed to come up somehow someway. At first I used to get annoyed but with time I stopped reacting itself completely. And now the past is not a name, its more of a symbolic representation for some , a memory or comparison for others.

I don’t know why I keep coming to this topic. While writing this I had a déjà vu feeling that I wrote something similar some time back. Yeah, I was write – found a similar one (http://unknownrahul.blogspot.in/2011/09/just-let-it-go.html) .

Am not sure what happens after life. If it is that you get a chance to sit with everyone who were close to you over a cup of coffee in heaven – then its not that bad either. 

Why sooo serious

Around five years back, I remember I took pride in being a careless young guy. I was totally dependent on the people close to me, super happy and relaxed in my small little world. This is when I moved out for my first job to Infosys Mysore, and as always this is where I realized that life outside this small world is quite different (Oh yeah, as always it was this period of 2008-09 everything happened for the first time :D). Couple of close friends made me realize that I needed to become little serious in life.

Oh no, I did not become serious because of what they said to me. It was the circumstances back then that made me reflect on my life. I was a believer in god then and I took it in a way that may be god punished me because I was not a good guy. I did a self-introspection. I realized that my actions that I felt were harmless actually ended up hurting people around me. I realized that my overspending nature actually made other people feel bad and angry. I realized that my bad choice of words sometimes offended others.

So if today you feel that am too serious, I give a damn to what you think. I accept I am a serious guy. But that’s the way I am. I hope you understand that atleast because am a serious guy, you careless people are able to get away with stupidities because am around. I hope you understand that sometimes I end up saving money for you too else you would end up with debts. I hope you understand that I sometimes make you realize that using bad language can lead you to trouble.

I hope at best you understand that when you call me a serious guy and ask me to loosen up, I have the respect not to tell you that you are a careless person and its high time you get a bit serious.

The blurred faces

I have read it so many times – that life is a journey, you keep on walking. With time, I understood the essence of this statement. Life indeed is equivalent to a journey, a journey in which you walk with some milestone in your mind. On the way, you meet new people with similar or nearby destinations, so you walk with them. Sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, sometimes even for years.

During this walk, you become friends with them. You get used to see them daily, talk with them daily, share your thoughts and feelings with them. But one fine day, one of you change their direction and you bid good bye to them. You promise to keep in touch.

However, the journey of life is not that easy. Sometimes, its due to the high demands of the new journey or sometimes its just that you make new companions in your new journey that you fail to keep in regular touch. With time, the faces you were so used to see everyday gets blurred, they start to fade.

I guess everyone goes through this phase at multiple points in their lives – when you finish school, college, shift jobs. It feels that you are losing a part of life. However, I guess its actually you are gaining a part of life. A part of life in which the people who actually matter are going to stay in touch and at the same point of time you get an opportunity to meet and add new people in that close circle.

Turning 27

One interesting thing I noted on my birthday couple of days back was that I ended up spending my last four birthdays in different cities. The 26^th one was in Chennai (http://unknownrahul.blogspot.in/2012/11/happy-birthday-to-me.html), the 25^th one was in Kolkata (http://unknownrahul.blogspot.in/2011/11/turning-25.html), and the 24^th one was at home in Delhi.

Never thought about this at the start of the year, but as my favorite quote reads “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” I ended up spending my birthday in a different city, Bangalore.  

Over the last few years or so, I always preferred to not to work or study on my birthday. During college days, I always took off. Even my last two birthdays, I took off/half day from work. Unluckily, had no such option this time and it proved to be the busiest birthday of my life so far. I eventually got couple of hours time late evening and had good dinner with a friend, few calls from friends n family who remembered its my birthday J. (P.S.  I know am going to get a call from couple of friends soon who follow my blog, and they are going to put the blame on me of not having birthday update activated on FB :D).

I guess this post is incomplete if I don’t explicitly thank couple of close and special friends for making the birthday so so so special, with their wishes and beautiful  and amazing gifts J. Lucky to have you in my life. Thanks again. J

Strangely am excited already for my next birthday to find out which city I celebrate it in. :D