Pride and Passion

Human life revolves around harmonizing Pride with Passion. Pride starts to fade and passion takes precedence as we grow older. Everyone knows there is distinct difference between the two, then why there is need for harmony. Why we didn’t attempt to synchronize it at the very beginning. Why very few succeeded at the same. Why we always speak about passion but rarely about pride.

It evolves from basic human nature for independence, recognition and acceptance. We are born and raised in social setup and try to be part of same. Irrespective of whether an introvert/extrovert, we want acceptance from our peers, family, friends, relatives, etc. The means of achieving this defines whether a symphony exist between our Pride and Passion.

The most important factor which defines whether you can harmonize Pride and Passion is talent. If your talent exist in the area of passion, there is synchronization between Pride and Passion. However this wouldn’t be true for majority because of societal norms and disconnect between ambitions and reality. For e.g., in a cricket frenzy nation, every child had passion for cricket and would have dreamt to be a cricketer. Very few even attempted to make career out of it for either the lack of talent or support. Many would have felt bad to leave their passion however would have realized later in life that it was a wise decision.

Pride is important for human being for simple reason that nothing tastes sweeter than success. Any success big or small gives you the confidence and lays path for bigger things in future. It becomes irrelevant whether it’s in field of passion or not. For e.g., I was school topper in mathematics in 10^th Standard and was rewarded with ₹ 500/- in annual event. I never expected to be part of event as I hadn’t score full marks and overall was just an above average student. The Pride in seeing all your teacher’s expression when they least expect you to be there is priceless even if mathematics was not my passion.

Passion is important to explore your inner self.  It can led you to unexplored terrains in a completely nonchalant manner.  It’s like that wonderful dream sequence which you aspire to make it real at some stage in life. It’s not restricted by any tangible or intangible boundaries and invokes the real ecstasy in you.

Pride is more extrinsic in nature compared to Passion. Pride is often undervalued for the simple reason that it’s an end of journey. It’s human nature to give importance to things which we aspire to rather than things which are accomplished. Pride is permanent in nature and no one take it away from you. Your achievements are forever and even death can’t it take away.  Passion gives you the reason to look forward in life and make your dream turn into reality. It takes precedence once you are content with Pride and look forward to explore inner self. However, Passion without Pride is equivalent to vehicle without wheels, no matter how good the vehicle is it can’t lead you anywhere.

As a great philosopher once said,

Work towards the Pride and it would provide you the means to walk on the path of Passion. 

Heart and Mind

The Battle between Mind and Heart is the longest battle ever faced in history of mankind. Unlike other battles there is no clear winner always. The good part is there is no threat of human extinction even after numerous battle happening every day unlike other wars.

Its presumed Mind is Logical and Heart is Emotional. From the time we had basic maturity levels, it was taught to take decision from Mind. The theory is imbibed such as these decisions are more mature and would drive towards a positive future. The same psychology drives majority of decision for individual at all ages. It’s not that the Heart for these individuals can’t sense wonderful things around just that it’s in a restricted environment and has got little freedom to express.

Heart is like a lion in a circus. There is enormous potential and skills visible for everyone; however it’s guided by the ringmaster and has little freedom on its own. The Mind can feel their existence and quality but would tend to ignore the same. Father’s Heart can sense son’s passion for music however Mind and accordingly action are driven towards him becoming an Engineer. Mother can see daughter’s artistic skills however the Mind drives efforts towards she becoming a Doctor. A teenager can sense his interest level’s for sports however his focus would be towards joining an IIT or Ivy University abroad to fulfil his parents wish.

It’s not like Mind has easier job on his hands. As Ben Parker said in Spider-man, “With Great Power comes Great responsibility” and same is true for Mind. Many times, the decisions are driven by burdens of responsibility carried on its shoulders. “The mind is everything. What you think you become” (Buddha).  It has vast amount of knowledge and unlimited potential to grow. The amount of avenues it can open up are humongous and it complicates matter as life gives us limited time. There is always a fear of failure attached to choose the wrong avenue and unlike Heart, Mind doesn’t have an option of failure. That might be the reason it attracts all attention and we ignore the Heart.

I always wonder why the Heart is so underrated. Think of memorable instances from your past and try to link it to your Mind and Heart. I am sure majority of those incidences would be closer to your heart. Heart has a long term memory than Mind which might sound paradox even if true in real life. Favourite songs, movies, sports, memorable moments in your life; think of any of these things and try to link it with your Heart and Mind. I am sure more than 90% of incidences would be linked to your Heart.

After seeing both sides of coin, I wondered why it’s difficult to take decisions from Heart. I can think of personal story around it. I recently bought Monopoly Board Game: Game of Thrones Collector’s Edition. It costed me 7-8 times the price of normal game. When I shared it with few friends, I got extreme reactions. Some loved the game, appreciated and some felt it as an extremely stupid and maddening decision to spend such a high amount on simple board game. In fairness, everyone was right in their own place however as a recipient the responses were extreme for me.  I momentarily felt ecstatic by positive and disheartened by negative views. However, in introspection my heart felt at the right place post seeing the product. As Hellen Keller said, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart”.

Heart is like a tire in a vehicle, a component which attracts least attention and you don’t feel its importance unless it’s busted. You have to pump it from time to time for a smooth and enjoyable ride. There is need for an absolute synergy between Heart and Mind for freedom to explore all avenues without fear of failure. It’s like the Pleasure (Mind) and Happiness (Heart) and we tend to ignore one. We need both to live a successful and meaningful life. It’s like the music without which a song can’t touch your soul.

Think of it, Invention of Infinity wouldn’t have been possible without Heart as Mind follows finite process defined by nature.

Feel height beyond the stars
Feel light beyond end of darkness
Feel love beyond hate of mankind
Feel nature beyond realms of universe
Feel God beyond concepts of mythology
Feel Heart beyond imagination of Mind

As George Michael said, “You'll never find peace of Mind until you listen to your Heart.”

In Pursuit of Happiness

I always wonder where one can find happiness, peace and true meaning of life. You always learnt different meaning of happiness throughout life. It’s interpreted in different way as Journey, milestone, achievement, mission, vision, satisfaction, fun, enjoyment, party etc.  At different stages of life, I found correlation in each or all of these words. Majority of the times it was a myth hidden by cover of reality.

As a toddler, we were curious and found happiness in almost everything in this life. We were both source and receiver of joyful moments in everyone’s life. As we grew-up, we became attached to material things in this world. Toys, chocolates, etc. were the fascination. As per my parents, I didn’t have many toys or ate chocolates compare to average kid. That might be the reason I was fascinated by this things during my schooling days.

Once we become more mature, we start understanding different nuances of life. We start getting burdened by expectation, competition, pressure, etc. and I don’t only mean studies but every aspect of our life. How we should perform, how we should dress, talk, behave, eat, dance, sing for everything the norms are created and we are supposed to follow those norms. We meet different people in life and we create different impressions about them like nice, cool, good, bad, mean, arrogant, etc. We have good time and bad times but in spite of all these things, we have some joyful moments in the life. Few of them we remember and cherish throughout life few disappear from brain just as speed of light.

When I first time went out of my town for engineering, my relatives had mixed thoughts. Some felt life outside is not an easy place and I would buckle up under pressure and wouldn’t survive. It was difficult initially to fit into the so called societal norms and etiquette's. I had never been outside my home and there was no one to teach me all those things. I was free bird initially with no control over height, range and speed but soon realized there is no place for freedom. I was subject of ridicule a lot of times from people but I was determined to succeed. The portion which was fun for others was learning for me to understand the nuances and life. To understand that there are rules to fly despite of infinite range, height and speed of the universe.

The engineering brought the best out of me as an individual who can develop his identity in this big world. I had lots of wonderful joyful moments in those 4 years in spite of all the troubles. After all what’s the meaning of joy without the troubles; world is place made only for survival of the fittest. I had answered a lot of critics and was a better and successful person. The milestone was crossed and path was laid for future success and happiness.

I am sure many people in this world have faced similar circumstances and they have tackled them with sheer will power to bring out success in life. Then why happiness eludes a lot of people in this case. They are successful, had great memories, wonderful moments throughout the journey and still something seems missing. This is where we need to understand the difference between Happiness and Pleasure.

Pleasure is momentary feeling that is stimulated by external senses. A good chat with friends, a nice meal, drinks with friends, success in studies or job, buying a new iPhone, anything stimulated from external events. Pleasure is important in life and can give us momentary feeling of happiness; however we will have to continue stimulating the external events in life for it. Few of these external events might become addiction when we run around always is pursuit of pleasure.

Happiness comes from within you; it’s a state of inner fulfillment and satisfaction. It’s an act or state which people can create by our own will. The smile on parents face when a toddler walks for first time. The satisfaction on mothers faces when kids eat properly and when she makes favorite food for them. The wish of writer to succeed with all challenges and obstacles in life. The desire of sportsperson to perform even with an injury forgetting all external pain. Happiness is the free bird not restricted by boundaries of this world.

As Quoted by Miranda Kate, “If you always choose pleasure you will never find happiness”.
Happiness is the most difficult willingly act created for mankind and no amount of external pleasure can bring this in your life. It’s a state of mind and an act of wisdom for which we work throughout our lifetime with a hope that sometime we will realize the ultimate need of life.

Sometime I don’t realize why I am sad
Sometime people don’t understand my emotions
Sometime I have hope in this world
Sometime they are shattered by people
Sometime I still act naïve and wait for that time
Sometime people would appreciate my emotions
Sometime life would understand me
Sometime it would give me a chance
Sometime my pursuit of happiness would be complete
Sometime… Maybe Sometime!!!

An Unfortunate Memorable Day

I call the day as unfortunate first as our primary objective was not achieved and memorable as it was the most fun-filled action packed day whose memories are still itched in our mind.

The day was Thursday 25^th September 2014 and it started as routine day with morning activities and office except one difference. The excitement was high within the mind and heart as I was going for Champions League T20 Match of Chennai Super Kings vs Lahore Lions in Chinnaswamy Stadium Bangalore. It was after long time I was going in stadium to watch the match with three of my friends Sagar, Dinesh and Roshni. Sagar, Dinesh and I work in the same company. Roshni was Dinesh’s wife who I and Sagar knew pretty well. They are happily married for past 5 years.

We all had planned to leave office early and meet at Dinesh’s House to go for match. Sagar and Roshni were particularly excited as this was going to be there first experience of watching match in stadium. The match starts at 20:00 hours and toss happens at 19:30. We started from Dinesh’s place at around 17:00 Hours considering the distance to stadium and waiting time in queue. We saw Lahore Lions bus on the way and even if we could sense some changes in weather, we were excited and hopeful. After All, “Hope is a word which god has written on brow of every man” and we were no different.

We reached the venue and as we reached the gate after being in queue for almost 45 minutes; Bang, we got a rude shock. Roshni was carrying a hand bag which was not allowed inside the stadium. All of us argued a lot with security person even showing him all bag contents but after all rules are created for this kind of moments. I literally had an amygdala hijack moment but tried to remain composed.

We all started to make calls to find out nearby place where bag can be kept as going back to our place was not an option. Dinesh was finally able to contact his friend who was staying near the stadium. Roshni wouldn’t let Dinesh go alone (Major Affection, Minor Guilt), so I decided to accompany Dinesh as this was first stadium experience for Roshni and Sagar.

We took an auto to go to Dinesh friend’s place and asked auto to wait, to go back to stadium as slight drizzle had started. By the time we came back the drizzle had changed to thunderous shower and streets had started flooding. This was just start of misery as Dinesh realized that we don’t have our tickets to enter stadium and misery became bigger when Roshni and Sagar both didn’t had our tickets. We all tried to rewind the entire scene in our brains and thought of every possible scenario but couldn’t found answer about lost tickets. As Sherlock says “there is nothing more deceptive than obvious fact”. In our case, the tickets got lost or stolen while we were exploring possibilities for the bag was an obvious fact masked with complete deception.

Amidst thunderous rain and no tickets Dinesh decided to stop at Brigade junction to do his favourite activity. Dinesh has been an ardent contributor to Mallya’s UB Group and we headed straight to Pub.
Without wasting time Dinesh decided to contribute to faltering UB group’s revenue by ordering 4 beers (Happy Hour). In the meantime, Interesting things were happening at stadium, someone overheard the conversation of Roshni about lost tickets and immediately offered him 1 Match ticket. He also assured Roshni to give 1 more ticket when the match begins. The angel stranger was from the match scorecard department and they had some good conversation.

When heavy rain and thunder storm was causing havoc and crowd of 35,000 and many others were praying mercy to “Indra”, there were two intelligent people in city who were enjoying their moments without cribbing about nature. After all there is no point being angry with the rain, it simply doesn’t know how to fall upwards. When “Indra” didn’t obliged to people prayers, match officials had to act and match was called off at 21:00 hours.

We decided to meet at brigade road junction and then decide further plan. It took some time for Roshni and Sagar to reach as they could not find transport. When all of us finally met, it felt like we are meeting after an eternity. The happiness and excitement was clearly visible on all of our faces even if match was cancelled. The road’s where completely jammed and it was almost impossible to get taxi in the area. We decided to have dinner nearby at Mocha’s to quench our hunger and give time for traffic clearance.

Sagar and Roshni narrated their first time on-stadium experience. The atmosphere in the ground, details about stranger who assisted in match tickets. An experience of watching players during warm-up sessions before rain started. Roshni’s excitement was similar to 7 Year old girl getting her first Barbie Doll while narrating about Dhoni. Sagar and Roshni had put all their efforts to convince us that they had better time. Eventually we reached home at around midnight after taking an auto from Mocha all thanks to Sagar. He was able to add final fun factor by arranging auto who agreed to take 4 people. As the tickets were booked online and not a single ball was bowled, we got complete refund within few days.

The evening was like a Bollywood drama with comedy, excitement, happiness, uncertainty, etc. It’s been more than 2 years but I still can vividly remember that night. It was night of uncertainties where we didn’t know what lies ahead in the next moment and taught me some valuable lessons.

Life is not about the perfect ending, it’s about adapting to change, living the moments and making the best out of it without worrying about the future to achieve true happiness of the soul.

My First Real Crush

I would have liked many girls in my teenage but I call this as my real crush as I can still visualize the first look; after all that’s what crush means.

First Year engineering walking towards the Mechanical department a pretty girl caught my eye; cute face, red t-shirt, black jeans. My feet froze for moments and I continued to gaze till the world around me stopped. I was far away from her but didn’t move in either direction. She had a million watt smile and I continued to gaze. My world resume when she went away.

I never had the courage to speak to her. I was too shy to even think about it as that kind of courageous task I only used to do when my senior would pass order to collect girl information as part of interaction activities (read as ragging). Normal life resumed and those memories got buried in some corner of my brain. Months later, I participated in Punt Formation event of my college. The event is about making unique formations by positioning multiple boats at certain place and angles. As luck would have it, she was also participating in same event and was assigned the same boat siting right in front of me.

The practice continued for almost a month and even being so close, I hardly spoke to her. The discussion was always work related like force of paddle, position of anchor etc. The only other interesting conversation I heard in 1 month was all girls discussing about number of roses they got on valentine day; so cliched.

We planned an outing post event and I distinctly remembered how I skipped multiple rows in bus to tie friendship band to her. It was ultimate level of desperation for unknown reason. She also tied one to me. I had kept that band for almost a month till last thread was torn and it breathed for one last time before being buried. It was point of pride for me and reason to tease for my friends.

The next 3 years we hardly spoke to each other apart from occasional acknowledgment and greetings. Maybe I never developed courage to think about her or there were no real feelings. We never were in touch post college days and I had made no attempts. We fall in lots of relationship with sweet and bitter feelings about them. But I don’t think of anything when I remember this incident.

As Lorreta Young said, Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you.

She was a real crush in true sense with no feelings developed in future.

Just one sweet memory when I saw her for the first time!!!

My First Humiliation or Learning

So here I am with my first blog. After all long introspection I decided that this should be my first topic as it’s a very old incident from my childhood which I still remember and would never forget in my life.

I was bright student in Primary School always amongst the top 2 with fierce competition between me and my close friend Jigu. (Majority of time he took the top honors but I have triumphed him a few times). I still remember small Congratulations greeting which my class teacher use to give me and that always used to keep me motivated to finish in Top. I was not the geeky type (if it ever applies at such small age) and was caught multiple times breaking the rules like playing with WWE cards or Flying Disc but being a bright student helps and used to get away with minimum or no punishment.

After finishing Primary School, My Parents wanted me to learn Marathi as they thought its important living in Maharashtra. Additionally, all toppers use to be in Marathi Class and my parents wanted me to be competitive (No offence meant to Hindi and Gujarati class). My Headmaster requested my parents to put me in Gujarati Class (I was studying in Gujarati Education Society School) but my parents were firm and I was admitted in Section D in Fifth Standard where first language was Marathi. I hardly knew anyone in the class and had almost no friends initially.

So finally the day arrived, it was in the first few months and I had hardly learnt any Marathi by then. I got late to school and class teacher was taking attendance. I requested permission to enter the class but to no avail. Next 5 minutes, I was standing on the class door with mouth shut. He was speaking a lot of things may be scolding, asking questions, telling me to get out but I was still standing there like a Zombie not able to open mouth as all his words were in Marathi. Finally my friend Suchita came to my rescue who explained the class teacher that I don’t understand Marathi. Some more scolding in Alien language happened and finally I was allowed to enter the Class.

In the break, I asked few students what he was telling and that’s where I felt bigger shock and humiliation. He was scolding my parents for getting me admitted to Marathi Class. Majority of his statements were like why parents admit kids in Marathi when they both don't know anything (Marathi). I was depressed the entire day. I was young but mature enough to understand someone has insulted my parents.

I still think about that incident sometimes and wonder was these words expected from a teacher. I was a young student trying to learn something and thought what kind of impression it leaves on students who were able to understand the conversation. Many times people are teased for not able to speak proper English, but do we really know their background. I am not trying to blame the teacher in any way through this post but I think people have to be very cautious with the words.

As someone has famously quoted, “Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye”.