Think

There have been a spate of bomb blasts in India recently, especially in Delhi. I had a few heated conversations with a friend (since this is one of the subjects that I consider my emotional triggers). My point of view was simple. What is the reason to live in a country where you have a constant fear of getting yourself or your family killed by some idiots for no apparent reason. My friend told me the usual stuff that India is our country, we should not run away, etc, etc. And that I would be selfish if I would not stay there. I guess most of my friends will voice this same opinion. I asked why and it was mentioned that all of our family and friends are in India and so we cannot run away. Well, isn't that an even more selfish answer. 

The question I carried further was if you knew that your loved one was about to die tomorrow in a bomb explosion and you had a chance to save him by moving him to a more peaceful place, would you do it or not? Would you, just for harping a few words of patriotism allow your family to be killed? As expected I got no answer. I still think about this and can't still understand why people fail to realize the truth. The truth that we in India have placed our security in a very compromising position.

The movie "A Wednesday" express beautifully what I am trying to explain. Ah, but who cares and what will I achieve by mentioning this. Nothing will change, nothing ever seems to change in our country for good (no they are not pessimistic thoughts just reality). I just hope I can do something about it for my loved ones.

What is your opinion? What is your answer?

The girl by the window

The girl by the window - Kevin Rodrigues

I woke up as usual today

It's a cold, windy morning in Norway

Walking alone on my way to the station

Hands in my pocket, and in my mind, imagination

A handful of people walking along their path

I wonder what story each has in his heart

Passing by the Palace with its beautiful ground

Watching the birds as they scamper around

I reach the station in about fifteen

A few trains pass with their seats empty

Waiting for the train that is seven twenty

Looking around, observing as much as I can see

In the other direction, a train comes by

MY eyes wander, trying something to find

They finally see what they have been searching then

The girl by the window have I seen once again

It's a wonderful life

I watched a black and white english movie called "It's a wonderful life" today. I really enjoyed the movie. It seemed a lot like one of those old Hindi black and white movies. And yet it did have a good story. Infact, a very inspirational story.

The story begins with the Gods deciding to send an angel to help someone because there are a lot of people who are praying for that someone. Who is that someone? That some one is George Bailey. Whos is George Bailey? The movie continues from George's childhood where he saves his brother from drowning but in the process loses the hearing in one of his ears. As a kid he works in a chemist shop. One day his owner accidentally mixes poision in someones medicine and asks him to deliver it. He knows that its poison and does not do so. So he gets thrashed by his employer (of course, after knowing the truth, the employer apologises). George keeps on doing good acts for people. Thinking about other people before himself. He wants to travel the world and has many dreams. But as he is about to leave his hometown to go study in New York, his father passes away. His father had owned a Loan Bank which he does not want to work for. But after his father passes away to settle things up he works in it for four months. Later as he decides to go to college he comes to know that his loan bank will be closed down. And if that happens many poor people will not get loans as the only other money lender is a very greedy man. So once again he sacrifices his life and works for the bank for four years. He sends his brother to college hoping that after four years he will come back to work for some time and he can pursue his dreams. After four years when his brother does come back, he has already married a girl from New York and has a job at her father's factory. George is very disappointed that his dreams are crushed once again. But still he decides to sacrifice and is happy for his brother. After some time George gets married as well. As he is leaving for his honeymoon, he noticies a crowd near the loan bank. All the other banks have been shut down and so people have flocked to his bank for their money. But there is not much in the bank. So his wife who is a lovely woman as well sacrifices all their honeymoon money for the people. George has to overcome many difficulties in his life but he also gets a good wife in Mary and has lovely children who make his life worth living.

One day his uncle who goes to deposit all the money in the bank misplaces the money. So there is a deficit of 8000 dollars in the bank which they can't pay. This amounts to fraud and could land George in jail. George is very depressed and expresses his anger with many people he meets. He shouts at his wife and kids. And goes to the greedy money lender for money. But all he has is his life insurance. So he decides to end his life. As he is about to jump from the bridge, another man jumps into it and screams for help. George saves this man's life. The man tells him that he is an angel and he jumped in because he knew that George was about to jump and so he saved George's life instead of the other way around. George doesn't believe it. The angel tells him that his life is too beautiful to be wasted on such matters. But George doesn't agree. He feels his life is a waste and wishes he was never born. The angel grants him his wish. And then he does not exist in the world. None of his family and friends recognize him. Since he was not there, his brother whom he had saved drowned. His employer who had accidentally mixed poison in the medicine is in jail. His wife and mother don't recognize him either.

Finally George realizes what a wonderful life he has. He remembers his wife, kids and all the friends he had. He prays to God to return his life back to him. And so in the end everything is a happy ending.

P.S: Hope some one who thinks their life is not special read this and understood my pathetic way of conveying a message. That your life is very, very special. And don't you ever forget that.

Kismat

Hmm. Just watched Kismat Konnection. So some thoughts on Kismat are expected I guess :)

Kismat stands for Luck in Hindi. So what is luck? Is there really luck? As shown in the movie, do things such as lucky charms work? Why do so many people believe in luck? Does it exist or is it a figment of our imagination put by humans so that they can place their fortunes or misfortunes on something other than themselves when they don't understand some things happening in their lives?

My thoughts are that there might be something as luck. We might be calling it a wrong term maybe. Maybe it is a part of something more. But we can just feel whenever luck seems to play a part. Sometimes we get good luck and sometimes bad. Sure that doesn't mean we just sit and let things just happen based on luck. Scientifically, luck may be related to probability. If you can increase your chances to do something in a particular situation then you are bound to have more success and obviously can be supposed to have good luck. And the opposite is also true. So if you want to be more lucky, I guess you just have to increase your chances in whatever you want to do. And your success rate will increase. So I guess luck in humans may be related to intelligence. If you can face any situation intelligently, you have less chances of having bad luck and more chances of having good luck.

And yes, you should consider yourself lucky to read this post :)

Contemplation about life

Have been thinking about life? What is it for us? Is it supposed to be having goals and trying to achieve them? Or is it just enjoying the moment for the time we have on the earth? Or maybe it is a combination of both.

Life with goals:
It seems that we always tend to fail at most of the things we do. Some people more, some people less. Every time I have some small goals in life. And every time I work towards them. Enthusiastic in the beginning but as time passes, it starts to decrease. Like I am trying to learn Norwegian, but since the last week I haven't read much of it. Maybe it is because the goals are not clear. Or maybe because I do not have enough discipline. Same case goes for my blogging. I started blogging because I wanted to write stuff that comes in my mind. But sometimes the mind just goes blank. So maybe it is human nature to fail. Maybe life is not about achieving success. Maybe life is to fail and struggle to get back on the road to success. This may be even more important than success. So that when success is achieved, the journey counts more than it.

All the people I have met, some time or the other have said that their life sucks because they fail. Even I say that my life sucks because I have failed in more things than I may have succeeded in. But maybe it is supposed to suck. Life is supposed to be good when it sucks and we try to make it better. Not only our life but that of our loved ones. When they feel their life is dull, maybe it is our duty to brighten it. So that indirectly, our life gets brightened too.

Hmm, so what to do when things don't turn out the way we want them to. I guess just realize that it is going to be that way. Life sucks and we got to live with it. Guess the answer is somewhat related to a positive attitude. Whatever happens in life, there is always something to learn. So that we don't make the same mistakes again. So that possibly the next time life doesn't suck because of that. And that learning from our failures we can succeed. That we have the discipline to get up if we fall in life instead of lying on the ground and sulking.

Enjoying life's moments:
I feel this is one of the most important things which we humans have been gifted with. We can savor a lot of moments in our lives. Everything is so beautiful. Nature, animals, family, friends, work. But then again we start taking everything for granted. We assume everything is just for us and start worrying about things we want. One day just have a walk in the park and look at the trees, the birds, the people. We need to see the beauty in it. Every moment of our life is a gift. I know we all have our worries and problems. But how much of that worry is necessary. I have seen people worry about success, money, happiness, etc. Yeah, to an extent we should be thinking about these things but never worry about them. As I said we have goals and we might fail but it just means that we have to try again and not stop. So why not enjoy the journey to our goals. Maybe some of us might find that the journey is our goal. That enjoying life's moments brings us more joy than what we supposed we wanted. So just realise that everything has beauty. We just don't notice how many wonderful things happen in our life. Taking everything for granted.

Love, rejection and acceptance

No I'm not a love guru or anything. But I intend to give my 2 cents about this topic. Because it has always been at the back of my mind and maybe it will do good to you as well.

We think of love as this wonderful magic that suddenly happens. We meet a guy/girl who seems to match our required characteristics. This is the so called "Love at first sight". For others, it is just a process of gradually falling in love.

OK, then everything is wonderful and we are in love. So that is great until something we forgot about. We do not know if that other person shares the same feelings as we do. So what do we do? We try to indirectly convince the other person to fall in love with us. By several ways such as trying to impress the other person. If the other person falls in love with us, everything is fine, everything is beautiful.

But what if it doesn't happen? What if the other person doesn't share the same feelings as we do? What if the other person doesn't love us in return? It becomes difficult to accept it, right? Somehow, somewhere there is always hope that maybe, just maybe, there is a way of convincing the other person that we are the perfect match for him/her. We as humans are emotional and the heart has been given too much hope in such situations. Now it is good to have hope especially in case of love. But what if it is not working out. What if the other person is least interested in you? Then it starts to get dangerous, doesn't it? Everyday, every time we remember the moments, we get distracted from whatever we set out to do. The hope within us tries to find a way. We react like a drowning man who will try to grab everything, even a straw if he get's one.

Well, my friend, that is where comes the part of acceptance. Now I don't know how to draw the line between trying to convince the other person and acceptance of his/her disinterest, I really don't. Perhaps, somehow it just comes in our mind and we will know when we have to accept things as they are. But once we know that we have to accept the situation, it is better to accept it rather than causing pain to ourselves. Maybe we have trouble accepting it. But we can take help from our friends who will always be there for support.

Falling in love is a wonderful thing. I have fallen in love too. And there seems no greater suffering than rejection. That too I have undergone. So here is advice from one who has suffered a broken heart to another, some advice from experience of my own and other wise people before me. Falling in love is beautiful, being loved is even more beautiful, but letting a loved one have his own free will is spiritual. Time, my friend, will heal everything. It always does. Maybe, such things leave a scar or two on the heart. But maybe there is some lessons we learn from such events. Perhaps, it is to make us wiser so that in the future, our love gets what it deserves. Maybe, it happened so that we can appreciate true love when we will get it.

Where there is a will, there is a way

We always here the words "Will power".

What do we mean by will power? Will power is the inner strength to try to reach your goal even if the road to that goal is full of difficulties.

We hear a lot of stories about how people achieve success by sheer will power. All of the people who have been successful in any field, whether business or sports or education are people who have tremendous will power. Actually we haven't to look that far our in the world. Everyone including us as humans have great potential of using our will power.

Will power can and should be used by us for achieving what we want to. We all have goals in our lives. Some of us want success, some want fame, some want money, some love, etc. Whatever be our goal, we can and should use will power to achieve it. When we set out to achieve goals, there are going to be obstacles. It's like a football match. The goal post is right in front of us. But there is no direct way to get there. There are obstacles at many places. The path to the goal is not straight forward and every time we have to change our way. If we keep on worrying that we cannot achieve that goal, then it is not possible. Without will power, we fail even before we begin. But when we use will power, if we believe that whatever the difficulties, we will succeed then success becomes possible.

Can non practical things be achieved with will power? Well, things are unachievable unless they are achieved. If we look through history, a lot many things would not exist if it were not for sheer will power. The electricity that we get, the cars that we travel in, the technology that we use, nothing would exist if it were not the will power of the people to create them. Before these things existed, they were supposed to be unachievable. But it was because people believed that they could do those things and even though there were failures and many difficulties, they had tremendous will power and managed to reach their goals. Maybe, we might not want to achieve such things and change the world's history. But each of us has our goals to achieve which are big for us. So we need to keep using our will power to reach them whatever be the distractions.

My friend asks if will power can get you a promotion. Well, yes, if that is what you want to achieve. I can tell my views if that would be my goal. I would try and find out what it takes to get a promotion. This I would do by asking the people who provide promotions as to what they expect of people to give them a promotion. I would tell them that I will be working to achieve that. I would also look at people who have been successful at work. If possible try and talk to them, analyse how they learn, how they work. Learn from their life. And use my will power to try and reach that position.