'Sigh, remember those days'..... PBBBBFFFFT!!!

Sometimes, when you're working really late, or you're going through some really tough shit in life, and you happen to have some company around you on the weekend (a friend if you're lucky!), the images in your head go black-and-white and grainy, as you say "How I remember the old days...."

You'll then proceed to recount how you were so carefree back then, and how innocent, with some misty eyes. If that friend knew you for long enough, depending on how empathizing he was, he would either murmur his acknowledgement or remind you that you had stolen his favorite comic books AND that apple or two from that neighbour's tree BESIDES protesting that you hadn't done it and squarely putting the blame on the neighbourhood geek/known rascal/mortal-enemy-kid. I luckily have very few of the second type, but invariably when I start going "Those were the days...", I seem to have the supremely good fortune of only being surrounded by these kinds of morons. Seriously, with dumasses like these, who needs enemies? If not these guys, I had the practical ones around me who said "Yes dude, that's really sad, but now it's your turn to pay the bill, the waiter's giving dirty stares, let's get out of here already!"

And that always brings me back! In a way, these guys are right. It's quite stupid to dwell on how you were as a child. And in my heart, I know I sure as hell wouldnt want to relive those days. I couldn't stand the homework, or the exams! Who enjoyed that? Sure, there were some good times. We got to stay out between 4 and 6, and play till we ran out of energy, or the sun went down early, and then we'd go home and loll around till some parent finally lost patience and said "Dont you have anything to do? Go study!" after which we'd ply a couple of comics up, and hide them in front of our books, and pretend to be engrossed in Newton's laws, when we were really reading Superman comics where obviously gravity, action and reaction didn't exist!

And those other days when we'd come home to see a piping hot bowl of Maggi noodles, which were supposed to take two minutes to make. Just like every other thing that is Indian in nature, "Just two minutes..." actually meant ten or fifteen. But we'd sit down, watch 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' on the telly, slurp the noodles and feel it smack against our noses when we slurped too fast, and then proceed to lick the masala off the tip of our nose, give up and wipe it against our sleeves. When we start hearing the clang of the plate, we look down from the telly to the plate, realize the noodles were over, but the plate still had that thick gravy on it, so you'd proceed to lick it all off, making the plate look spic and span, under the disapproving looks from your parents who were unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile. We didnt care, we knew that they knew that we liked that gravy. But now, would you really do that again? Come on! We grow up! There's such a thing as decency, table manners! It's stoopid to do such childish stuff!

And waking up every morning to go to school, listen to the teachers the whole day, seriously..! Who would wanna relive those days? And college didnt really get any better! The exams were more serious, your life and job depended on it, so you had to pay attention while the teachers droned on about the laws of Thermodynamics, Three-phase power, Op-amps so that you could become a halfway decent Electronics Engineer. And what do we do? Write code in C, Java, VB.

People dont really want to become children again, they just want to relive the happy times. They only remember the good times. The playing when you were a child, the outings with your college friends to bizarre places so you could trek across a couple of mountains to swim in some lake. We weren't practical then. The swimming pool cost 1/50th the price. We were more... carefree. Practicality only extended to "I have X rupees I get as pocket money every month, how can I make sure I survive on X+Y till the second last week?" The last week was basically a lesson in frugality, the Y was treats we could mooch off of unsuspecting friends if it was their birthday, or they happened to get great grades, OR they barely avoided death thanks to Bangalore's great traffic. Could you imagine going back to a life where you didn't earn such fantastic amounts of moolah? For writing "Hello world" everyday?

But I know us all. We come through. It's just for that span that we rejuvenate our sense of happiness, or atleast dull the sense of sadness, through the happy thoughts of our carefree past. I get it. We like thinking of the good times, it makes us think that life was good, and there's a chance of it getting better. But we ought to leave it at that! We're older now, we're more responsible. We need to remember that. It's fine to remember the good old days, but we ought to stop acting like life's over. Shit happens. Suck it up, move on. We need to take our time to get out of that low, but we sure as hell can't sit and dwell on oh-if-only-i-got-those-years-back. If you do, ATLEAST remember the bad times as well! God alone knows, if you happen to come across a wishing lamp, and you are granted one wish.... All I'm trying to say is be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

I was watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The Blind Side the other day, which were both pretty good. It's because I'm an adult (or so I claim to be), that I can understand the underlying themes or messages of these movies. I was half way through the Blind Side, I was feeling hungry, so I went to the kitchen and sifted through some stuff. Found a packet of Maggi noodles that were lying around since they seemed to need the least effort to make. See? Adult decision! Efficiency! I then proceeded to make it, tidy up the kitchen and settled down to continue to watch the rest of the movie. Around the time when Sandra Bullock tries to coach her son about his expected role in his team, I heard a clang. I looked down and saw the mess on my plate.

I proceeded to lick the plate clean.

Procrastination as we know it

Ever heard the story of the person who kept procrastinating every single task that he was expected to handle? No?? That's cos I kept leaving it for later. But even the masters of procrastination, hereon referred to as MoPs, fall in battle when faced with a undying urge to finally go ahead and do something, and to just complete that task for God's sakes!

As it so happens, I've perfected that art of being a MoP, once I make my mind to stay idle, there is absolutely nothing in this bittersweet world that can force me to go do something. I should think that a hot chick or a great buffet at the finish line might help, but so far only the latter has happened to me, and that didn't work so well. Though I did procrastinate less for that particular task. Tasks, in fact.

Anyhow, right now I seem to be going through one of those moments. Nothing brings you down better than the realization that something that you really wanted can no longer be had only because you took the time to do whatever else you were doing, feeling falsely (and might i add, easily) assured that it would last just that little bit longer. Which meant you had a lot more time to catch up with where you left off. Seeing how this is very close to Valentine's Day, I wouldn't be extremely surprised (though if you want, I can act like I was) if you thought that maybe I dilly-dallied telling some girl how much I liked her just long enough for her to finally go find someone else, out of sheer boredom, frustration, spite or just plain simple pure love, rare as it might be. Well no, not today, and not in the past eight-nine months have I gone through that, and it's never felt more unemotional :). I for one, welcome it after the tumultuous previous year. No, this time, it's something far more simple. Rain.

If there's anything I like better than being on the terrace of a 25 storey building/top of a higggggh hill, windy as only it can be, watching over all the other buildings/farms in the city/village in the moonlight, it would be rain. The pitter-patter of those raindrops on the streets makes a really heavy drop-mob sound as it bounces off the roads, shop shutters, windows, short-circuited BESCOM electricity poles, cars and trees, all of them coming together in this complete cacophony which has a barely hummable tune, but yet low enough to be surprisingly soothing. Add to that the absolutely hazy look of any object seen under the streetlight, alongside the dust that raises just a little off the ground when the rain collides head on with any unfortunate particles of sand, and we have a complete visual treat with the streaming audio, and if you really still want to be in the moment, add the scent of sand trodden on and driven on by tons of people and cars, the individuals all spitting and sometimes, vomiting their food on the ground. How that scent could actually be good, is surprising considering the input, but hey, they now make fuel out of cow dung. Anything can happen...

Today, I heard the raindrops pitter their song, and I was so busy watching a movie that I thought I can watch all that later. When the movie ended, I opened the window, to find the last stanza being sung. It appeared like the energy was gone, everything had already reached its "been high, going low" level and I was just in time to watch nature pack up. No, I wasn't devastated, but its when small things like this happen that a lot of things flash before your eyes and you realize that its not just this one instance, but so many others which have happened just like this. Manifested in many ways, it included not listening to my heart when someone I liked walked away because I thought I wasnt ready yet, missing a great professional and therefore career defining move just because I felt I wasn't ready for it yet, distancing further away from a friend since I keep putting away the one call that I think can solve it in the blink of an eye just because I have been too lazy to go buy a birthday gift, putting away very important physical fitness because something/someone isnt there or worst of all, be completely satisfied with the way I am living my life when I am actually watching all of the above happen to me while thinking that Naah, I'll do this later.

I could sit and analyze what the hell I m doing and why, but that's also being put away. See, the thing I seem to suffer from, is optimism driven by laziness and near-sightedness, fueled by a drive to totally disregard anything that anyone says in my best interest. Sure I don't open up to people, sure I'm a hard-ass at work, sure I am a total pain-in-the-ass to a lot of my friends, sure I am very childish and proud of it, but the one thing that really gets me, is that there's not one friend of mine who's not trying to pull me out of my hell-hole and the ones that have stopped have only done so because I have hurt them or their ego somehow in the process and the others are being very careful, since they realize that I don't really care about all their warmheartedness. I am getting cold-hearted much too sooner and for all the wrong reasons. I never wanted to be THAT guy. Guess what, I am now.

These things can be fixed though, and I want to get started. It's just that... I don't seem to see any light at the end of the tunnel. Other than my well-being, I don't seem to see any reason why I should hurry up. And mainly, I still cant get myself to stop procrastinating. At the end of the day, I guess what counts, is that when the rain stops, and you miss what you didn't get, you stop breaking down and await the next time the heavens weep for us lost souls. When you walk down a dark road, it seems easy, yes it does. It's all down hill and u just drift along. If you want to really get back up, then you have to walk back up that road. If you're really strong, you'll get there soon. If not, but if you have some company along, you take longer, but the journey still seems ok because you're not alone. But if you're alone, all you have is you, and you're going to fall. Many times. It's when you decide to get up and get going every time, that you stand a chance of backing out of this hell you got into. It will always rain again. What matters is if you will always be at that window, watching when it does.

The Trekker's guide to life

Funny how each hill ahead of you looks so green and inviting, and you just want to reach there.
Funny how each hill behind you looks just as green, and you wished you could have lingered there more.

Funny how the hill you are climbing now feels rocky, and you get tired by climbing the steep path etched by others. There are instances where you feel really good, the sight of two lambs frolicking, of the cowherds cheerfully controlling the grazing livestock, of the sheepdogs yawning in the light. And then the instances where you feel like just giving up, like when a bag you carry to the top of a hill goes rolling down when you make a careless move. You regret it for a good long while later, but if you are lucky someone went out of their way to help out, and you have your bag back. If not, tough luck. That which isnt important can be replaced. That which is, should have been kept safer. Learn the lesson, move on.

There are times where you take a break, crash to the ground and just lie down. Listen, the wind through the trees are speaking, listen to the leaves rustle. Feel the drops of sweat roll down the top of your eyelids, feel it cool you off in the mellow wind. Smell the scent of a thriving forest, smell the nectar that draws the bee near. See the rays of the sun glance off the swaying treetops, see the sun play peek-a-boo with you. The symphony is playing if you want to free your senses. You can lie there for long, but know when to get up, your journey is not yet done.

You climb to the top of the hill and look with pride at all around you. You see the next hill, the longing begins. Given a choice between a direct path at the same level to the next hill, and climbing down and back up to the next peak, which would you choose. Whatever be your choice, in which case would you feel a greater sense of accomplishment. Is it for that rush, that people do it? Is it necessary, so you feel pride over your ambition, instead of taking it for granted?

Along your way, did you find anyone who needed any help with their baggage? Sometimes, your companions dont need a helping hand, they just need the company. The stance, the silence, it helps more at times than the hand. Did you know which to give and when? Did you wish someone gave it to you when you needed it?

Finally when you are too tired to go on, mentally or physically, when you look back at all the hills you conquered, do you think more about the number of hills? Or do you instead look at the people who were with you the whole time, and grin unconsciously? Did you have such people?


At the end of the entire trip, if a layman was to see what you did, he may wonder why someone took the entire trouble to walk up and down mountains. Seems crazy to him. He just doesnt get it. It's not the start or the destination that matters, it's the journey. It's not the distance you walked, it's not the heights you scaled, its the path you followed, it's the relationships you make.

That's how they'll remember you.

Bargaining as we know it.

Category: Finance and Business. VERY serious. Entrepreneurial language - Level Max.


Welcome back to this oddly colored page, i like to call The Fence. Today we shall take our discussion to a highly unanticipated and most unnecessary facet of business transactions.

Bargaining.

Previously known as the mark of a successful trader, a tool used to get a person the maximum profit he could try to get. He could save MILLIONS if he could reduce the price he bought at for less than its CP(Cost Price), and sell it for a price more than it's SP(Sell price). It was a SKILL, something that no ordinary man possessed, something to handed down from generation to generation, like the Marwadis did, something which the Mallus never understood, and therefore were just called plain cheap, something which could not be learnt, which is why the Kannadigas dont own a decent business establishment which posts a decent/successful growth rate every quarter.


To have such a skill at your disposal was to be able to bargain with the English when they landed first at our beaches (Englishman: I come with gold, and silver and cool diamonds to buy what you have to sell. What can u offer me? Indian trader: Ka-ching! We have gobar, from which you can make gobar-gas and therefore save our planet from early extinction. We also have macchi which we caught just off the coast, normal to look at, but fried in our specially extracted refined oil , and lathered with our finest spices we offer you a dish which will leave you begging for more! and water costs 100 gold pieces only. We have wool... and so on, so forth.). Dumass East India Company people would have first finished their entire ration of water after eating two fish... their definition of spicy is beneath us. Their damn chili is sweet by our standards! And no more freshwater = lots and lotsa moola for us Indians.

They must have been pretty upset over their bad end of the bargain, and so they started taking over India, to take all that money back. Sore losers. Left us after stripping every last cowdie out of us... look who's laughing now foos! Give us more IT projects!


Sadly though, we no longer have that respect for bargaining, not us, the generation X/Y whoever. You should see my grandma, when the lemon-man brings the lemons home in the morning. She looks at it, crinkles nose and says "5 for 5". The lemon-guy goes all wide-eyed and says "You're mad! I payed 8 for 5, I have a wife, kids. Gimme 10! Think about me! I cant do this!", She tosses the lemons back at him and opens the door. He grumbles and takes the 5, gives 5. THAT'S BLOODY BRILLIANT! I decided to try that once. At my place, my usual lemon guy comes, looks at me, I crinkle nose and say "5 for 5", and he shows me the finger. Then he tells me to get my face checked, my nose looks unusually crinkly.

But I didnt give up... no no! Some other day, I went to buy sandals. Had to go for a trek, see. So one of my friends decided to good-naturedly tag along. Said he wanted to buy shoes or some such. So we go to this place, and we start looking. Pop! 2 seconds - his shoes are found and he's racing to the counter to pay and leave. Holding the plastic cover with his precious shoes, he's waiting for me to come with him. I am still not yet inside. Looking at the glass case outside, I'm all crinkly-nosed again. First there's admiration on his face, "Oh, this guy is a true connoisseur of shoes.". Twenty minutes later, he's just plain irritated. There he is, standing with a white plastic cover in one hand, looking like a fool right in the middle of the shop entrance, while I'm running around saying "No.. next... next.. yea, that one. Oh no, not good enough.". Finally I settle on something. Time for the price. He says 400 bucks. I laugh and say "You're joking! I'd most probably walk in goat-poo in that, I'm not paying 400, this is a bloody joke!" And add the crinkly nose for good effect.

It's amazing how quickly people show the finger and give you the most cynical expression.

And it's not just the shopkeeper. My friend and he are now "best friends", in sync. If actions were sound, they'd be bloody harmonizing. My friend is openly criticizing me "you dare bargain? what's wrong with you!" like I committed a frigging crime or something. "How cheap!" he goes on. Raving and ranting, on and on, for ages! At the end, I must have visited five shops with the same response. The last guy didnt show me the finger, my friend dragged me out before he could even react to that. I remember seeing a shocked face, slowly moving to rage, and a hand coming up with four fingers rolling inwards(technically, since i didn't see the final outcome, I didnt see "the finger").... then I was just turned around, and shoved out the door by my very-pissed friend. No longer good natured. Dumass.


Walked into a Nike showroom and asked how much? He said 4000. Why would anyone pay 4 grand?! He says Brand. My thoughts go back to that gay primitive cannibal . All he did was put a tick. And the clothes now go for 4k. On another he put three lines in parallel. That for 5k. AND NONE OF THEM CAN BE BARGAINED FOR. I look at the guy, crinkly nosed, unsure... "th-three.... k...?"

I dont want to talk about what came next.
I just wanted my granny there.


Bargaining... no longer the most-wanted-skill. The English might yet keep their money. Sigh!

Life and Fashion as we know it.

Category: Burst of thought.

Welcome to my blog, its got a new look. One that makes ABSOLUTELY no sense. I have no taste in color, style and combinations. And it shows! The blue-green combination that u see, leaves u disconcerted! Hell, it leaves ME disconcerted!! And i dont get disconcerted easily!

And you wonder. Man took to art like chicks take to credit cards. The basic science of color, should be inherent, people should know that black goes with gold , and white goes with blue. Pink goes with nothing, except hot chicks, but that isnt a color... i dont think it is. In fact, they go with anything, disconcerting to say the least....

And then comes fashion. This is some hoopla initiated by tailors i think. Lets really think about this. Long long ago, when some gay dood couldnt till the land, or craft weapons, and liked to play with dolls, he must have thought, hey! people need better leaves to wear! and would have gone about making his leaves into wearable shrubs. when people came to try it on, his heart would have known no bounds, when he would see people get into his shrubs, and feel happy about it. Now he had a valid reason to play with his dolls, tailoring subjects he would say.

After getting enough goats for his shrubs, or maybe fruits or eggs in barter, he might have sat down, counted his chickens, after they hatched, and made kababs. Life would have been BRILLIANT for a good while, but after his entire colony got the shrubs and rival gay people had their own shrub outlets, he would have run out of good meat. and fruits. Fruit runs out of fruit, not a good thing to happen!

So he would have been like, how can i get more fruits (in today's world, the word is money/business). And then, he would see the shrubs go pale brown, crumple and fall off, seeing how he made them in spring. So he would make the FALL collection, using pine cones and needles. Itchy and scratchy, but they last. He would have found some evergreen leaves, and made new thingies. And so began Spring and Fall collections. More goats, more fruits.

But competition has a way of catching up.... there is ALWAYS someone who cant get original, and likes to make money off other people's ideas. He calls it variety, we call it stealing. But this guy is brilliant... gay, but brilliant. So he finds a way of introducing brands. Says, you have nothing unless u have beech tree shrubs. comfortable, silky smooth and evergreen! Now, with added flowers to make u smell good, even if u do something bad and smelly, and yellow.

Time raged on, and the unknown gay tailor gave way to today's fashionista. Now THEY decide what color combos are good, what are not. THEY make clothes for people and charge them so much money for something they drew up a few days back. Something that a second standard kid could do. I mean, a hole here, a tear there, and its fashion now. Hell, its not clothes anymore that's fashionable... its NO CLOTHES that are fashionable. I m sure, someone ought there is thinking, one with nature and all, i m sure one with nature u sick psycho! Just want to see naked chicks everyday, dont you!

And so here i am, color combination less, brand less. I am back, to churn ur innards, and drive u mad.

Welcome back to my technicolor musings.

Cupid Needs Glasses

Category: Humour. My kind.

In a universe present very much here, there is a small collection of dots. Like as if some kid went whacko riding on a damn motorised pogo stick, and peppered a black sheet of paper with loads of white dots. We know this better as the Milky Way. Go deeper, use that magnifying glass, and if it is of the sufficient magnifying power, you might be able to discern this small white dot amongst all the other millions, like searching for a needle in a haystack of needles. That little dood right there, he/she/it is the Sun. Now that you've zeroed in over here, take a break and count all the other stars.

Once you're break is over, attach a magnifying glass, preferably of the same type as the first one,(it would be great if you got it from the same factory, you may get a discount! If you dont, tough luck!) Look through the looking glass, and you just might see Alice. Even if you dont, try to concentrate on all those spheres rotating crazily around the sun, you should count eight of them. The straddler sitting on the end - yeah Pluto, was going so slow and acting smart, so they decided to stop calling him a planet and called him some wierd asteroid. Talk about demotion.
Amongst the entire set, there's this one blue thingy somewhere in the third ring orbitting that big ball of fire. Yeah, looks nice doesnt it. Sure it does, the planet is always blue-er on the other side! And its grass definitely looks greener!

But it has people.

Yeah, those two-legged-creatures who run about hurriedly trying to act like they've got some life. And who move generally between two places, one their resting facility, the other their home. They even put their young 'uns through fifteen-twentyfive years of rigorous punishment, making them read, so they can grow up to be like them. Look closely, some have weenies, some dont. Yeah, its a way of life for them. Finally the have-weenies go to the have-nots and make juniors who are delivered by short sighted storks(who sometimes deliver in the wrong houses causing loads of drama from which we make stories like "That's Not MY Child", and "I'm not even pregnant". These stories are hushed up by the Stork Coverup committee so you dont get to hear it. Hush this, stork!), who again might have weenies or not. They call it reproduction.

Anyway, if you're wondering how the haves go to the have-nots, its quite simple. There's this one guy/angel-kid/mischievous mongrel who's rolling all around the planet, hitching rides with the storks, and who shoots this primitive arrows. He kinda gets very active around the months of January and February. That's cos, the storks are on migration and have a very skeletal staff. The storks come in full flow somewhere around November, but then again, thats a different story.

Anyway, so this Crazy Kid, called Cupid, has full support from the "Gods" (read, unknown characters who hide in the background and play puppets with the strings of the universe, generally naked cos they like it that way.) and he runs around violently releasing arrows at any person moving in his sight on God's Green Earth. (Yeah, it looked blue before, dont ask me how it became green.) He seems to have been doing a decent job, but of recent his work has slacked.

Yes, that's right people, Cupid is going blind. Now that the Gods have decided to change the ratio of the haves to have-nots to a respectable notch, it is now 1634426:1. Yes, lots of haves, which is more than i can say regarding the rest of the world's economics / statistics / mumbo-jumbo-i-cant-recall.


And this hapless poor kid been working so hard, he's looking for the odd have-not to shoot at, and he's finding very few of them. Since he's working so hard, and doesnt have any support staff, and doesnt entertain Customer Care Calls, he's quite tired/glazy-eyed/frustrated. So he's decided to let everything go. All of a sudden, he's firing at people who are blissfully happy, and then content with the fact that they're feeling a deep sense of loneliness, and infrequent cries of "why-oh-why", and the rare cases of "I am a have-You're a have-let's have!" which might frankly help in reducing the populace.

Recently, he hit me. Dumb freak of a Winged-nut, he wasn't even WATCHING who he hit. Here I am, blissfully happy in the company of my code, spitefully mocking the have-nots, and there he goes "twang!". Didnt take more than a couple of weeks before I am gasping for "companionship" as one of my friends put it. Laughed at him then when he went into some Devdas based talk (moving piece of literature in India, where the guy finally dies cos he cant handle his love for two females, one a dancer, the other a confused brat) and philosohpically mentioned his need for companionship(Ugghh!). Talk about irony.

It's bad enough, when you speak to very few have-nots, when you're looking for that special have-not and give Cupid the sign that "all's ok, go ahead and shoot... aim for me and THAT one there, yes THAT one. I'll give you an extra heart!". It's worse when he shoots the wrong guy. Now all I have is one big pain-in-the-neck and pain-in-the-hiney, cos he shot both arrows at me for DOUBLE pressure. It's not a good sight when you see some guy looking speculatively at all the have-nots in the room, and definitely not when you find out you're just looking at yourself, cos there's a mirror in the way, and you see the wild gleam in your eyes.

"Get over it man, it's just feelings!", you say. Crush the damn thing, Cupid gots a lot of arrows, beg him for a couple more later. Sigh, if only it were so easy. You just cant stop thinking of that one person, and finally, you cry to yourself, why-oh-why did you not hide around when you know that something like this was bound to happen. Advice from the fallen one (me), RUN WHEN YOU HEAR THAT FLAP OF WINGS!! The guy is running blind, hope he hurts himself and puts himself in the hospital till some eye-guy goes and gives him a good over-all, and dresses him up while he's at it, so he doesnt get cold and frustrated so easily.

But 'tis the busy season for him, and he's running blind. "'Tis the season to be jolly", came and went in December, tough luck if you didnt get your packet of jolly then!

One more wounded in battle, one more crawling towards the light. But I still have my determination, and my will to be a good friend. If nothing, it will just be that which gets me across this war-torn battlefield. I know not what I want, and Cupid as sure hell doesnt seem to care about it at the moment, he's got some target to reach. So, I need to draw whatever supprt I can from faith, in the fact that the one I want, will come, in time, and that I'll be there to receive her. Maybe that time Cupid will be all right, and I will be ready for his arrow, hurtful or not.


Damn Cupid, crazy freak!

Sleeping when it's pouring cats and dogs..

Category: Rambling thoughts. Serious. Unnecessarily obfuscated.

All the people in the world have dreams.
Many of them think that it will remain a dream.
Few of them strive to reach out, and give up due to all the pressures on them.
Fewer still, and i mean much fewer, reach those goals and by then have become old. They then sit and reminisce about all their struggles, and are content. They say "This is what I've done, This is what I give to my offspring, society and world".

And then there's a smaller minority.
They live their dreams.

These guys dont forget to live, while trying to reach their goals. They dont forget, that they have one life. They dont forget that the relationships they have right now, it only lasts them a lifetime. They live life to the fullest and enjoy every moment for what it is.

What's special about these guys? I sit on my fence everyday, and watch all the people, and only these guys have the sparkle in their eyes, the one glint which says everything. You want to know such people. You want to BE them. And then you wonder, where did you go wrong?

I mean, lets face it. I'm from Bangalore, one of the hubs, or rather, lets call them dhabas on the Information Superhighway. I know what it takes to be a software engineer. I know how many people busted their behinds all the way from school, through pre-university, graduation, just so that they could land a cushy job, earn big fat packets of moolah and go home proud. Yeah, I earn the moolah... it was my dream. It was my dream, that I be independent, capable of spending by myself, for myself and others, and I got my dream. Why am I not content?

And I know it. There was a time when I just started working, when people said I had that glint in my eye. Yeah, that was a long time back. I remember those days, when leaving to office, I'd enjoy the travel, I'd look at all the people travelling by my side, look at the sky, buildings, and be happy, that yeah! I got what I wanted!! And then it started.

Work. Work. Work. You throw yourself at it. It's not an examination. You are actually using what you've learnt, all that crap in engg and school.. ur USING it. Finally u know WHY u studied all that!!

And then, slowly, everything begins to fade. When u travel, the sounds are all dimmed, the people all just a blur... you reach office, and you have no idea how that time passed, you dont even remember that you might have met with a billion accidents on the way since u were driving with an absent-minded frigging mind! All you do, is think of the problems in your project, what u can do to solve them. Friends begin to stop meeting, they have work on weekends, quick delivery they say. You stop hanging out with the people you were with for four years. Then, at times, you notice a certain irritation in the air... anything you are asked, even if a little out of the way for you, and you snap. What do you think I am? Do it yourself!!

And life goes on, day after day. Make new friends, forget your old ones.. then u get married to some girl whom you might think is the love of your life, probably because she was the only one who agreed to marry you, or the only one you gave a chance to know you better. And you think you are content. Then you have rambunctious kids, who have problems, and their lives ahead restart the entire cycle.

Is this life? This how we're supposed to live it? Why do we work? So we can live? So we can eat, provide for family? Have fun with friends without worrying about where the money gonna come from? And what happens?? Go home tired everyday, watch TV, eat dinner, go to sleep.

When we were kids, we would want to stay awake all night, we believed everything we were told with wide-eyed surprise. We even believed there was a Santa Claus. If we finished our homework for the day, we could do whatever we wanted the rest of the day. We watched Chitrahaar. We watched news, sports, movies, regional, English, without any qualms. Then we got cable, each person wants to watch something else. Choice we have, they say. Be free, they say. Did we really enjoy TV as a family any more? Now, any kids come home, the parents put them in front of the idiot box, and its shocking how the young ones just sit, eyes glued to the TV. They'll keep quiet through 2-3 hours, just cos they're looking at it.

Remember we used to play outside, cricket, football, lagori, choor chand, or just cycle around? See any kids do that nowadays... yeah, you do. The ones who cant afford a TV, the ones who cant afford a computer. They then have desires, I want to have a TV and computer like that boy there. Is that the point of technology? To make those who dont have it, want it? Crave for it?

I sometimes just want to get away, sit down somewhere, watch life pass me by. Watch that small kid learn to walk, the glee on his face, he's done something new. See the pride in the parent's face.. their kid just did something incredible. He's growing. I want to watch those ants crawl all in a line across the walls. I want to sit on top of a highhhhhhhhh building, watch all the vehicles just move around down below.

But my fence is not so high.

Do i do the best with what I have? Or do i try to have more?
Do I be content with what I have? Or do I get more, so I can be content?

Why do I work? Do I do it to live?
Why do I live? Do I do it to work?

I know, that something is different with me. Deep down, there is a need for change. And I know not what is going to happen, yet I look forward to it. People say, there's a time when u stop being a child anymore. You become an adult, you become responsible, you become wise. Am I at my threshold? Am I going to stop being the child I have always loved? Am I going to give up my right to question things innocently without worrying about what others think about me? Am I finally going to understand the meaning of being?

I know not, my fence is not high.
But I am ready for it. I am ready to live my life.