Hey, Be Practical!!!

We all hear this advice from quite a few people around us almost every other day. Yea the current world lives on being practical. The generation of youngsters that constitute many of us promotes this motto. We need stuff, we need people and we need comfort all for our benefit. Here, we do not care whether another person is worried or bothered about us. We interact with people only if we are sure that we are bound to get something out of it (be it a stranger, a colleague, a friend, a relative or anybody).

Yea sure, we do not intend any harm to a fellow being by our deeds, but at the same time we do not care about the well-being of the same fellow.  As long as we are comfortable, we are ok.

I feel so sad about our generation. I think it is high time we spend some time and think over our intentions in life. It is true that we should have ambitions and aim high. At the same time, we should have compassion too. Why can’t we spare a few hours or days just for the happiness of a fellow being; at least a loved one; without thinking about whether we are comfortable, happy contented, attending to our personal priorities? I can definitely say that there is only a handful of people in our generation who does that these days.

It is a shame that we have stooped to this level. I am not trying to say that I am a perfect being. I too am one most of the time, but I try to not be one. I would like you to take a few minutes and think what you have in your mind regarding this and share it here if possible.

Hope

It is normal human tendency to crave for the best out of everything around him/her. Many a time this craving cause disappointment as things may not happen as they wish. This leads to the development of pessimistic attitude in men. In my opinion, pessimism is a very dangerous evil. This kills the enthusiasm in a person and makes him useless in almost every field that he ventures in.

What we need to understand is everything would not come smooth in this world, and if things are happening as you expect them, you should not fall prey to the luck factor, because there will be times when things may not fall in place and you would regret being not prepared then. For me, the motto of life is, ‘Hope for the Best, Be prepared for the Worst, and Take What Comes’. Hope is the only reason why we live. If there is no hope, our urge to live ceases to exist.

One big mistake many of us do, in which I too take part most times, is ‘not acting’ due to the fear of failure. What we fail to realize is that it simultaneously eats up the opportunity for us to succeed. When things are smooth, we tend to curl up in our cozy comfort zone without the slightest care in the world. Beware, this is the greatest mistake that one can make because we soon regret what we did not accomplish in the lost time, and the damage would have been irrevocably done by then.

Optimism is the best attitude with which a human being should live. Optimism is not just hoping for the best. It is acting towards it. Until and unless you put in efforts to achieve something, nothing will come your way. The fruit of such an act tastes much sweeter as there is a sense of accomplishment associated with it. Optimism is not expecting that everything would be as we wish. It is the hope that it would give us what we wish for, but simultaneously it is a mind set of resilience to act through a different route if the intended result does not materialize. Optimism is the attitude that tells us that there is nothing impossible for us. If one door closes, there’ll be another one wide open somewhere else, waiting for us to enter. It might take a bit more of our time and effort to find that door, but once we enter there, the elation is beautiful.

Optimism keeps us healthy, observant and proactive. It tells us to be on the move. As we often hear, it is accompanied by faith in the almighty. Praying to God and asking him favors all the time will never suffice; it has to be accompanied by our efforts to make things happen. But faith makes us hopeful and clear headed. It is always a deed that is half done by you and the rest by God that gives you complete satisfaction.

How Good Am I?

The title of this post is something that crosses all of our minds now and then, and a very tricky question to give a clear cut answer. All of us want to be good. Only being good is different in different peoples’ perspectives. It can be excelling in work, studies, sports, cooking, fashion, looks, and the like (category 1) or it can be being devotional, altruistic, considerate, loving, caring, and the like (category 2). Many a time, it happens that we struggle to find a balance between the two categories. All of us crave for excellence, but many of us don’t know what excellence is.

What I learned from my life so far is that, there is a very fine line between good/bad or right/wrong. Many of us travel through the intersection area of these two phenomena. What we judge as a good deed may seem a wrong activity in someone else’s perspective.

In the modern world, the outlook of youth is very different from what it was for our previous generations. For us, everything should seem cool, rocking, trendy, dashing… The usage of these terms does not matter as long as they refer to something acceptable, but many a time the factors that are described by these adjectives do matter… For many of us cool or trendy or rocking are things like iPhones, other electronic gadgets, movies, outfits that are in, automobiles, etc.

Our generation is extremely materialistic (I admit that I too am one, though I try my level best not to be). Yeah, how can we be not, with all the development in technology, all the gadgets that are irresistible, and many a times affordable?

Our status statements lie on what all we posses, how updated we are, how good are we with using those gadgets. I am not saying that these are not good, but how many of us do think about the not so fortunate people who we see everyday around us? I feel guilty all the time about the luxuries I have when I see all these people struggling to make ends meet.

Again, this is a very frequently raised issue that we come across all the time. I know many of you are fed up of such ‘utopian’ questions asked by many. Just think about it, is this really a ‘utopian’ statement?  Can’t we do something about this, and have a balance in our ways of life and theirs? According to me, I am good if I can do something for the unfortunate ones and live a satisfied life.

Newspaper Now

Every morning I open the news paper hoping that I might find some article worth reading. Now days, it is pretty difficult to spot a news article on the daily news paper, which has some news value. It is mostly filled with details of rape case statistics in a particular city/region/country, new rape cases, celebrity scandals, murders, and the like. I know that these are no silly matters, but are these the only things that are worth reporting in a news paper? I mean, we know such things are happening all around us, but reporting them over and over again makes the reader feel that there is nothing else happening in the world.

Come to think of it, be it regional news, national news, international news, or the sports page; you get to see at least two articles regarding some scandal where some well known people are associated with some girl/guy. That can be their girl/boy friend, extra marital relationship, or their own spouse. So, what is the difference between a main stream news paper report and a paparazzi report? Where sports page is ideally meant to report news related to sports/games events, we get to read news regarding sports persons’ life events. I mean, what is the whole point of spoiling the name of a very good sports person when he still is a good player? Be it Tiger Woods or Anna Kurnikova, it is their game that we like to read about and not what they do when not on field.

We hardly get to read details of new developments in science and technology. If there is any development in this field, it will be reported somewhere deep inside the pages, with a small heading and just to the point details, so that people hardly notice the piece. On the contrary the front pages will be presented with news like “A rare photo of John F Kennedy with Marilyn Monroe Released” or “The list of women Tiger Woods is associated with”.  What value does such data add to a person’s knowledge of the world? These are nothing but trash.

This is what we get to read in almost all newspapers that are published in India. The worth of news reporting is being deteriorated everyday and the reason the publishers give is that, that is what the public asks for. No, that is not what the public asks for, the media has made public interested in such matters by publishing these over and over again. The reporters have lost their sense of duty towards the public as to report facts that are significant for the general well being.

My Daily Adventure Ride

Please do not get into conclusions about me being exploratory or daring, just by reading the title of the post. Yeah, it is an adventurous ride that I’m talking about. But, there is around one tenth of Pune’s total population that joins me in this ride every weekday. Yeah, I’m talking about my daily trip from home to office.

It is an adventure ride because the road is never the same in any two consecutive days. If it were a perfectly maintained road, I could have travelled the one way distance from home to office in at most 15 minutes. Alas, that is never the case. It is almost one and a half years since I started working here. This particular road has never been what you would call a tarred road.

Every morning you see a new pothole in the road. The older ones get bigger along with the appearance of new ones. When some of them grow to the size of small ponds, they (I don’t exactly know who) fill them up with wet mud!!! Just think about it… wet mud??? Once in a while, they fill them with melted tar, and just the tar… no reinforcement. This is the way one of the busiest roads in Pune is maintained.

If you have a car, you are bound to be stuck in this stretch for at least 45minutes. Luckily, I have a bike, which helps me avoid some of those deep holes, though it still is a roller coaster ride. But it is not just the road that causes all this commotion. The attitude of people is another major issue. Tell me, if you are stuck in a traffic jam, where you can see that there is a huge line of cars waiting to move in front of you, what is the whole point of honking loudly at the vehicle right in front of you??? Will he/she be able to fly over the whole jam so that you get one or two feet advancement??? This is what I get to endure almost all days when I’m stuck in a traffic jam.

Another thing is, when in a jam, with the formation of one or two lines of cars in a direction of traffic flow, you get to see a huge number of bike riders taking the wrong way, either from the left or the right side, to get to the front, which eventually results in a much more blocked traffic, which would take another hour or so to move.

On top of all these, you will be bathed in dust cloud all through the trip. I guess, there is more dust in this stretch, than there is over 200 kilometers of highway trip from Pune to Mumbai. Now the road works department has started doing something about this road, (guess they are planning to widen the road), which has been going on for around 4-5 months, though there is not much of improvement in the total landscape. What I cannot understand is, why do not the authorities give much importance to such matters when this particular stretch is one of the most used roads in Pune with huge amount of traffic flowing in and out every day. I know that this is not an isolated case, and many of you must be facing similar situation every day, but I just felt like sharing my frustration with you.