Why is it? Head Vs Heart

Heart: Why is it that we rely on our parents and the elderly for the smallest and littlest of things in life? I mean aren't we supposed to be individuals making our way in life, not bothering what others think about us?

Head: How stupid a question is that! Can you really be this foolish?

Heart: Why what is so stupid about what I just asked?

Head (in a frenzy): Well 'parents' - they've been there and done that! And they know the consequences. So, listening to them is an almost sure shot way to get it right. If at all you understand what I mean (sighs) !

Heart: Oh no no! I am aware of this. My question is asked with a very different perspective in mind.

Head: Oh yeah! And what might that be?

Heart: Suppose I want to tread on a path that the previous generation hasn't tried stepping upon.

Head: Anyway, they have seen the world, and are more aware than you are about what might be in store. It is always important that you consult them and actually pay a heed while doing that. Don't take them lightly. Your parents are your greatest benefactors, well wishers. Whatever, it is that they say or do is with your own happiness in mind.
Heart: I know, but don't you think I am a different person from who my parents are, don't you feel the same way too, at least sometimes? Like they don't understand you or your point of view at all. Its like living in a world of contradictions. You have been put in a convent school and not merely any English medium school, so you grow up to become a better, a bigger person than what you ought to be in a different environment. Haven't you always taught to be kind, to put others before yourself ? All they ever wanted was to make you better than themselves and wish for you to have a life that is better than theirs.
And, yet when you have done a good thing and suffered for the same, haven't  you been scoffed at? At least I remember many such instances. All I can think of is, I have been scolded for my stupidity, not once has any one ever told me, what you did was the right thing to do, its not your fault that you had to suffer.
Tell me I'm wrong..

Head (slightly confused now): I don't know. But the fact that they scoffed at you was for your own good. So you don't fall for that kind of trap ever again in your life. So you don't trust the wrong people.

Heart (infuriated at this indifference): And you call that life, wherein I'm not capable of trusting a single soul! It is not written on men's faces if they are trustworthy or not. It’s my instinct that tells me to trust people. You are telling me NOT to trust my instincts, my own self!! Oh, how can you be so mean! If they didn't want me to trust in fairy tales, why did they go through the pain of making me believe them in the first place. Why does everyone say, have faith?  - It will pay off. Now, no matter what you tell me, why am I not able to believe you? Why is it that I just can't seem to shake off this weird crazy faith that something good is about to happen, even when nothing seems right?
Maybe nothing wondrous is ever going to happen in my life, and I will learn to live with what I have and this is the very prospect that infuriates me, saddens me, makes me hopeless, lose my heart. I don't find the strength to carry on any more. Every day just seems like a drag. Life has become so ... so lifeless. When it comes to not giving up and living on in the hope that things will change I feel like Sam Baldwin when he said "Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out... and, then after a while, I won't have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while."
I guess I have to give in to the ways of the world. Fairy tales are not meant for people like us. We are the ones who have to be content with food, shelter, clothing and a practically feasible life partner. We cannot have soul mates.

Not knowing

"On the other hand this not knowing has its charms" - Joe Fox

I have always had people plan for me what I wanted to do with my life. And I made myself believe that all this is happening with my best interests in mind. I was an above average student, got through school then went to a college, got a job and was earning enough to fend for my own needs. This is when my so-called self-realization started bugging me. I mean what am I doing with my life. Whilst in college I always liked coding and imagined going to office to do some more of explicit coding - I had no idea back then what kind of life I was vying for. Now that I'm more than 3 years into IT I realize how terribly wrong I was.

During the first 2 years I had no time to ponder over this considering all the time I had to spend commuting from home to office and the rest of it dedicate to a delicately placed support project. Then with God's grace my project changed and so did the location. I now had quite some opportunity for coding. Just when I began to think I might like this stuff, came the second blow! I was shifted to another support project.

Now I think maybe this is God's plan for me. He/she, whoever it is, doesn't want me to stay in this field and is providing me with opportunities to get the hell out of here and find my place in this big wide world. This very thought seems to light me up. It gives me a new hope of moving forward and doing my bit of best to figure things out for myself.

The whole anonymity of the situation - of not knowing what's out there, is what lures me even more into finding it out! The hope that something wonderful might happen if I just give it a try (and not hold myself back and think what others might think of me) gives me the strength to move on. Somebody once told me, 'You know when you write don't think much about it, just go ahead and write what you have to'. I guess the same holds true for almost anything and everything. I never really got hold of the old saying in Gita 'Karmanye Vadhikaaraste Maafaleshu Kadaachanuh' - I mean how can I work for something without even knowing what to expect. Now somehow, I understand the situation. If you want something, just go ahead and do it, without thinking of the odds in the way. If what you do does not hurt anybody else, then what's the harm!

Words are so damn powerful.... used in the correct manner they have the power to manipulate your thoughts (mogoj dholayi, wow!!) I came across this blog - http://literaryjukebox.brainpickings.org/post/62896499485  - very inspiring :)

Wishful Thinking

Imagine that you are attending a seminar/conference/lecture and the host says that the best questioner would be awarded. Now imagine, surprisingly enough, you come up with one such question and you are dying to ask it out loud!


However, at your very moment of limelight, some strange person, whom you never even noticed coming into the hall, spoils your moment of glory by asking the same question in an amazingly superior way. You get unfathomably tongue-tied, seething and hell-to-the-power-of-infinity degree distracted, waiting for the seminar to end. Sometimes my thoughts tend to fly so high that a drastic downfall is almost inevitable. At that moment, I dearly wish that my thoughts were unique - that the questions which come to my mind hadn't occurred to anyone else - and above all, that I be considered an INTELLECTUAL! :P

Crazy but true.

All this said; now consider an altogether different scenario. Let me give you an example. Suppose that you have bought the latest android phone in market, but due to some very strange reason, every time you try to make a call the phone turns off! Or maybe, you are at your office and while testing some software you get an unheard-of error message. What is the first thing that one would try under these circumstances? I normally ask people around what can be done about this. Then when I do not get a satisfactory answer (which happens most of the times that you are desperately in need of help – like Mr. Murphy's Law) I resort to Google.

Google almost always has an answer to everything – whatever be the problem you can always count on Google. And the reason Google is so helpful is BECAUSE it connects together people with the SAME questions, same thoughts!!

Life is ironic.. :-)



The irony is that you can't use real rain to make movies.

- Greg Kinnear

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Songs just seem to fill your head 'n heart every time you listen to them... written by someone you don't know - someone you probably never will get to know and yet somehow speaking your heart out with his/her words , successfully too. Miraculous, isn't it!

Lines that never could be born of an ordinary, yet somehow conceived so fully by the ordinary themselves! It's like Einstein mentioning the term "Theory of Relativity" without having to explain what it is all about, as if the E = mc2 formula had been in there all this time, just hidden at the back of our heads!

I don't know what the moral of the story is or should be. Should I explain things optimistically, or be a pessimist or the plain-pragmatic one?? These are the lines that made me think all of this,

"Someday I'll wish upon a star,
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me,
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops,
That's where you'll find me"

and they will be the ones I will keep wishing upon..... :-)

Journey to my office

Last day there was a survey going on at my office regarding various factors which included facilities provided inside the office, transport, environment etc etc. At the end of it there was a comments section, that I did not take the pain of filling up (which is, by the way, very much like myself). Therefore, I decided to write a blog about it, I mean, what I might otherwise should or could have commented!




So, here it goes.



On weekdays, except for occasional (read very very “rare”, like an oasis in the Sahara desert) holidays, I wake up in the morning, pray that I don’t miss the office bus, make haste, get ready (all this while, still praying – “Oh God, please don’t make me miss my office bus, I promise I’ll get up earlier tomorrow!”). Thus, mostly with God’s grace I manage to make it to the bus stand on time.

Now, for most IT professionals reading this (and not having to come to …… say “Arrow-storey”, coz that’s what I’m going to call this place, as I couldn’t find a better Bengali to English translation for the name) – you must be wondering what nonsense this is all about. How can travelling to office be so important? It has always been a secondary concern. The only thing that matters most is how long you stay at office and NOT how to travel to the place. But believe it or not, travelling to AR-ST can be painstakingly difficult at times without office buses. Therefore, if you miss it you are DOOMED!!



Once I’m on the bus and all geared up for the journey, there comes this second …. errr….well….obstacle! The first quarter of the journey, I must say is not very disagreeable, and neither would have been the remaining three, had my nose not come into play! 

Confused??!!

Allow me to clarify …

My story starts just around the corner (okay, I’m a You’ve Got Mail fan!!  ), when the main bypass road splits in three directions and leftmost one bends leftward leading right into our very own AR-ST grounds. Lots of small industries have cropped up in and around AR-ST. They are meant as a source of income to many, I’m sure of that. And yet I can’t seem to hide my handicap of not being able to bear the mere sight of them. Reason for my disliking them is that, these industries are the source of such an olfactory sensation, that I fall short of words to describe justly!!

Every time a tiny speck of smoke particle resulting from the above employment, gets into my nose – all my violent streaks surface. And I have to keep my fists clenched hard so as not to do something that might be considered “unladylike”. Luckily for me, I happen to carry a handkerchief with me and that comes to my rescue! All through this half an hour stretch, I keep my savior (read handkerchief) clung to my nose.

Finally, comes the hour when the journey is about to end. With another bend rightwards the office building comes into view. The surrounding – away from the hustle & bustle of a city, with open meadows and a very welcoming office gate – altogether are very pleasant to look at. But I must warn you about the canal cum high drain that flows all along the boundary of the office premises. Despite the pink liquid flowing through it (that sure does appeal to ones sense of visual aesthetics), it simply unnerves a person’s olfactory nerves. And no amount of shielding your nose can protect you from its clutches.

Yours sincerely,

Poor Employee of some office in Arrow-Storey 



P.S. – All the information published here is absolutely my exaggerated version of the original story in a humorous way. There is no intention of hurting any sentiments whatsoever. If any comment in the blog above offends anyone in anyway, please accept my sincere apologies, as that is not at all what I had in mind.

Perceptions

Misunderstandings, fights over them, break-ups, heartbreaks (accompanied by a tear or two) - are all links of the same chain. And the main culprit behind all of these is the age-old MISCOMMUNICATION! No wonder our teachers always prompted us to hone our communication skills - in school or college or even now, only now that the teachers are 'events' instead of real life people.

Just think how differently people are prone to think, or just how differently they tend to express their thoughts. Had this been a vocal session, I would have read out some phrase in three different tones - a statement, a command and the third, something funny or something unconventional. However, this blogging-spree restricts me from doing the same. So I'll try explaining this little unusually.

Coming back to my trend of connecting my blogs to songs (they're just so inspiring!), here we go:

1.) All of you must have heard the very popular, almost chart-topper, item song - "Munni Badnaam Hui Darling Tere liye". Some people (mostly the old school ones) will crinkle their noses, while some others will find it to be ver-r-y ver-r-r-y entertaining ( ehmm..! ;) )

2.) There is one other song, that I find to have an uncanny similarity with the above. Any wild guesses as to what that might be (I'll give you a chance to think, before letting you on to the answer)

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

No its not 'Sheela ki Jawaani' :S

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Ain't 'Jalebi Bai' either...... na-ah :|

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Hint: Remember when people said that Rabindranath Tagore had written songs for any and every occasion - this one's inclusive.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The song that I'm talking about is - "Ami tomar preme hobo shobar kolongko bhaagi" ! Now does that ring a bell?

I know this is a very square form of expressing my thoughts, but what can I say - the similarities actuate me into doing this!

P.S. - With all due respect, I am too slight to offend Mr. Rabindranath Tagore or his creations. He was, is and always will be the iconic legend and the heart-favorite of all Bongs :))

Happiness - Its all there in the mind

"Pujo te ar matro 1.5 maash baki!" - "Ajke ekta bhishon long awaited movie dekhte jabo bondhuder sathe!" - "Pujo shopping, yippee!!"

--- Do these thoughts not arouse a sense of acute happiness within you?? For me it works like wonder. Just a thought and everything around seems to frolic along with you. How very truly do they speak when they say - "its all there in the mind".

Have you ever noticed, that its when you are anticipating the good things, is when you feel happy the most? It feels as if something inexplicable is about to happen. Something wondrous, something that is about to change your life.

The thing usually turns out to be a small thing [:P], yes, but the impact is great, nonetheless.

This has happened time and again, but today it happened to make me feel it happening.

Previsioning an event with great positivity and looking forward to it with a greater passion, is what makes an event so special - so unforgettable.

Yesterday morning a friend called me up and said "I'm in kolkata at the moment, when can we meet?". And thus a meet was planned. 3 people based out of different places came together today morning. One from Delhi, one from Patna and myself from Poshchimbongo (as of now).

I hadn't seen them for a very long time and all day, yesterday, I was more than happy about the plan. However, when it finally happened, it lasted for a seemingly short time.The nostalgia never got time to build up. There was so much to talk about, as if on the last day of semester exams and the day just before the semester break began, that the emotion, of not having seen each other in this tenure, never sank in.

Now that its done and over with, I can't help but recall and then recall again, today morning - and of course feel queerly (no pun intended) happy about it and smile all by myself :))