Think Beyond Present!!!!

What happens when you dont pursue your dreams? You feel like a loser....not once but many a times. Life sucks even more when u settle for the commonplace careers or those which everyone pursue or for that matter those which never interest you.

I dreamt of a life full of music, a life where i could entertain. Not that i have turned 65 and i cannot do that any longer but somehow everytime i look beyond i see a an obvious pattern my life will follow. A pattern that scares me. Fortunately or unfortunately, the so called 'second generation planning' that the old man talks about is an inherent quality inside individuals. In fact it comes too easy. I say this because the easiest thing for a human is to settle for alternatives. We conveniently percieve the environment to be changing so that we could happily change all the time.

I always wanted to be a DJ....now donn u laff....but its true. I still love mixing tracks and i am letting this out the first time. But i have mixed plenty....not that great but i have tried to in my own way and i do know that i wud hav made a good one....a DJ that is. It was really about me identifying my core competencies, and i know that i have a sense for music. Music turns me on. Listening and jiviing to good music is probably more orgasmic than an orgasm itself.

I still wish that probably 10 ears down the lane i am doiing some thing in the field of music. I dont want name or fame i just want to if possible gloss a piece of the dream with my colors of reality....and even a piece of it wud do.

MARKETING: WHATS WRONG WITH THE FEEL GOOD FACTOR

this happened yesterday....after days and days of pondering i finally coaxed myself....i went for a haircut. i went to this saloon opposite to somaiya. "kaise ho bhaiyya, aate hi nahi baal katvaane", said the guy who had cut my hair always at the shop. interestingly, as far as i remember...since i arrived at somaiya i had always gone to him for a haircut and yet somehow he always told me the same thing when he saw me....strange!!. anyways i offered him the head telling him indirectly.." dood its all urs....do whatever u want....but just to see it....that the gals are able to bare me when i am around them..". He smirked and went sik-sik-sak-sik-sak-sak. The best part about good saloons is that there is some good music that plays..and then came apna himesh bhaiyya singing away his nose for some promos of his new movie called karz. He definitely owes something to the whole indian public for singing so awful and extending his monotony of songs all thru....the funniest part of the promo tho was " be a part of the most successful album of the year by the most talented musician of india- Himesh Reshammiya- but cassestes and Cds on bony rmg audio"...what followed was an interesting comment by the guy cutting my hair(i donn like the word barber.....i think it degrades the profession)...he said " kya karte rehte hain yeh log..kuch bhi chicken masala dalke bol dete hain...aur dimaag ka bheja fry kar dete hain...asia kaise ho sakta hai ki is chachundar ka gaana itna hit ho jaaye jabki mujik niklake 20 din bhi nahi
hua".....this set me thinking....how far can a company go to sell its product.

competition really is so fierce today that marketers go any length to woo the customer. is marketing all about gimmicks and lies? can we use the word honest and marketing in the same sentence? if u ask my opinion i would really take a middle stand (thank god for inventing a word neutral...its the safest and easiest word to use). i believe that a marketer is selling happiness to the customer and not the products really. hes just trying to magnify the attributes in front of the eyes of the consumer by telling him/her that dood u will never feel sad with this product. whats wrong in that. donn we pray to god to feel better in bad times despite the fact that we are not sure abt his existence.similarly a marketing campaign is just like that...it creates a feel good factor....but at least it makes u feel good unlike so many things in life...

Laughter Shows: Tickling the funny bone or rubbing it in too hard????

Lets admit it...Indians by far are the most shy people on this planet....there is notning wrong in it...but the problem is that we euphemistically term the same condition as being humble and down to earth and sadly are proud of it. We rarely speak up for ourselves, we rarely take our decisions ourselves and we rarely are completely confident of what we are doing. I am sorry if i sound harsh....and oh!!....you must be wondering what all this serious stuff has to to with laughter
shows...well the same applies to our sense of humour. We never let ourselves loose, laugh our guts out....we dont laugh at ourselves fo that matter....

When the Laughter shows came in...the revolutionary great indian laughter challenge...it was like a sigh of relief from the ksob ksob...kboohooo serials (u know which ones i am talking about...kat kleast know) .....dads stressed from office work would laff their guts off....children for a while wonder if they had entered the right door when entering home. moms after heavy cooking sessions...smile instead of frown and crib....and of course the mood shows in the taste of the food as well...children wonder whether the food was ordered from a 5 star. Raju shrivastav becomes the hero along with sunil pal, instead of tulsi and parvati (they are the heroes of their serials....and gender doesnt matter). Gajodhar is your moms favourite actor on screen....and not apna paaji...dharmender.
Of course...who can forget Mr. Nav-joke Sidhu...he cud laff off his bowels on a PJ.
happy Happy story....Indians are back...so is their sense of humour...now Mr. Jignesh Bhai goes to his office and shares the jokes with his colleagues everyday....and Mrs. jamuna ben is the best joke cracker at her kitty parties. Ghar pe happy...TRPs are zappy...Channels wale bhi happy. Now what happens next....

Thanks to cable TV...we have about 100 channels today and thanks to technology we have a remote control. So what do we do...Switch..Switch....Switch.....Switch....Switch....next family member.....Switch..Switch....Switch.....Switch....Switch....this goes on. This is ok...manageable. Now the day the first season ended..laughter challenge ka....Bony TV comes up with its version....so does KEE tv...and then the list goes on and on. Now this is a serious point.....News channels have become junk and nothing else...and the Junk leader is Parso Tak...followed by Kee News and Tar news. Can one imagine news channels showing clips of comedy shows in their normal air time. Hum hain Naa. Now Mr. Jignesh watches s comedy show every half an hour....hes gettin bored....the joke cracked is the same that came 2 weeks back (he remembers the episode number too). Mrs. jamuna ben is no longer the best joke cracker...women now think she is a nut cracker. The children get normal food to eat.

Too much of a dose is harmful. Today channels capitalise on success by thinking short term. Short Idea Life Cycles kill a concept. The Indian consumer is wise and does not take shit anymore.

Do we live for ourselves today???????

Before i really get to the subject which i guess is a lil serious, i was wondering as to how come every coin has two sides, every subject can be looked at from various perspectives and so many schools of thought for every matter under the sun. Wish things could be looked at with just one view....things wud have been simpler....but then the other school of thought is.....see see...i told u....anyways the main issue...before i start , i wud apologise for the complexity of the below written materiall.....i am not a psycho....i swear..

i believe somehow that all of us today hav become complex humans. We do not think simple...and do not live simple either. i guess this article is an evidence to that. we live very insecurely today. There is a high sense of consciousness when with peers and friends. The way we eat, talk and move around is all calculative. All the time we are worried by the fact that the people around you probably think you are an ass of the highest order. Hence you become conscious and lose your own self. You try and become a different individual, trying to impress others all the time. in this process you tend to look down upon people whom in real you are actually scared off.

My favouritessssttt quote somehow happens to be from a bollywood movie called Bawarchi where rajesh khanna says-" Its so simple to be happy but its so difficult to be simple".

All of us somewhere have become arrogant, lost our humility and lost the need to respect people. All this really comes from the immense pressures we face in our daily lives. The competition with peers, the expectations of elders. but the real individual is that who retains his self in turbulent times. Alas! thats not the case today............we dont live for ourselves anymore.....

A Day in the Life of Alibaug....and Us

Entry long pending....better late than never and also this blog wud have been incomplete without this entry. Our trip to alibaug on independence day. from goa to mahabaleshwar....and from lonavala to matheran....we planned it all and settled for nothing less than alibaug ;). They say the ferry is the best way to reach alibaug but we defied the ordinary and set out in a qualis....6 pirates of IB and....it took us 5 hours to cover a 2 hour journey(cos we held the bull by its tail) and believe me it was worth it. The journey till alibaug was ausum....it was pouring....we got stuck up in a huge jam for an hour and reached alibaug when almost all the eateries except one had closed shop. But we sang, we cribbed, we gossiped and bhala, our entertainer remixed every possible song his way. We ate in the best chinese restaurant in alibaug which was on four wheels. Funny it may sound but we had the tastiest noodles and soup that day (evidence: all of us had sound bowels the next day).

We found a hotel room....each had his own bed to sleep on .....luckily. We gossiped and did all the bakchodi and finally managed to sleep. In the morning we checked out and first hit the alibaug beach....had bhutta. We cudnt dive in cos the water had come in due to a high tide. So we set out to the next closest one called Vasai. "Green and clean"...."Made in Heaven"....these tags were probably inspired by such places. We took snaps till eternity, hung on trees like monkeys....and bent a few as u see in the snaps.

We then went to Kashiv beach. The sea was beautiful. We lazed around, had maggi and eggs and finally we took the big plunge (hehehe....into the sea). After almost an hour of masti and exposing we gave up and got back into the qualis to visit the Janjira fort.

To our dismay, all ferry services had been on the occasion of independence day. We visually conquered the fort and left to a so called waterfall in the inners of alibaug.

For me the journey to the waterfall was as splendid as the waterfall. My pirate buddies would agree to that. All of us were in awe of the place after we reached it walking through jungles. The snaps say it all.

We left the place with happy hearts and with the satisfaction that we had covered a lot in a day but there was action to come.

We drove back to Alibaug beach as we were told that the waters wud reced in the evening and that we cud go to the alibaug fort on the khachars(a young horsey).

What caught us by surprise was the level of amount of recession. The water had receded back by almost half a kilometer. And the best part....instead of khachars we actually waded thru the waters ourselves...water knee deep...to reach the fort. We came back feeling proud of ourselves. We had conquered alibaug like noone had....after all we....my friends were the pirates.....OF ALIBAUG

Innocence Lost

No real deep thoughts into this one except the simple fact that in order to gain something people lose something. People dont think twice before venting out anger and regret it afterwards. Anger never puts things to an end, it just aggravates the pain. However idealistic it sounds...its true. Bhashan over....thank you :)

INNOCENCE LOST

the smoke rises in her eyes,
relentless, unwilling to die down,
the days pass by, life moves on,
and yet the fire rages like it started afresh

she tries not to show it,
alas! shes doesnt know it cant hide,
she wishes the smoke turns to water,
but the fire burns on.

a feeling of quandary,
to let go off the rage in her or not,
the urge to avenge overpowering her humanity,
and she does nothing about it

the rendezvous finally happens,
the wait finally over,
she lets out the fumes of anger,
she tells him what she feels

as she walks back,
she feels free, she feels alive,
somewhere though she still feels sad,
that she reacted like everyone does,
had she defeated the whole purpose?

V.V.VIKRAM

Experiences in a troika: A tribute to the Biharis

When it happened twice i just kept it to myself and pondered but when it happened the third time, i decided to blog. These experiences are worth mentioning as they move you in a way. You feel sad and proud at the same time about that one state of india- Bihar.

I have traveled many times in the great troikas of Mumbai. More amusing than the rides has been the experience chatting with the drivers. Mumbai is full of Biharis. Low levels of income, education and infrastructure has driven many of them to come to mumbai to earn a living....in short to meet the two ends meet, barely.

Everytime i have travelled in the auto, its a Bihari babu who rides me to my destination and its fun talking to them. But then when they go into the details of their lives (which they always do) u think for a moment about how lucky u have been.

Three instances, and its like the same story is being narrated by three different people. Believe it or not, all the auto drivers from Bihar that i have met have been graduates (Hum BA kiya hoon sirji....thats what they say). All of them have been forced to pursue a career which they never ever wanted.

Ask them the reason for doing so....

1. Ab kaa batayen aapko. BA hindi kiya hoon lekin bihar mein kahan job milta hai humko. Meri do badi behen hai. Dono ki shaadi nahi hui. Pichle 4 saal se auto chala ke paise bhejta hoon. Ab jaake ek behen ka dahej de paoonga.

2. Metric paas hoon sirji. Aaap belieb nahin karenge par sach bolte hain hum. Apni iskool ke topper reh chuke hai. 87% aaya hai humko metric mein. Hamare bapu nahi padhne diye humein. aana padha idhar. shaadi kar liye abhi. aur aaga kya padhenge

3. Graduate hoon main sirji. LIC agent tha. Paise hai hi nahi usme. Bihar mein paisa deke job milta hai. Haraam ki kamai hai woh. Hum nahi kar sakte. Usse achha tho auto hai sirji.

I am always taken aback by these comments. I manage to mumble a few words like... aage padhna hai bhaiyya....important hai (not knowing what was the hindi word for important). They smile and nod.

I have always respected every state for what it is. But the saddest part is this: I can understand if a state is short of funds and cannot provide higher education, but i cannot somehow accept a state not respecting a citizens graduate degree by not providing him the encouragement and forcing him to take up a job less that what his calibre can match.

I salute the Bihari of india today who is true in what he does and what he says and believes in dignity of labour. They think beyond themselves and that is true spirit.