“SUCCESS”

How is it measured?
How does one know if one is successful or not?
What lengths will one go to, to achieve it?
What kinds of compromises are involved?

Really, how is success generally measured? We usually measure it in terms of money. If the occupation we are in returns money enough just for sustenance, it’s not really a great success. But if we earn enough to buy a car, shop extensively on weekends and pamper the taste-buds with ‘Fresh Pizza’…it may be called ‘SUCCESS’.

Everybody wants to be successful at the end of any given endeavour. Nobody willingly embraces failure. People forget hunger, thirst, sleep, leisure, family, lovers, friends, duties, countrymen, compassion, entertainment, movies, music, passions, hobbies, sport, health, life, breath, holidays, travel, meditation, parents, God…everything! Most importantly, they forget who they themselves are! This is too big a price to pay for ‘success’. To become happy in the FUTURE, we become unhappy in the present!

What I am arriving at is that, ‘Success’ has to be redefined. There are thousands of ‘successful’ people in the world outside…but how many of them are really ‘happy’???

For me, success means being happy in the present. What does it mean for you?

Slow down, You move too fast...

Why are we all running?
Do we know that we ARE running?
Is running important at all?

I just happened to get this flash of thought the other day.
Our life is like driving from point ‘a’ to destination ‘b’. We all have our own chosen destinations. Usually we start from the highway at full throttle speed! Why at such great speed, do you ask? I don’t know. Nobody does. We can overtake other vehicles on the highway, cut lanes. But when we reach a red signal, all the vehicles stop. They must. Else they will be fined. Big, small, new, old, indigenous, foreign-made, diesel or petrol…everyone must stop and then start the journey again together.
Then what was the purpose of shooting from the highway at break-neck speed, draw the wrath and bad-will of vehicles we have dangerously overtaken or honked endlessly at? Ultimately, even we had to obey the rules by stopping at a red signal; and red signals are predestined! Then could we have taken it a little easy on ourselves and on other vehicles? Could we have enjoyed the journey by going slow? It’s not just important that we reached the destination. It’s ‘HOW’ we reached there which matters! Are we smiling at the end of it?

Don't blame me if you die laughing...

Do this when u go online
Google home page
Language tools ka button (to the right)
Type “my mom is nice and cool”
Translate from English to Spanish
Then copy this translated sentence in to box again
Say translate from Spanish to English this time
See what happens

Leave a comment if you are alive.

The SCARIEST sight in Mumbai...

Do you know what it is?

A group of 3-4 BMC workers preparing to dig ONE more strip of land which looks relatively 'flat'.

This reminds me of a very funny SMS I'd received:

Idhar khuda hai

Udhar khuda hai

Jahaan dekho khuda hi khuda hai

Jahaan aaj khuda nahin hai

...wahaan kal khudega

Exactly 9 years ago, I picked up the guitar for the first time! This snap is from Smt. Lata Mangeshkar's show in Mumbai in 2001. You can see me in the farthest left side of the snap :))
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Isn't the sculpture very unique? This is Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad.
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Mommy, look WHAT I found!!

These make me cry...

• Soldiers
  
• The National Anthem
  
• Hariharan’s voice
  
• Innocence
  
• Love stories
  
• Black- the film
  
• Truth and sincerity
  
• Onions
  
• Remixes
  
• Meditation
  
• Mallika Sherawat
  
• “I love you”-the three golden words
  
• Violins
  
• Live chamber orchestra playing in sync
  
• Love
  
• Longing
  
• Surrender
  
• Letting go
  
• Knowledge

Not necessarily in that order…

Un-holi hai!!!

On a beautiful Holi morning, I and my mother were walking towards our car in the building premises itself. Suddenly a bucket of water splashed on my mother's head which was hurled from the fourth floor of our building (she is 61 years of age)! She was furious. I dashed a letter off to the secretary. I have always been protesting against such kind of celebrations where a celebration for one could become a punishment for life for someone else!
I am only 24 years of age and I am not really counted among the mature people of the colony! :) Still, the letter was read out in the committee meeting and action has been taken. There is a notice put up on the notice board saying that as a rule, nobody can be dragged into a festival without consent!
Two days of my life were utterly wasted in frustration witnessing the stupidity of people around me. My mother kept telling me to give up my protests and accept the situation. But my persistence paid off. And I am glad.
So, people, even if you are fighting for a really really small cause, don't give up if you strongly believe in it. Eventually justice prevails! Yayyyy!

Modern, eh?

I simply HATE (Aaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh) the sight of movie posters which have people (usually a man and a woman...or two!) making out like sexually deprived animals. Tongue in another's mouth, hand on cleavage (on one's own or someone else's), half-naked woman draped in white sheet etc. It's all over the street walls and hoardings of Mumbai. Am sure it's all over the country as well. The point is that all of a sudden our 'socially responsible' and 'sexually liberated' film-makers and their loyal actresses have decided to 'educate' stupid Indians like us about 'sex'. Boom!! It's everywhere. On T.V. serials, in talk shows (ever seen Pooja Bedi interviewing people on Zoom? Watch it.) and in movies. Kids ranging from 3 years of age till 15...young adults from 16 to 21...old uncles above 55...everybody are taking in the SAME kind of 'education'! The kids are wondering, "Why attend some boring sex-education seminar in school, when I can get a CD of 'Julie' or 'Fun'?" It's scary.
There is this whole bunch of models that think showing off the 'six-pack' and the perfect chest is sexy and cool. Where are the 'actors'?? Om Puri, Ajay Devgan, Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjiv Kapur, Rani Mukherji, SRK, Kajol, Madhuri Dixit, Shabana Azmi hardly have bodies to die for! But that's the point. If you can act well, you don’t need a great worked-out body...if you still have it, great! But but but if you have an amazing body and you can't act to save your life, then it's not working for me!
There's more to come.
Now, replicas of Mallika Sherawat walk openly on the road too. Jeans which begin below the navel and tops which end above it. I never knew showing off one's underwear was so cool!
Where are these people heading for? Is this exercising freedom? Is this being Modern?
'Modern'.
The synonyms of the word are: 'Contemporary', 'Recent', 'Current', and 'New', 'Fresh'.
Is Mallika Sherawat 'Modern'?
Is Imran Hashmi 'Modern'?
What about Celina Jaitley, Isha Koppikar, Amrita Arora, Neha Dhupia, Meghana Naidu, Udita Goswami, Aryan Vaid et al?
Does it involve being modern in the head or being dressed in the least of clothes?
With every 'freedom' comes a 'responsibility'. Who is taking the responsibility of the young minds? Is looking great everything? Is sex the ultimate goal of life? Can there be no entertainment without anything being sexually suggestive?
Our ancestors started out their life without clothes. They used to be naked. But hey, they had fur on their body. Then as evolution took its toll, the fur reduced and then people had to at least cover their 'privates' for fear of injury and protection from the climatic conditions. Then as they became more 'Modern' and 'civilized' they started wearing more clothes which were very basic in nature but it used to protect the 'furless' skin very well. Then clothing became more utilitarian and it was used by everybody except tribes (no, not Mallika Sherawat). Then the fashion designers came. Then 'another kind' of fashion designers came. And they ruined everything. I suspect we are going to grow fur again. Going by the rate at which people are shedding their clothes without any inhibitions, we are not 'modern'; in fact we are going back to our primitive roots.
Somebody stop this bullshit!!!
Disclaimer: These are my personal views. I don't wish to educate anybody nor get into any kind of debate! :))

My days in Jail---Daisy

There was a white girl in the lot. Daisy was her name. She stood out from the rest not only because she was white, but also because she was very beautiful. Neatly dressed in a jumper, track pants and pleated hair, she was always one of the early birds for the morning exercise sessions. I and Vandana were totally taken in by her beauty and her intelligence. She said she knew most of the asanas and it was apparent. One day, we decided to ask the jailer about Daisy. The jailer said she has been in the jail from the past 3 years! And now her age in about twenty...that means she came in when she was seventeen...we thought, "What kind of crime would anybody like Daisy; that too at a tender age of seventeen, commit?" She came in with 20 kg of brown sugar, it seems. Daisy??? I couldn't believe it! She and many foreigners like her are under trial for the same crime. But foreign nationals don't have any sort of bail plea in courts. For the next two days that we went there, we were still reeling from the shocking reality about Daisy.
She was British. Grey eyes, amazing figure and a very captivating smile. Looking in her eyes one could not imagine she could do anything like she did. Finally after the meditation one day, we mustered the courage to ask her why she had come in here. She said that she had been framed by some Israeli friend of hers. It was not her fault. Our minds anyway didn't want to believe what the jailer had been telling us.

250 female undertrials
50 kids below ten years of age
2 barracks
1 woman/ 18sq.ft area
6 toilets
7:30AM breakfast
9:00AM lunch
5:00PM gates close no movement outside
200sq.ft patch of sky
365 days a year
1 dream


Continued: Next week-> Ashwini

Location: Pavement in front of Furtado’s Music, Opp. Metro Cinema, South Mumbai.
Time: 11:30 A.M.
Weather: Really hot

A mixed group of around 12-15 people comprising of young and old of various socio-economic backgrounds, stand surrounding a young man in his 20's who is lying unconscious on the ground. He is experiencing an epileptic seizure with hands and legs flying out randomly without any control or co-ordination. None knew what to do. But then an old Parsi lady came out and told the people, "He's having a fit. He'll need to be hospitalized. I am a nurse...I know he will have to be taken to the hospital!" Nobody moved. Nobody had an idea about what exactly should be done. And then, a man in his late 30's stepped ahead and he said, "Place a bunch of keys in his palm." He was exactly what the dabbawallahs of Mumbai look like...a 'ghaati'. The nurse mocked at him angrily saying, "How do you think THAT is going to work?!" A shopkeeper from the adjacent Bombay Sports shop ran inside and emerged with a dumbbell and a huge bunch of keys and gave them to the 'ghaati'. He knelt down and then placed the keys in one palm and the dumbbell in the other. And the seizure stopped there and then. Immediately. And the crowd dispersed. The nurse went away, perhaps wondering about what she learnt about medicine all these years...they never taught her anything like this! I walked in complete awe, humbled by the 'ghaati' man's presence of mind and strong faith in simple remedies.

Can we really feel 'intelligent' and smart just because we have education?

The one thing that haunts people after they are 25...
That one thing that becomes a nightmare for actors and models...
The theme of ALL 'Santoor soap' commercials...
The 'irreversible'...
That is AGING :)

We are ALWAYS aging no matter what age we are. And along with wrinkles, age brings with it a lot of other unwanted and unnecessary baggage. Haven't we noticed that as people start growing up, they become less spontaneous, less enthusiastic and the biggest of them being that they smile a lot less. I can notice the change that I am going through. Today I have many more insecurities in my head than what I had two years ago! And someone said that age brings wisdom with it! The more we experience in life, the more cautious we become...rather we become over-cautious. And that’s how we lose our spontaneity. As we grow up, we also begin relying on our intellect more than on a gut feeling. We tend to meticulously calculate everything before making the smallest of decisions.
Somehow we begin to need reasons for everything! "Why this?" "Why not that?" etc.
So, do we actually become more vulnerable with age? It is something to seriously think about.

"Age is a matter of the mind...so if you don’t mind, it does not matter!"

MY quotes!

"Insanity when contained in an Artist is called Genius".

"I am Unique...just like everyone else!"

Corny Lines ;)

For Cordless Phones:

"Can also be used for making calls"

For Chocolate Bars:

"Can also be eaten directly from the wrapper"

For Satin Scarves:

"Can also be used as an accessory by putting around the shoulders"

These two lines are the most beautiful I have ever come across:

"Who will take care of this world
Asked the setting sun
I will try my Best
Said the earthern lamp"

~Rabindranath Tagore

'Depression' is a pretty depressing state to be in. And at some point in time, all of us have visited it...or more precisely, IT has visited us. Unfortunately, many of us don't even know when we go into depression, leave alone fighting it off. There was a patch in my life where I was in acute depression for more than six months. I was alright in the morning, used to start crying suddenly at noon. Shopping used to boost my spirits for evening and by night time I was suicidal. This cycle continued without an exception of a day for six long months. It reached its peak one day when I wanted to end my life...full and final. I just did not want to breathe anymore. My family decided to take me to a psychologist for counselling. But I knew how 'dry' psychologists normally are. For them, it would've been just another 'case'.
At that time, a friend of mine suggested that I do an 'Art of Living' basic course. Somehow I knew from within that this was my rescue call. And it turned out to be more than what I imagined. It put a smile on my face again...forever. The key lies in the right way to breathe and a different attitude towards life and its events.
So, readers, if you are depressed yourself or if you know someone who is depressed, make them do the course! Use force, blackmail, cajoling, threats...whatever it takes!! And enjoy life.

Breaking News!!!

New mountains are coming up in the middle of Mumbai city! The growth of these 'mountains' is quite apparent along patches of the Western Express Highway, and rail-tracks along Mahim and Andheri.

The mountains are unique in their formation because they are not made up of any kind of rock or stone. And this may be the very first time in the history of our planet that such mountains are coming up in the heart of a metropolis.

Also, these mountains are entirely man-made...they are formed of Human Shit.

It is said that when society undergoes change, music is affected the last. And music literally reflects the culture of a society.
Remixes.
Firstly, I refuse to call it music! But in its raw form, it was music sometime. I also refuse to call ‘remixers’ as artists/composers/musicians. An artist is a communicator. She/he expresses what is close to her/his heart, in a creative way. A composer is a person who writes songs which are HIS OWN. So, where do REMIXERS fit in these categories?
Some years back Shankar Mahadevan, Ranjit Barot and Taufiq Qureshi presented a different version of S.D. Burman’s “Teri Bindiya Re” from the film ‘Abhimaan’. It was simply beautiful. Now a few points to be noted here:
· He does not mint money by using his own version of the song
· He always gives due credit to the original composer
· He does not sell the song using Deepal/Shefali in the video
· He composes brilliant stuff himself
· He is a great musician
· He is a true artist

What is the big deal in remixing ‘Kaanta Laga’? Did the REMIXER think of the original tune himself? Did he tell the original singer the nuances of the song?
Composing a brilliant song out of NOTHING is creative. Borrowing/stealing an already well-liked song and adding preset rhythm patterns to it is NOT creative!

Fortunately, industry say that remixes will go away as fast as they came. J

Thank God!

There’s a story in Indian mythology which goes like this: One day, one of the Pandavas, the Great Yudhishthir arrived in Yama’s court (Yama is the God of Death). On his arrival, Yama asked him, “Tell me, what’s the most astonishing thing that you saw on Earth?” Yudhishthir said, “The most astonishing thing I noticed on Earth was that people are surrounded by instances of death…their own kinsmen or strangers…but they always think that they themselves will never die! Death is always thought of something that will happen to someone else.”

Have WE given a thought to our own death? It will come for sure. Somewhere, sometime, someway…it will come.