A note to myself

I wake up everyday asking myself one simple question to myself. This last week i have been asking the same question more times than i do normally. Do I really believe that one fine day i am going to live in a world that was not given to me but rather the one that i would create for myself? A world that i create, carve out, etch out, inch by inch from my dreams, my passion and my desires. Living every second of my present by thinking what my world in the future is going to be. What i want my world in the future to be. Looking around and looking at my past, i see a lot of ‘should haves’ . I should have studied harder, should have practiced more, should have worked more, should have done this , should have done that. So many should haves. Perhaps my present is one should have i am not letting go of now. I am living my present the way iam living hoping that it doesnt become another ‘should have’. 

It’s a battle. One that we fight not only on the outside but on the inside. The fear of failure. The fear of strife. The fear of struggle. All throughout man’s evolution, everything has evolved purely based on the basic need to lead a easier life. Our basic DNA itself is structured on the fact that we want things to be easier. Fire, weapons, clothing, technology...all of it from the need for things to be easier. So battling the most primal urge in ourselves;to make things easy is not a very easy choice nor an easy action. We are programmed to take the easier option out in life. Overcoming that to fight for what is needed rather than what is easily possible is the biggest internal fight. Then comes the external fight. Fighting the naysayers, the dream breakers, the family members who go tut-tutting your ideas, your passion. Sure, they are looking out for you. They want you to live the life in the world that they imagine for you.  They think they know whats best for you and they may be right or wrong. But the only proven fact is that they are being selfish.  

Doing what is easy is very easy. Stand in the sidelines and peer from the crowd at the one guy who is standing in the middle doing the things that you wish you had done. Or you get in the middle of the ring. If you keep looking at yourself as a victim of fate, judging yourself by what you are currently going through, the situation that you are currently in, then you are wrong. Because winners win and losers lose. But only people who try can win. People who dont try have already lost. 

Take any major goal that you have. Or one that you are already working on. You have experienced a lot of  setbacks, major disappointments, many failures. Maybe you have already given up. Maybe you have already decided that you are a failure. Maybe all you need is a little push, a word of encouragement. There are winners and there are losers. And there are people who are yet to discover what it is to win. Going after your dream is not important, it is necessary. I want you to hold on. If you quit, its not going to happen.  It may not happen at the time you think its going to happen.  If you quit, if you stop, if you do not continue , you would not make it happen. When i started i kept a target. It didnt happen then. I changed my deadline. It didnt happen then also. It may not happen now, 6 months from now, a year from now, ten years from now. But i know it will be a reality. Because i am working at it. I know that this thing is going to work. I have been reborn twice in my life already. I will die how many more times it takes for me to make my dream possible. Because each time i will have evolved. I will rise again. I will make what my dream is a reality because i have seen it. I have lived it. Now its all upto me to make it happen. 

How to make Monday more interesting

I write this on a weekend. It goes about to show as to how much the impending  Monday morning blues have affected me over my long( it isn't really, just a decade long, but it feels that way) career. So with my experience of working in multiple organizations and in running multiple organizations, I decided it's time to share some of the things I do, to make Monday seem interesting.

Step 1: Start early

The best thing to do when facing hell is to face it earlier. I always tend to make it to office a bit earlier on Mondays than any other days. This prepares you for the shit that happens the rest of the day. It wont make it any easier and sometimes you will feel like you preempted your own suffering but its better to get it over with. It also gives you enough time to prepare to make someone else's Monday worse than yours. Revenge is best not served cold or hot but in magnitude and multitude. So lets go out and spread the love and the hate. Think of innovative and intricate ways to increase the fan base for Monday haters. I do this too.

Step 2: Start earlier

I start even earlier. I start work on a Sunday. That way, it doesn't look like any different from the normal routine of a weekday. Also, It is much more peaceful and quite on a Sunday and you can get some work done without any distractions, delays or deliberations with your colleagues. And you can sit back on a Sunday, no stuffy clothes.. i mean formal clothes, you still have to wear something to office.

Step 3: Create a crisis

There is nothing more fun and more productive than a crisis. Trust me. You can check it out yourself. Look at the various times you have seen your office security guards moving about idly, chatting around and basically looking like they have a jolly life. It may or may not be true but the perception is what i am talking about here. Now look at the same guards when there is a crisis, say a fire, or a blown fuse or even something as mundane as changing the light bulb in the parking area overhead light. They are a buzz of energy and activity. Transform this to every department inside your office. Just think of how a crisis can make people more active and more efficient and just more fun to hang out with. So do something. Start a fire, no no not literally, we wouldn't want to get arrested for Arson would we? Create micro crisis on a Monday and just enjoy the pandemonium that unfolds.

Step 4: Create gossip

Before you naysayers start belittling me for suggesting something like this...hold on. Whatever said and done, rumors are going to be there around the office. Even God got to know about Eve and the apple through the grapevine..or some other equally reliable sources. People are always creating something new. We are basically very creative people and we need to release our creative juices or otherwise we implode. So for those people who are not in a creative industry, say like the news media or the PM's office, you need to start telling creative tales a.k.a gossip to relieve yourself. And its good fun. Trust me. Wouldn't it be great to hear about how Mani watchman was seen with Gokila madam from Accounting in Sardar theatre on Saturday night? although Mani may be a seventy year old man with partial hearing and fully blind and Gokila madam was in Cherrapunji eating kanji.

Step 5: Dont do any productive work

This may or may not be different from what you normally do on the other days. If normally you manage to give like 3 or 4 hours of productivity, do one thing or rather dont do any thing. Stop working on Monday. Dont do any work on monday. Go through the motions. What is the point in doing work on Monday and getting screwed over however good or bad the work is. Stop it. Stop working.

Step 6: Dont go to office.

This isnt anything new to offer, because all of us have done this at some point or the other. Monday is the day when our grandmom,(may god rest her soul) died for the 4th time that year, when your bike had an accident and it would take the entire day of Monday to rectify it, when you fell down in your bathroom and wouldnt be able to come to office as it is too serious for working on monday but should be alright to coming in on a tuesday, when you suffer from very high fever, a result of rubbing onion on your forehead and dipping the thermometer in tea. So work on your creativity and come up with the best excuses this side of the globe. Just imagine, you have decided not to work but your manager may be working. It is your duty to make his day better. Give him a good reason to laugh. Make it as wacky as possible.

Step 7: Stop reading this.

Thats it. The post is done. Stop reading it....no more ideas here. Please feel free to add any suggestions as comments. I am planning to publish this as a book if I get enough ideas. Facebook also promised me one cent if anybody shares this on their wall. I shall give you a mention in my speech to the bank manager on the people that i fooled to make my fortune. Good day folks. 

Tackling grey hair

Last week, something monumental happened. At least it was monumental for me. My wife discovered my first grey hair. It was pretty upsetting for me. Even more upsetting was the victory dance done by her around the house, tom-tomming and chest-thumping for a good solid 10 minutes. She looked something like this.

I was in doubt whether she was right. I was hoping that her eyes were blinded by jealousy. She has been behind me telling that I need to act my age and stuff for quite some time. I had always come back with the smart reply that I am indeed acting my age-that of a teenager. So when I met some close friends over the weekend I asked them to check out if indeed the improbable had happened. That perhaps I was turning old.
They confirmed. I wanted to just shrug of their comments because one of them is recently going through a clean shaved look and the other spends time on dyeing her hair once every couple of months.


But the inevitable cant be delayed forever however much the heart wants it. I am turning old. For 29 years( yeah i am 29 years old although i dont look that old, i hope) i had survived all symptoms of hair problems that seems to plague all my peers. I know of my colleagues and juniors who started having white hairs at a very young age and some people who had an early onset of Male pattern baldness even before their first paycheque.

Which one is you ?

I had thought i had slipped through the net of problems all my fellow mates have got caught in and that i would forever remain in the dark and (slightly at least) handsome mysterious stranger look. Alas I guess that I can no longer remain in that way.

This was how i used to look

Which brings me to the next big question on my mind. All through my growing up i had always said that the day i have a white hair or show signs of balding i would either completely dye it white or go bruce-willis style completely. Now my mom who has been for years warning me about my shampoos and conditioners and gels and creams is finally calling my bluff. She is asking which of these am I going to do.

Can you try on this 

I tried opening up a couple of photos and see how it will look either white or totally bald. But not able to do much on photoshop or in paint. Does anyone know how to go about doing it...Please do that and send it across.I need to call my mom's bluff, one way or the other.

But on another note. It is an end of an era. Now i join the ranks of the greyed and the wise. Not that i was not earlier. But this is a very emotional period for you. I now sink beneath gloom and despair brought about by age and experience and can be consoled only by ablutions of material gifts. So please shower your gifts upon this old and tired person...make him feel young and renew his energy with gifts aplenty.

(Cash and credit card also accepted)