School friends!

Life is all about the present. The presents you have, making it worth it, breathing in and out. One such present is your school friends. You could have their faint, half-forgotten images in your mind, with a couple of year old frame of references and then you are just stunned and amazed by the fact that they've changed so much. Suddenly all your senses are alert trying to recollect how they were and constantly sinking in the fact that this is who they are now. Sometimes the child in you wants to fight with the clock trying to make it tick backwards but all you can do is order a couple of drinks and hangout with these old friends and revive those times which made us stick around in the first place. The time gap hardly matters. Whether it’s been a few months or a few years, it’s the present which makes you happy. That very moment, you realize THIS is friendship. You behave as if there has been no void. Even if you feel it the questions and conversations are enough to fill them up. Jumping from one topic to another like the blithely flying migrating birds, the bliss of catching up is beyond these walls of words. And then the topic of discussion is about you and you realize that all this while when you were comparing the present and the past of your friends they were busy doing the same thing. You realize how you’ve evolved and how circumstances have led you to be who you are, as your friends ask you whether you still do this or that which probably you might have forgotten yourself. You realize how you were paying little attention to yourself in your busy life while your friends act as your mirror reminding you of those little moments which mattered to them the most about you. It’s funny how we think and act in one direction while your friends discover the whole new side of you. Yeah! After all this while school friends are still precious. They are still your presents!

living life to the fullest!

A lot of weird things happened today that threw me into a stack of realizations not only changing the way I am looking at my life today but also what I would choose to do next.  It’s funny how you always remember things in theory but forget them to apply in practice. I’ve always felt this self-constructed pressure on myself for a range of things I choose to pursue and I don’t know why. I’ve always known to enjoy life every moment (in theory) and make the most of it without actually realizing that I might have missed a whole lot of sides to my life which I could have attempted successfully or unsuccessfully just for the sheer pleasure of pursuing them. As confusing as this previous line could be I myself am appalled by the fact that there are so many things I wish I would have done in the past but left it as I was afraid of failure. Not just in pursuing the new task but also fearing to not be able to live up to my own expectation of my previous work. Well, it is realistic to be careful, cautious and wise but sometimes it’s worth taking a risk. Sometimes you need to hit the arrow in the dark to see where it lands. Although I still strongly do believe in not leaving your life to chance but certain decisions, certainly not all, could be dealt differently. The true experience of anything is when you could see both the high and the low of it. Unfortunately it can’t always be that ways. How could one experience both success and failure at the same time for the same thing? Although it’s easier to imagine about feeling happy and sad at the same time and even for the same thing but could it be possible with everything else as well? Would that be called the true experience of the thing in the first place? Even though I do not have an answer for that I do know one thing for sure. My definition of living life to fullest is dynamic, constantly changing and warmly accommodating every new facet that life has to offer. 

No regrets...

So many juniors came up to me saying that how couldn’t I participate in dance for Manthan, the annual inter hostel cultural festival. The question was killing apart from the expressions on their faces. It’s weird how we see movies and read books on things that you should follow which your heart desires but revert back to the normal life we live every day.  Couldn’t I have spared a little time to be a part of the practices every day? I guess I could have. Then what was it that leads me to abstain from it?

I guess they were a series of incomplete tasks and the burden of my goal for this semester which prevented me to enjoy something which so naturally comes to me- Dance. Sometimes it’s not okay to let go. Sometimes you need to adhere. Well the opposite side will seem perfectly crafted apotheosis of inspiration and motivation to have a free will and do what your heart desires but well my vision has crossed far beyond the predictions of natural successions to realize and tell myself what I need to live up to. Nobody had told me, goals especially ambitious ones would come in ribbon tied box which I would just neatly open up. The more important thing is nobody should. 

Unless you are absolutely determined to achieve what you've set to achieve you will not. Yeah I might realize in process whether it is worth it or not and that’s where I could choose to stop and let go. Do the things I do and pamper myself with a break but when I am in the middle of the road trying to reach a particular place, I cannot fancy me with break or a rest. What for? Dance for me is my hobby. I love it but I do not wish to pursue it.

I can dance anywhere. The feeling of not being ashamed and using it to express myself is priceless. But I cannot dance anytime and every time. I do it to take a break not to commit myself to it. A break from the tiring incline of the success graph I wish to see for myself. It brings a sort of constancy in me. It gives me the energy. Energy for what? To continue to pursue something else.

And  yeah this is not a letter of apology or clarification. In fact it’s a conversation with me. Talking to myself gives me the drive. My teachers have told me that I am a great speaker but a terrible listener. I wondered how I could improve. I failed. I couldn’t listen to most of them. Might sound funny now but well last option was to at least listen to myself. For now, things are going pretty well and I have taken decisions and have at least tried to proudly live up to them. For me, dance and conversations like these are my drive.  

So in the end, of course the choice is yours to do whatever you feel is right for you. Either way I believe you will land up in a place familiar to where you’d mentally limited yourself. You could be happy, you could be sad but I wouldn’t ever want to regret the path I take.  I’m happy in this case I don’t. 

Reaching for the stars....

William had been my best friend since college. He was one of the very few who effortlessly made his way through my bastion of life. I had always thought of him to be awry with those unconventional methods of problem solving so much so that I had started despising his acumen. Although there was no doubt that William and I were on the same intellectual level, I always used to end up undermining myself. 

One day when I was struggling hard with this apocryphal fact William worsened the situation by coming up with a preposterous idea of discovering a star by going to the North Pole. I had always been the textbook follower. Such absurdity had no room for respect. He was belaboring to the extent of me losing my equanimity. Enraged I had a bet with him saying that “I will follow the rules and you do your nonsense but I will reach for those stars earlier than you do”. William abated the storm by going no further. He was used to me losing my temper. 

Well this incident was wiped off my memory just like those after party nights. Time passed and we got so busy with our own lives that we were hardly in contact with each other.  The distance between London and Massachusetts worsened our relation. However, we both were flourishing in our work and were joyously living the dream. Astrophysics was life; I remember telling him almost every day. With me siting in my office trying to make multiple copies of a document saving it in different hard drives for backup I came across “my college days” folder. Sometimes going through your old folders is a rediscovering process of your long lost and forgotten old self. 

The first pic that caught my attention was William and me holding our graduate degrees. In that same moment my cellphone buzzed. To my surprise it was Williams’s residence. My already existing smile broadened. Titillated, I received his call. “Hey buddy! How are you?” I said with alacrity. “ugh John? This is Williams’s mother” I heard a melancholy in her voice. My heart sank. “Williams met with an accident. He wants to talk to you” she said with a constant quiver in her voice. “hey jonnie…” I heard a faint voice which seemed to resemble Williams. “docs say I don’t have much time so I thought of telling you something” he said. My heart was beating so fast I guess I went numb. “Hey willy. Long time mate” I said with a tear rolling off my eyes with his picture right in front of me. And then he said “I told you I will win brother. I am reaching for the stars now.” 

confused!!

Let me admonish the reader from before that what you read ahead might lead you to abhor me acutely. Probably the acrimonious debate with myself over certain questions has left me exasperated coveting for the storm to abate but alas! It’s all in vain.

The question is “Is there a basis for passion?” if yes, then does it mean that by rational plausible explanation one can convince oneself to be passionate about anything and everything? If no, then how does one rationally move towards achieving the set goals and in fact how does one become rational at all? Most of the times one would say that they are passionate about something because they “like” it. It’s like saying I’m passionate because I’m passionate. So it seems liking something is a “just-like-that” business. Obviously here I am using “like” synonymous to passion and not interest. Being interested and being passionate are two very different things.  If there is someone who feels they can make long term plans but not short term ones kindly let me know. Because that would mean that they have rejected the dynamic nature of immediate chain of events creating an impact over their lives. This doesn’t seem plausible to me. Holding that thought, the ones who feels that they do not have long term plans but short term ones are leaving their life to chance. This is a strange dilemma. The immediate question is how is one supposed to live then? Aimless?  Is there a need to have an aim? Wouldn’t you feel wasted without doing anything? In fact you really can’t do nothing as such. Ahh…I stand confused….