'P' for Perseverance

Perseverance is...

Holding on when everyone says give up

Keeping true even when you feel all is lost

Holding on to your dreams…

...when everyone else has given up on them

Holding on when you don’t know why

Perseverance would be..

The band-aid holding it all together,

If you had a first aid kit for life

The vessel you start and end with,

If you were you were cooking-up the recipe for life

The road you thread on,

If you took the first step of a thousand mile journey

Wishing you on your 50^th anniversary,

If you fell in love

The first building block

In the designs for your dreams

The cake

On the eve of your 100^th birthday

Get your Vacuum out! When your dreams turn to dust

It had been almost an hour since she’d been crying. The trails of tears could still be made out through the pouring rain.

She asked me, “What’s worst that could possibly happen to anyone?”


“Hmm… you’re on your way to the park and the button of your pant suddenly gets undone and you’re spank middle of the road wishing you wore your underpants”, I replied.

“Shut up! This is the second time someone has done that to me.”

“What? Undone your buttons?”


“No, I’ve been dumped for the second time I mean…” she mumbled while getting back to the daunting task of crying her eyes out again. “What do you do if your dreams turn to dust?”

“Vacuum it!”

“What?”


“For once stop crying and try being in my shoes. Let me give you an instance; you tell me what you’d do. 


You wake up as early by 4 in the morning because you don’t want to miss the only opportunity you’ve got, still wondering whether you’ve actually slept, even if for only just 15 minutes. The phone bill feels like concrete blocks in the middle of a lake and yet you grab your phone to make several last minute important calls. You are on your feet by 6.00 am and make a dash for the 6:30 train, even though the meeting is supposed to be at 9.00 just so nothing is left to chance.

As the time nears, you can feel a surge in your gut. As you approach the office, the inexperienced 21 year old at the desk tells you, “I just spoke with Mr. Carson and he is very sorry that he didn’t inform you yesterday, but your book on wizardry is too childish to publish”.

The words coming from the lady’s mouth screeches in your ear and sounds even more appalling than nails on a blackboard. All the preparations, the time, the hard work, everything seems to spit on your face because the only chance you had just slipped out of your fingers.

You can’t even call your husband because he just divorced you last week. Cursing your luck even though you never believed in it, what you do? You got three options:

1.      1. Call your mom and cry your heart out as you did the last time when that red haired guy left you over a gold-digger. OR

2.      2. Get depressed and don’t talk to anyone for few days. OR

3.      3. Visit the nearest psychologist and get the sleeping pills

Now, amongst the above, which option will you choose?”

“Err…??!! Joanne, the options suck”, she replied after pondering for a while.

“Exactly! Just as I live my life, I should have a say in the options I give myself. I’d probably make my own option – Go to a pub, get a beer and get banged. So don’t let your dreams lay on floor like dust, vacuum it!”

      I could see that the wailing had suddenly stopped; she nodded her head in agreement and smiled back at me. We started walking back on the promenade when she said, “Anyways, I read your manuscript and really liked it! I mean it does have a kind of catchy title too! Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”.

P.S. Characters in the above story are fictional and do not represent any person alive or dead! 

Perseverance

Perseverance is a virtue which eggs you on to make something sees the light of day, long after you have run out of steam. Villainous thoughts of giving up plague your brain. Perseverance is what Gandhiji had when he took up the slightly tricky task of freeing a nation from oppressive rule, perseverance is what kept the fire in his belly raging. In spite of the Queen’s faithful servants making sure that every petition, every Satyagraha was vetoed and rendered useless, and tried to make him feel stupid after every attempt, but no cookies for guessing who had the last laugh.

 

Perseverance is what James Watt possessed when he had to make some a thousand odd attempts to create a light bulb, in an era when artificial light was considered a sign of evil and work of beloved Satan, and he had to bear with the usual cat call of ‘retard’ and the occasional ‘ son of Satan’. He chose not to give up, and eventually his ‘dimag ki batti’ lit up and he did manage to light up his home. In your face, you dastardly disbelievers.  Perseverance is what leads to the ultimate unparalleled joy of creation (after you have braved the nagging cynical dogs to try to get you down).

I’m lucky to be blessed with this virtue. It has enabled me to pen this down without once feeling the urge to be institutionalized, than bear the agony of seeing this article through.

The Nine Lives Of Intuition

What do we know about intuition? Not much really, reliable research is not freely available particularly because of the ambiguous nature of intuition to begin with. Some researchers believe that the power to intuit is an innate ‘gift’ which some people possess, much like the ability to create art (http://afgen.com/intuition.html). 

So where does intuition really come from? Well, for that answer, let’s pay homage to the old saying ‘that gut feeling’; new research suggests that the brains in your head might not be the only brains you have! Yup you read it right we’ve got a primitive brain located in our gut! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system). 

This brain works in concert with your ‘higher functioning’ brain in a complex concert. This secondary brain has the power to autonomously function, detect changes in its surrounding, reacts appropriately and even shows rudimentary learning. 

Nervous butterflies, stress knots, postprandial flare-ups and other gut-based feelings have been finally explained, as this enteric nervous system secretes many of the neurotransmitters found in your brain and is the largest manufacturer of serotonin in your body! (http://whyfiles.org/026fear/physio2.html)

All this is great, but what does it have to do with intuition? Well, though the brains that sit on your shoulders are a product of millions of evolution and no doubt are a marvel of nature all by them, they are bogged down by higher thought processes that are a function of our day-day living, it is too absorbed with the stimulus-learning-reaction equilibrium which blots out those little whispers of Lady Intuition. 

While your enteric nervous system which is not bogged down by such higher functioning can more easily react to the primeval impulses that are imparted to us through trillions of years of trial and error evolution.

So the next time you feel that little surge in your tummy, pay attention, it’s trying to say something important. Who knows then, you too could exercise your right to the nine lives bestowed upon the kitty next door or even bear the next Game Changing thought that has exquisitely tainted humanity. 

Touch. Taste. Smell. See. Hear.

Flowing like a river, it brings a silvery black to the realm of touch. A shade of depth and understanding, like hot-chocolate-eyes, it sits on a face flowing into a petite ridge, cutely rounded to a perfection; pointing into what can only be described as ‘a mouth’ succulent to look at and invitingly moist to the touch, well settled on a hard well defined cradle. Grace like a neck leads imagination to a slender curvaceous front to what can only be described as the music of beauty and lust immersed in the guilt of a thought on the back burner. The perspiration of all that passion rolls down the intersection of the hills and the valley. Lost in the slim, tight and tanned perfection, don’t think I’m going to reach the yonder in any hurry! The gaze moves on like a cold ice cube on a hot pan to the steamy waterfall below. Curves to the sight and supple to the touch, persuading you to gasp at the glossy-wet tone of the sorry excuse for a strut, luring you on to dribble at the form and the shape in this culmination of mother-nature at the epitome of her creative genius.

Congratulations! Your curiosity has led you to a pinnacle of thought without ever having described anything conclusively. Thanks for the imagery anyway!

Feminine Intuit

My intuition always told me that women are smarter than men. Now I am not being sexist or maybe I am. It's been recognised as real for centuries, scoffed at by many, yet an undeniable, inexplicable reliable phenomenon since the dawn of time; a woman's intuition. Women have relied upon it, men have feared it, lives have been saved by it and pride restored with it. I was taught from a young age to listen to and rely upon mine, thank goodness!

After 2 yrs of being subjected to a “cheating boyfriend” a man I trusted, a man who had always treated me with the utmost respect, I began to get a funny feeling. A feeling I tried to ignore as silly insecurities. But persist in nagging me it did, so much so that I could no longer ignore it. I had no definable reasons, no tell tale signs really, but I believed, felt, intuitively KNEW, he was cheating on me.

So one day when he said he was leaving for work. I followed him in a rickshaw. He stopped at CCD. First to give him a benefit of doubt I told myself he wanted coffee. But that feeling lasted only for a second. He went and sat next to a girl colleague who I met a few times at his work parties. They were holding hands! 

I left and went home and waited. It was like someone had punched my gut and was now trying to squeeze it. Later when I confronted him it was like I always knew it! My instincts always pointed out “He wasn’t the GUY!”

So girls don’t ignore the signs, they are your intuitions!  Listen to your gut because I did and now I am with a man who is a sweetheart & my husband!!

Why the world, when it’s you?

We all spoke about...

The important kind & smart witty, recommending you on stock investment kind

The thinking kind & the lucky bugger from Ghatkopar, living in a 4BHK kind

The god blessed, coming on preaching channel TV kind & philosophical blurting about life’s lessons kind

The ones who deserved it & the ones who earned it because they kissed the right asses

The kind you wanted to be because they seemed cool & the kind they wanted to be, because they found him cool.

The ones who changed the world & the ones died trying, because they bothered enough to care kind

The ones who reached great feats & the ones who reach ordinary feats everyday picking munni to school without drinking.

The ones who gave birth to you and the ones who helped give birth to you

But we never spoke about one kind, who matter the most kind,

The one who counted the most in your life, kind.

You are that kind.

Be the kind to inspire you to be important & witty kind

The one who thinks and let luck follows you kind

The god blessed, philosophical who deserved it and earn it kind.

Then say proudly I am my own inspiration.

 My inspiration is within me.

A Letter from Curiosity

Rolling on my roller chair, I requested my mind to work on the next (supposedly) big idea. But I was helpless as my head kept popping upwards to look at the new gentleman sitting inside the ACD’s (Associate Creative Director) cubicle. Few minutes later I could see the gentleman walking away from the cubicle and next thing I saw, the ACD standing next to me. He asked me “Did you come up with any ideas?” I replied, “Err... Not yet...”, “How would you, if you kept peeping at my cubicle” he interrupted. “I just glanced once to know who that new guy in the office is. Curiosity made me do it”, I tried to justify. Comprehendingly he said, “Hmm, curious huh, that’s nice. A bit of inquisitiveness is always required in this field. Well, just make sure you are not competing with the poor cat”, winking at me, he left.

Back at home, lying stolid at my bed, I thought for a while. Am I as curious as a cat? Is curiosity good or is it not? Suddenly, I got a flashback. When I was a kid I wrote an imaginary letter to Mr. Curiosity, citing him his faults. I quickly got up, went near my wardrobe, took out my glittery box and fetch for the old letter addressed to ‘To Mr. Curiosity’.

Dear Mr. Curiosity,

I don’t know whether anyone had really ever bothered to inform you that how malicious you could be.

I’m not the only one to have fallen under your trap. You tempted poor Adam and Eve to taste the apple at the Garden of Eden and the blame went to the poor Fallen Angel – Lucifer. It was you who made Albert create E=mc2 (energy = mass times the speed of light squared) that took life of so many in the atomic bombings at Hiroshima.

So it is not the man’s fault if he does anything to keep himself alive when he is bored. You haunt his mind and start corrupting him and as rightly said by Miss D’Souza, ‘The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.’
- Yours unfortunately,
Daydreamer

I fold the paper and kept it besides my bed and as I continued thinking about it, my eyes were slowly drooping down and I felt asleep.

Next day, bewildered, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Besides my bed I found my old letter replaced by a new one addressing to me, ‘To Daydreamer’.

Dear Daydreamer,

 I agree with Miss D’Souza, that there is no cure for curiosity. But do you know that first ever emotion a human discovers is curiosity. For proof, watch any toddler on a nature walk. They look at everything. Watch their face when they find something new. Naked delight is the most beautiful thing you can see on anyone’s face, but on a small child it’s sacred.

Sir Isaac Newton was arguably the most influential intellectual ever. I provoked him to go deeper when apple fall onto his head. If it was not because of his gravitational theory, how would we have ever sent satellite in the sky and how would we have ever watched television or surfed net.

John Glenn, the first man to walk on the moon, enjoyed science. Edmund Hillary, the first man to explore the peak of Mount Everest, wrote a number of books.

And most importantly, how can you forget the invention of internet. It was I who inspired Google for the entire curious mind of world.
-Yours fortunately,
Curiosity

‘Trrriiiiing!’ went my phone alarm and I woke up. I turned my head sideways and found my old letter lying at its place. The letter in my dream was the words already existed in my head and for years the questions I hunted for, were the answers I already knew. The world works on curiosity and every day we live to unfold it.

Fuel it up with Curiosity

Curiosity is what propels us. It is curiosity that makes us want to try that new drink even though it looks awful. It is curiosity that makes you want to know the next line in that novel you’re reading inspite of knowing it is way below your standards of likeable literature.

It is curiosity that makes you give in to temptation. Makes you do all the things in life you know you’ll repent soon, but the thrill is what draws you to it. The call of the unknown, the pleasure you derive by doing all the s##t that you know you should’nt even be close to.  Even though curiosity doesn’t lead to all the possible vices in this heavenly abode called earth, it is quite responsible for most of them.

Curiosity is what leads you to make all the memories that mostly go to the grave without ever being revealed. All that kinky stuff you desperately will hide from your folks all your life, for if they know you’re on for some serious trouble mister. It helps you make all the funny stories you narrate when you’re spilling the beans, when you’re hopelessly wasted... so go ahead, and try the best things in life... and just remember everything is an experience... and even though you might repent it then... it will be a memory for life... and a lesson too, not to mention!

We are who we are… Curious!

What has the world come to?

We want everything in the world materialistic of course. We wake, drink, work, chill and sleep! Always complaining “Where is the f***ing time”? We take everything at the face value. We don’t want to dig beneath. We are just living on an automation mode.

That’s what they think about us. With ‘they’ I mean – all those who think it was better in those days, and loathe our generation for being so irresponsible.

Me thinks that is bullshit.

Just consider the possibilities if Rakhi Sawant reforms. Paparazzi have nothing to photograph. Newspapers and magazines everywhere see drop in subscriptions. Bombay Times is the first one to announce bankruptcy. K.J feeling stressed because there is no Rakhi Sawant to mock at, we lose confidence in the market. Stock market crashes. Planes fall from the sky. Civil war. Anarchy. All because Rakhi Sawant reformed herself!

Why?

Because we all are curious about the nuances that affect our lives... be it reformatory issues like the High Court Verdict or issue-creators who are still planning to reform themselves.


“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

-      Albert Einstein

Isaac Newton’s Apple... Where Art Thou?

Move over Isaac Newton for curiosity has a new poster child. Yes, you were great and all when that apple fell on your head, kudos to you for not gobbling up that apple or trying to make a quick buck off it. Personally, I think it was bad entrepreneurship. But I wonder if you ate that apple as you pondered over gravity, or did you eat it afterwards or maybe the missus baked you a celebratory apple pie for being a genius?

I’m sorry to have gotten off the track but the question still remains... what happened to that blasted apple?

I think Isaac Newton is over rated for being synonymous with curiosity and as much as I would love to hand over the crown to Alice ( Alice from the wonderland and not the mystery Alice from that annoying song about who the f*** is Alice! )

Think about it, there was Alice strolling about, minding her own business, and lo and behold, she meets a talking rabbit. Me thinks she had bigger issues than flying or falling apples and I would probably blame it on the mushrooms she had for lunch. But what does Alice do when confronted with a talking rabbit? For starters, she sure as hell didn’t eat him up, so in your face Isaac Newton! But she chased him down a hole that led to a wonderful adventure.

But she still isn’t my hero when it comes to being curious. A close second, yes.

My heroes are all those unknown faces that are driven by curiosity to acquire the simple pleasures of discovering and learning something new. No matter how mundane or magnanimous like Isaac Newton or delightful like Alice.

And so, to all those people who carried a dictionary under their arm as their bible, and those that would religiously seek out the best place in town for biryani or even those that googled google on google. You are the unsung heroes of curiosity.

A Smile That Inspired Him

Past:

I was just an average man, about to pass out of college in the next two months. Everyone seemed so ready for life. They all looked so inspired. Inspiration was embedded into their running blue veins, their tiered sparkling eyes and broken pumping heart; especially her. I could never figure her out; how she was always so jovial and inspired. Her smile, so mysterious! I, on the other hand, am without a direction, craving for inspiration. Everywhere I searched for it, but inspiration always managed to win against me in this game of hide and seek.

It happened one day. It was raining, boy it was raining. I was standing under the tree when I saw her. She was right next to me, under the tree, protecting herself from the torrential rain. ‘Hi’, she said with that same mysterious smile. Little did I know that grey day and the small ‘Hi’ would change my life forever!

She had a beautiful name, just like her face. Though her beauty couldn’t be justified in the conventional sense, she had an enigmatic aura around her. Her smile was what distinguished her. So mysterious, it made me feel like she knew the aesthetics of how everything and everyone worked.

“What’s your secret? How can you always be so inspired?”

“It’s simple. I follow my passion. That’s where you get your inspiration from. What’s your passion?”

“Well, painting”

Present:

I sit in my basement, giving a final stroke of my brush on the canvas. She is complete. My friend comes up behind me.

“Wow! That is a brilliant piece of art! What an exquisite beauty this woman is and what a mysterious smile! It’s almost as if she’s hiding something.”

“She’s hiding passion and inspiration.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mona Lisa”

Let’s Get Inspired

What is common in all success stories, of those men who are driven by a goal of life, is the fact that they were inspired. Inspired by a hunger to succeed, inspired by bushfires in their bellies to achieve, inspired by situations in their lives, inspired by a curiosity that became their sole reason for living, inspired by a rage, inspired by failure, inspired to create something that destroys the existing conventions; and when it is accomplished ,it becomes a powerhouse of inspiration for others.

It is inspiration that led the Wright brothers to fly, an apple falling lead to Newton dedicating his entire life to research and thereby giving laws which govern the very nature of physics, it was inspiration that fuelled Gandhiji to make an entire nation rise to his call, in simple words to INSPIRE the people.

Inspiration is the daring to dream and the sheer determination to make your dream see the light of day. Inspiration is not, contrary to public opinion, a brainwave leading to short-lived motivation; it is the unrelenting effort that leads to the ultimate creation. Inspiration dies out if not fuelled by action, and the action usually inspires many more. Like Nelson Mandela said, "As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

The Eleven Senses of Man

All quadruped animals have five sensory organs – eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin; though they do have something that bipeds don’t – an extra-sensory perception that we call intuition. Bipeds on the other hand have five sensory organs and a very rudimentary intuitive. Scientists say that there is a direct correlation between agility and the five senses. The more senses you have, the smarter, the faster you are.

Taking into consideration this fact, man should have been a little less bright than any other animal on earth. But it’s not so. Why?

What does man have that other creatures don’t?Why did man (who is puny) and not the elephant (who is mighty and extremely intelligent) invent the wheel?Why wasn’t fire invented by a firefly? Clearly they have an affinity for it! Or why wasn’t Einstein a fox terrier? (There is an uncanny resemblance though) For that matter, for millions of years billions of apples must have fallen on trillions of other animals. Why didn’t they think of gravity? So, we’ve established that man did all of the above but the question “why man?” has not yet been answered. Was it fate that called upon man’s intellect or was it sheer dumb luck??

The answer lies before you. What you are doing right now is the reason why! Man doesn’t just see things, he observes them. Man doesn’t hear. He listens. Man doesn’t just touch. He feels. And thus my friends, man doesn’t just exist! He co-exists! Today man has reached Mars and the Moon, milestone seems trivial. The reason is passion. Man’s passion to grow and to push himself to his limits. His passion is what leads to the metamorphosis of an anthropoid primate into the smartest animal on the planet. We are lovingly called “Homo Sapien Sapiens”

A very famous Homo Sapien Sapien once said “Passion is the genesis of Genius”, and I’m sure all the other Homo Sapien Sapiens agrees.If not, how else would a weak polio stricken girl be an Olympic Gold medal winner? And how else would a deaf blind girl be a lecturer? How else could a man gone stark blind make a movie? Man’s not just sixth but, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh sense is passion. That’s what sets him apart from the animal kingdom. Everyone has a passion….What’s yours?