The 4 lettered magic word

This is the day, this is the time.. but yet...
There are things which bother me.

The time of my life is now, the time to rejoice, the time to feel like God.
But yet, there are naggings which make me feel so slipshod.

Since a long time now, I have been thinking about what makes a perfect life?
How does one attain a life which is devoid of negativity or any other ill?
Is it really possible to dream of having such a life?

An emphatic and resounding NO is the answer from the skies.
So if some such thing like utopia doesn't exist, can we create a replica of it or atleast pretend that we live in a replica of it?

What did I just say? Pretend to live in a replica? Oh yes, definitely!
You can pretend to just about anything.
Inside, you may be the most insecure and jealous person, outside you can always potray a cool, suave and unperturbed image.
If you can be pretentious about all these things, then why can't anyone pretend to live in utopia.
But the point is, you are still pretending.
You are running away from what bites you.
You know how affected you are by something, but yet, you think by not thinking about it, the pain will subside.
The truth is, the more you try to detach yourself, the more you internally end up thinking about it.






What then, is the resolution?
It ain't that simple. It requires a lot of courage.
It requires a lot of confidence.
It actually is the simplest of things, but turns out to be the most complex thing to do in such situations.
It is 'TALK'.



It's a simple 4 letter word that has kept three big nuclear powers like India, China and Pakistan from going to war in times of adversity.
The most difficult part is to 'start' talking.
But once you do, you realize that the other person isn't all that bad, he isn't all that conniving.
Once the sun is out, the snow melts and the flowers bloom again!

But if you don't talk, you deny yourself that chance to joy.
You deny yourself that chance to mend fences and be back on track.

I have had instances in my life too, where things were assumed and then it snowed to such an extent that nobody was ready to clean up the snow.
Had I not come out and started to 'talk', who knows how much time I would've lost out and in course lost out on many other things important to me.

This situation will stare you in the face many times in your life, sometimes as frequently as everyday.
All you need to do is .. come out.. hold it by it's horns and say..
"Yeah, lets talk"
The wildest of bulls will also mellow down and listen to your side of the story.
Conflicts are inevitable, but combat is optional.
So the easy way out, however difficult it may seem initially, is to 'TALK'.

Garth Brooks said : "The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself"
This signifies that most of the conflicts are assumed and not real, the other person may afterall be only a catalyst to your own conflicting thoughts.
This makes 'TALKING' an even more sensible solution.

Wish I had the courage to always stand up and 'TALK'...
Because it can make things go from this...


to this...

Travails of a guy's life and a tribute to the ladies

Have you ever faced discrimination as a guy?
Sounds strange?
Well, you would find it less stranger by the end of this post.

For all those who maintain being a girl comes with its societal problems, please re-think.
I have been a guy for 28 years now and will continue remaining so :)

When I was a kid, I was fine till the age of maybe 6 or 7.
That's the age when you hardly realize who a guy is and who a girl is.
Frankly, for me, judging the sex by the length of the hair worked!
All short haired ppl were guys and long haired ones were girls.
Call it stupid or whatever, that was how I was till atleast I was 5.

As time passed and I grew older, I understood there are more intricacies to this guy-girl thing.
Till 6th grade, in my school, we considered talking to the girls a thing below the 'guy' thing.
Now don't ask me why, I don't remember either.
We made faces at girls. (like girls generally do).

7th grade was kind of a discovery period. It was a realization period when we were starting to reverse what we were made of, the guy attitude.
Slowly but surely, the hormones started jumping.
One by one, everyone seemed to like some girl or the other.
I was shocked... because it was the first time I was experiencing this.

There were 3 guys with whom I was friends... 2 started spending more time with the girls they started liking lately.
They even changed their positions and no more sat with me in the class.
They went to the bench behind their new 'girly' friends.

Exasperated, I looked for company of the last guy left in my gang.
Unfortunately, he thought that I liked a girl... and the problem was that he actually liked the same girl.
So, inspite of me not liking Madam X, I lost out on the last guy friend too!

Then I made newer friends.. slowly started realizing that this age does not belong to the 'guys'. Girls are what drives the guys crazy.
So this was my first lesson that girls are more equal than the guys.

Time passed, I had similar such experiences in every walk of life which reposed faith in my belief that guys don't stand a chance when it came to a face-to-face battle with the girls.
Especially in the softer aspects of everyday life.

Being favourites of the lecturers in college to getting favours from the lab instructors in the mechanical workshops to getting good marks in college internals to hogging the limelight at college festivals, the girls got it all done!
And how? Just like that!

Guys, including me, no matter how hard we tried, found it difficult to manage the same kind of attention!

Another example, have a look at your social networking profile, orkut or facebook or whatever...
If the guy is extremely popular or drop dead killer looking, then the case may be different, but for a commoner, the updates/scraps are a little far in between.
He generally keeps 'liking' others' posts.
Sample this against an above-average looking girl on facebook.
The first thing you would notice that her number of friends are double yours.
You may be a stud in some other field, but on networking sites, you don't just measure up.
The saddest part is, you post something on your profile, there would be a couple of 'likes', a few comments.
But on the other hand, any mediocre status update from the above-average girl and the humanity pours in on her profile.
If it's a happy quote, people rave about her wittiness, talk how they feel the same and everyone else is dirt.
If her status message is sad, the whole set of friends, some who even otherwise barely talk to her, would give her pep-up talks, give jadu ki jhappis and make her feel that she is 'THE CHOSEN ONE'.

All this talk and people talk of downtrodden ladies!! :(
Agreed, there is a section of the female society which still is in the previous century...
But you also have to agree that the urban go-getters of the female community are leaps and bounds ahead in the race and have their male counterparts a distant second in the race for attention.

This is not a letter of appreciation for the more-than-equal ladies of the world!
Yet, I would also concede that I am also in awe of such ladies.. afterall I am a guy who is prone to killer ladies :P

Few years back was when the 'travails' ended.
And how? Just like that! :)

8 years back, lightening struck and I was smitten for life by one such lady.
Slowly, I started doing everything that I hated my friends in school for. :)
We went from strength to strength and now we are married happily! :D

Apart from my mom, who is still 'the-one-lady' whom I look up to for everything, there are just 2 ladies who are on my list now.. the ones for all occasions.
Needless to say, they are my support system and that's how the travails which I faced in my earlier life with the girls turned to the biggest boons with these stars!!
My wife, who was my friend-turned-life partner, continues to remain my best friend and biggest asset of my life, a person who I look upto when I am down and beaten.
She gives me that charge which makes me feel larger-than-life.
She is not just 'a star', but 'the star' who keeps my solar system chugging.

Next, my sis-in-law, the name the law defines, who was my friend turning to a person who I can share anything with to a close confidant is my next biggest star!

I don't know how life would've shaped up without these stars, whether it would have been better or worse, but whatever it turned out to be, it made me love my life more... love the people in my life more.

Either ways, it's the initial travails that made me what I am today and gave me the stars which light my life now!

How to make your bird flock together with you?

The best days of my life were spent during my college days.
And I don't say this without a reason.
There is a distinctive 'aashiqui' thread that I keep talking about.

That's common everywhere as long as a guy has hormones to keep playing!
Ok.. coming back, have you ever felt that you like/love someone but are just not getting the kind of response that you'd like to?

How simple is it to decode?
Is it just that the 'bird' isn't interested? Or is the 'bird' playing around?
Well, it can be both. It's not that easy for a guy to dissect.

First up, you have to learn to decode the reaction through common expressions that she shows.
She might be smart and brilliant, but when you throw a hint at her, does she reply stupidly or just like she did not understand what you meant?
Well, if this is the case, then she isn't dumb, you are.
You are the biggest moron on the planet.

Then there are girls who just do not understand anything.. whatever you say, they just laugh it off!!
Believe me, they are the most irritating lot.
But inside, they too might be intelligent!! Beware.

There was one guy in another college whom I knew during my college days, Purab Dambekar(name changed of course).
I sometimes felt for him, because I never understood if what he did for 4 years was even worth it or not.
He tirelessly pursued Anjali Matondkar(again name changed of course).
First, I felt it was a true case of aashiqui.
I watched from the sidelines. Slowly by the end of first year, it became a kind of junoon for him and he thought he was the next SRK from Darr.
Anjali always was friendly with him... talked when it mattered or replied when talked to.

Purab took this for something else and fell deeper for her.
In the second year, took a gift and went ahead and did the unthinkable on 14th February.
Got royally snubbed, came back dejected, downed 8 bottles of beer and spent the nite in the lavatory puking.

But Purab sir, for whatever reasons, thought that Anjali was his partner, you know, like saat janam waali.
Like the ones that get manufactured in YashRaj films.
Kept pursuing and passing comments on other guys who were friendly with her.
Third year passed, proposed again, got slapped across this time.
The resolve got even firmer.
Fourth year, 'bas-abhi-nahi-toh-kabhi-nahi' syndrome took him over.
Tried all tricks in the book, never got the girl, but failed in the exams.

The result, girl happily got done with her engineering, guy sat around for another year sulking and completed his engineering in 5 years instead of 4.

Now, in my eyes, this is a classic case of uber-moronism where the guy should've fathomed in the first year itself that the 'bird' belonged to a different species.
The 'poor boy meets NRI girl-knocks the wind out of her sails-and they live happily ever after' never works in real life.

Lesson 1 : Get Real.
Lesson 2 : If your subtle hints don't work, there is good chance that they never will.
Example : If you say, you have been thinking a lot lately, and she asks about whom? Sachin Tendulkar?
You have got to get the signal.
Lesson 3 : Often, its better to be direct and get your answer. If its a yes, live happily ever after, if its a no, look for another branch and another bird.
Lesson 4 : Never under-estimate the people who may be her confidants and in-the-know of things. A smitten kitten is more easier to spot than a tiger in the yellow grass.
Lesson 5 : Always do a benchmarking exercise before beginning a voyage. Every Seal doesn't mandatorily get a Heidi Klum.
There too, Heidi was very 'high-maintenance' and Seal was perpetually rich.

This, I realized when I saw so many guys fooling around in the 4 years. It continues to show up till date, but on a lower scale.
The Junoon isn't so pronounced, it's more subtle and subdued, but the 5 lessons still hold true!