I think I should do a recap of how my life has turned out. It has been six years, and I will concede that six isn't that great a number. Not as good as five anyway.

But then I just think I have to. It's time.

By 2012 numbers, I am now in the top 1% Indians by affluence.(An annual income of 12.5 lakh and above [link]). Don't fret, it is not the point and the last thing I would want to brag about, is money. (Though I suppose it is harder to convince you of that now, and yes, I have been there for quite a while now :) .)

The weirdest thing is that no colleague of mine who makes just as much or more, is ready to believe this. They happen to know how much a Mainframe professional in Qatar makes, but not this. But more on that later.

A little over six years back, I was earning exactly zero. The ceiling for my inter city travel was reserved sleeper coaches in Indian Railways and the ceiling for intra city travel was shared auto rickshaws. My average meal budget was around twenty-five bucks and my average movie budget was twenty bucks going up to forty for the odd movie at Nandan. And the icing on the cake is that all three day vacations from college had a budget of five hundred bucks!

Today, five hundred is regularly not enough for a single meal. I have to decide every morning whether I want to take the car or the bike to office. All my travels are air-conditioned in some way or the other. And let us not even get into how much my last vacation cost.

The trouble is, most of this also applies to most of you. And if my guesswork is just as perfect as I think it is, none of you think you are rich.

Well the fact is this. You are filthy stinking rich (You might want to say that to yourself in your head once. And no, it does not help). Whether you like it or not. I do not like it at all. But this does not happen to be an argument; it is just a cold hard fact.

The first time I realized this, I also realized that I did not want any more money. I do not think I have the guts to refuse it, but I do not think it can be the driving factor in my life any more. Being in the top one percent will do just fine for now, thank you very much.

Because the surge in income has not come with a surge in happiness. I am just as happy as I was six years ago. Perhaps slightly less? I am not sure.

Everyone I know agrees when I say that money does not make you happy. All of them then say that they need to be making more money. "To be happy?", I quickly ask. "Nah, just need to", they say.

But what I have learnt from the past six years is that more money will not make me more happy. My happiness graph has just stayed constant. On the contrary, I have less time to do the things I really want to do.

Do I think I have all the money I need? No, I do not.

But what I have begun to realize is that I will probably never ever have all the money I need. Some billionaires do not. I am just a top 1 percent affluent Indian.

I do not think it is a chase that I can win. Why chase the carrot at the end of the stick?

As a footnote, I would like to leave you with an article I just happened to read [link]. Calling my problems as problems seems a little vulgar in comparison. Yup, that is India too.

There was this time when he felt like a spark....
There were these moments when he could feel electricity inside.
When he felt like a live wire..

Today, he feels like a light bulb.
There are no electric patterns anymore;
He radiates a dirty yellowish light.
Ever responding to the flick of a switch.

No one really needs a spark,
Not many can live with one.
Everyone needs a light bulb.
Most cannot live without none...

Why then on some lonely nights.
When the switch is open,
And there is a queer calm all around,
Does he long to be the spark again?

And why does the line spin in his head
Barely noticed, but always there...
Like a small old wound that never healed right
I was not born to do this.....

One good thing about me switching jobs is that I eventually make a post out of it every time. Thus happened with IBM, Samsung and now Cisco. In retrospect, that is kind of expected. A quick jot of the reasons would look like this:

1. I get loads of time to kill. Wait. Loads is an understatement; its more like Mountains.

2. The Internet speed has improved from College to IBM to Samsung to Cisco.

3. More of alone time leads to more philosophy (not essentially better).

4. I kind of miss the old environment (read people I used to work with) and this point should have been clubbed with the previous one.

5. An entirely new set of females in and around the campus has the creative juices flowing. No pun intended here!

6. Every time I switch, I realize that despite the trillions of pages, there is only so much internet that you can browse.

The body of the post is not related to the title in any way, it's just that the title keeps rolling over and over in the back of my mind as I type.

To end, I would like to say that I find the updated blogger interface decent; this being my first time using it.

Finally, I would really really appreciate if anyone is kind enough to drop a comment, just to let me know that people do still visit my blog.

You are the same

And I haven't added fame (sadly)

The same is my mood

And I still cook my food (I wish)

The same stays my money

And no one calls me honey (still)

I still walk to work

And I still have no perk (Team lunch twice a year doesn't count)

My flat is the same

The same stays my name

There's still traffic on the way

And I'm still late every day

The same jokes people still crack

And HR's still say, "Let me call u back"

My Manager still sits at my rear,

And people tell me "HAPPY NEW YEAR"?????????????

Diya Mirza (the poor man's Aishwarya Rai) , once revealed in an interview how she would skip meals to be able to afford the cab from her way back from work, back in her struggling days. That was long back, but I guess the information stayed with me because I thought the story was kinda inspirational.

Or was it?

Diya Mirza could have taken a bus/train/tram from work as well. That way, the whole skipping meals sob story wouldn't have been essential any more. But that was Diya Mirza. Or was it?

Our generation suffers from a weird insecurity. Let me give you an example. Back when I worked at a consulting firm, everyone came to office in Levi's denims. Well, to be truthful not everyone did, but more people did than otherwise. Now that I work at a product based organization (where the average pay is considerably higher), most people I come across dress in more sensibly priced brands. I once went for an interview at Google India, and the interviewer came dressed in a fluorescent orange turtle neck that I'm sure came off a flea market for not more than 150 bucks.

We seem to have reached a stage where we do what the market demands of us. Another example? How do you explain the obscene percentage of students who chose

1) Engineering degrees

2) Software Jobs

3) Management degrees

in that order? Hell, software doesn't even pay more these days! And I have lost count of the number of people who hated their engineering courses, went on for management degrees and then hated those even more.

Personally, I always feel the pinch every time someone goes for higher studies in the US. Why? I have no idea. I would enjoy creating an android app or optimizing an SQL query far more than say, mugging up a network packet structure; but the market tells me that the action is abroad.

I recently bought one of the best (and the costliest) phones in the market. The price was certainly way out of my league, but I still did. And now I think:

1) The screen is definitely huge and gorgeous, but I spend almost 18 hours a day in front of a screen which is 4 times larger; the PC monitor. 9 hours out of these 18 are spent in front of two such display panels.

2) Games do run butter smooth; thanks to a dual core processor, but I would prefer the FPS games that run a tad awkwardly on my single core PC any day.

3) My office is just a 20 minute walk away, and I could do without any music during this journey.

4) I really do not need most apps on the go, as I have better softwares installed on my PC; and I am in front of it most of the time anyway.

Point is, I still love the phone. Forget love, I am crazy about it. That's in part because I can appreciate the elegance of the product and the design of the software, which a big section who buy such phones cannot. (Not because they are dumb, but because they aren't into engineering per se).

And buying a phone is just the start. After the phone, I bought an elegant case for it which incidentally cost me more than what I would get for reselling my old phone. Now, I have realized that the 2G data connection on the phone can hardly do any justice to its abilities, so the solution seems to be an obscenely priced 3G data connection. Next, I would be buying 500 bucks apps on the market. At the end of the day however, playing Need for Speed on my PC is still going to be a hands down better experience.

I remember a health drink ad which talked about how we should run or fall behind. Well, we are running, but where are we running to? And what are we running for? I completely advocate running for a goal, but truth is, most of us are completely clueless. I still remember when a trainer asked this question to a training room of 15 people.

What do you want to become in life?

It's a simple enough question. One that I am sure every 5 year old can answer at the drop of hat; Pilot, soilder, actress, teacher and the like. Most people out of a class of 15 answered what sounded like,

"I want to fulfill my responsibilities to the best of abilities; rise up the value chain and network across my peers".

That's one answer that my simple brain cannot make any sense of. Is that what you are running for?

So what are we losing out on? Relationships? Perhaps values? Baba Ramdev can tell you more about them.

What I feel that we as a generation are losing out on is creativity. I know that for sure when I look at someone wearing a (fake) solid colored tee with "being human" written in a simple font in white, and I feel, "this doesn't look bad".

There are three types of people in this world - Normal, Genius and Frustrated.

To illustrate further, I would like to give you an example.

Three people named Normal, Genius and Frustrated walk into a bar. There's a band playing a very catchy tune. None of them has ever played any musical instrument before, but they're all impressed with the music. All of them develop this desire to learn to play the guitar.

So far so good. The story was uniform. Not any longer.

- Normal toils hard to learn the guitar. Ten people say they do not want to teach him because he understands no music. Ten others refuse to teach him because he is not gifted enough. Normal doesn't give up and after what can be called a fair amount of time, he is able to play the tune decently well.

Normal invites his friends for a party and shows of his skills. His friends clap and Normal is happy. He goes off to sleep contented. End of story.

- Genius picks up a guitar. After some time alone with the guitar, he is able to understand how the thing is supposed to work. Some more time, and viola! Genius, is able to play the tune. But does Genius stop here?

No. Genius has a great inspiration and he creates a new tune that is kind of groundbreaking stuff. Next the story can go in two directions.

Rockstar Genius goes on stage somewhere and plays his tune. Instant fame and recognition. End of story.

Shy Genius hides his tune somewhere until a smoking blonde manages to dig it out. She coaxes him (:P) into playing it in public. Instant fame and recognition. End of story.

- Frustrated is kinda lazy so he takes a long long time before he actually picks up a guitar. During this time he is very frustrated because he is not picking up the guitar. When he finally does, some pretty teacher agrees to teach him. She is fairly impressed with him because he is able to learn it really fast. After what some people would call a small amount of time, he is able to play the tune.

Frustrated (like Normal) decides to invite his friends for a party where he wants to show off his skills. Another associated desire is to ask his Teacher out after the play (She is also invited). Frustrated plays and all his friends clap.

But this isn't Normal's story, so it gets complicated. Teacher tells him that he is really cute and talented, but she already has a boyfriend. Some *&#$@? friend tells him how the rendition was almost as good as the original. (Incidentally, he had mentioned this to Normal as well, but weirdly enough, he seemed fine with it).

All this is too much for Frustrated. He continues to go to sleep jittery and frustrated.

I rest my case. :)

P.S. Not to be taken seriously

To tell you the truth, I never intended to guide people in becoming entrepreneurs. Far from it. It just happens that three people pinged me on facebook to tell me that they thought my blog was good.

I believe in science. And I believe that science says that when you have the same observation thrice, it's about time for deduction. Which in this case has lead to an attempt to bring my dead blog back to life.

Before you start, to prevent you from getting any false ideas about me, I would like to clarify the following.

• I come from a family where they have never been any entrepreneurs/businessmen. In short, no one I am related to has ever made a "profit".

• My family does not believe in entrepreneurship. In short, everyone I am related to tries to explain why the whole idea of entrepreneurship is not a very smart one.

If you still want to learn from me, I would gladly feel sorry for you. Here goes the list of do's and don'ts.

• Don't start deciding the name first. We spent the first two months doing nothing except working on the name!! And what we finally agreed on (and have stuck to), in our college lingo means 'idiot'.

• If it's an internet/software startup, forget about getting a server. We wasted the next two months thinking about the advantages we would have with a dedicated server. When we finally worked on the disadvantages list, it turned out to be so long that today we host our website on a free webspace.

• If you haven't already, do not watch the movie "The Social Network". Not that it isn't an awesome movie, but they day my partner watched it (I recommended it to him), he started talking about how much each of us own and how we should always inform the other before every decision taken. *wink*

• This one is very important. Never, and I mean never ever announce a product before you have it completely ready. The following things could happen:

- Out of the blue your day job may start demanding hectic hours and you won't get any more time to work on the product.

- You may start getting bored with working on the same thing for a long time.

- You start getting the feeling that the product is useless. This is usually the most common.

• Well this one is a revelation. You have your website up and running which tries to tell people what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. Simple enough. You post the link somewhere (a little bragging never hurt anyone), and next thing you know is you start getting the following type of messages on Facebook -
  
  
  "Awesome work man! Btw what are we supposed to do on the site?"
  
  
  You are not supposed to do anything dumbo! All you are supposed to do is to look at it and tell us if you think it's good/bad.

• If you are a group of one/two/three etc people, you must understand that you can't be one/two/three for the rest of your life. So you need to bring in new people. How? Don't ask me, we are still two.

• This one is a secret. Odd jobs never hurt anyone. I suspect that all entrepreneurs have done some at some point. For example, I sometimes do assignments for grad students in US/Europe to keep my paypal account ticking. *wink*

• You always live in the morbid fear that you are getting accustomed to (and maybe even interested in) your day job. Trust me, it's not true. After spending an uncomfortable more than a year, I finally realized this. "All day jobs suck and have always sucked".

• Try not to tell everyone you know that you are the proud owner of a company without a product. I understand that at it's really difficult, but atleast try.

Well, I suppose that almost sums up my knowledge of becoming an entrepreneur. If you are a lonely reader who happened to wander to this dead blog, post a comment if you feel like.

On a bright sunny morning in April, 2010, a bus dropped us at Haldwani, Uttarakhand. We were en-route to Chowkori, a little hill station in Uttarakhand when my stomach declared trouble.

We neither had the time nor the intention to book a room or something, so armed with a paper-soap, I walked into a place called "HI-TEC toilet". Needless to say, after an overnight bus journey, I was under immense pressure.

After I had settled down, and everything had settled back to perspective (If you have ever faced a similar situation, you know what I mean), I noticed a tiny little piece of graphiti amidst all of the porno that is so characteristic to an Indian public toilet.

It said, "Maaza aaya??".

I so wanted to write "Yes" a thousand times over :-).

Does this happen to you too?

I was eating loads of street food, when someone commented that on the hygenic aspect of street food. In response I told everyone how I had a pretty robust digestive system ( Which I still maintain that I do), so that I could loads of everything and anything that I wanted. The next morning, everyone else is fine, while I keep shuttling between the room and the loo.

I tell someone how I efficiently wrap up my work on time, so much so that I never need to stay back late or go to work on weekends. All through that week, I do 11+ hours and also work from home over the weekend.

I tell my folks how popular I am in college (again I still maintain that I am still a recognized face in my campus, even though I am out of it now), and the next day they meet someone who has never heard of me before. The day I had told someone that I was good with mechanics, the graphics lab prof told me that teaching me graphics had been a complete waste of his and my time.

It's not a crime to brag once in a while, is it??

When the chips are down and the stakes are high,
When the match is tied and you bowl a bye.

When the bills are high and the cash is low,
When the Man-Hole was open and down you go.

When you get a dud after expecting a beauty,
When you see that idiot flaunting a cutie.

When a bird shits on you when you pass under a tree,
When you gotta go to office and the loo ain't free.

When you work on weekends while your friends go booze,
When you brush your teeth and you want to snooze.

When you sweat in office while your Manager has fun,
When you write a code and it does not run.

When the appraisals are out and your ratings are down,
When everyone seems smiling while you wear a frown.

When the Day is Valentine, and you haven't got a date,
When she rejected your proposal but the chocolates she ate.

When your present is boring and your future looks bleak,
When you are avoided coz you complain like a freak.

When the shoes are worn and the road is rough,
When you feel so squashed but the going feels tough.

When everyone you know would kick your bum,
Just hang on Buddy, for your time will come!! :-))

Ahemmm, ahemm, I'm blogging after...... lemme see.......3 months!!

Well, today's one of those rare lucky days, when I have nothing to do (that goes only for the next few minutes, touchwood) and I am still not worrying how I am supposed to show in my ILC(timesheet) what I was doing during this time.

For updates, the pretty gal who sits in front of me hasn't reported to work today(before you think I am that lucky, also consider that there are two wooden partitions in between, which incidentally are completely opaque ;)).
My Functional Manager is in Spain along with one Team Lead, the rest of the Team Leads are in a meeting, and one Lead who has just been back from Spain, has been offering Spanish chocolates to everyone around 30 seconds ago. Tell you what, there's nothing special about Spanish chocolates.

Well, so much for the Mr. X story. If you haven't read that, you might consider doing so here.

Well I am Mr. X now, except the beautiful Mrs X part, which I am sure you have already figured out. Being Mr. X, I wanted to add a little to the story.

• Mr. X never lets a single chance to trash his juniors pass by.

• Mr. X's manager and seniors; similarly never allow a single chance to trash Mr. X pass by.

• As far as the current Mr. X in question (read I) is concerned, I got no juniors

• Mr. X sometimes attends office parties where he feels like screaming his head off, let alone having fun.

• Mr. X meets no clients and delivers no presentations. Instead he tests codes that other people have written (usually) and occasionally gets to write a few lines of code and modify a few lines of pre-written code. Incidentally Mr. X has discovered that the codes he deals with require absolutely zero imagination and no creativity.

The rest of the updates will follow as and when Mr. X finds time and finds updates *wink*. For now, Mr. X has to test the next piece of code. :-).

I do not expect many people to read this post, partly because I have been on an extended leave from the blogosphere and mostly because I never had many readers to start with. So, if you did read this post, you might consider offering Mr. X your sympathies.

Yes I am.

I am stuck in a company. More specifically, I am stuck in a training room. The trainer fumbles while executing a simple C++ program and wonders whether "Using namespace std" ends in a semicolon. He has no idea that C++ codes can be compiled using "g++". What are we doing?? We are learning Object Oriented Programming Concepts (OOPS) in two whole days!!

This is an absolute mockery of my B.E degree. All the time, I sit around chatting and surfing the Internet while the trainer drones on about how confusing Inheritance is. Worse, the guys in the class, leave alone the ones not from Computer Science backgrounds, are even more pathetic. This is a batch where more than 80% of the class cannot complete a factorial program in C in 15 minutes! I am not enjoying being the smart guy in the batch, not anymore.

But the worst part is that I am not feeling like running away as I should. I am yet to receive my first paycheck, but the mere thought is tempting. In a long time, I am very concerned about what future has in store for me.

Sitting on a bench in a railway compartment munching a stale hot chicken patties, it occurred to me that life was not fair. For example, the stale hot chicken patties that came without tomato sauce (courtesy a shop at the station) had cost me fourteen bucks. Not fair. First, the only place where I could find chicken was in the name. Next, the little square piece of baked or fried or whatever dough had cost ten bucks the last time it went down my food pipe. Which was probably 2-3 years ago. But then, this one tasted as if it had been fried 2-3 years ago as well.

My eyes darted to the pretty gal in the corner of the compartment. She was smiling at some apparent joke which her dull looking boyfriend had cracked. Not fair again. I was single, sweaty and grumpy while that guy was having a good time.

Life is also strange. Lets take the patties example. The vegetable patties is triangular while the chicken patties is square. I tried hard to figure out some apparent reason that could justify this fantastic choice of shapes. Probably the difference ensured that the vendor would not hand over chicken patties against vegetable orders as a mistake. I gave up thinking. Maybe I should have bought a vegetable patties instead. They seemed to sell more; that meant it was less probable that they would be stale. I have the best of realizations at the worst of moments. Life isn't fair at all.

Back to the gal. Perhaps I was a bit harsh on her boyfriend. If that was her boyfriend at all. I of all people should abstain from judging people by their looks. Its funny how we do the things that we expect others not to. Nah, Life is a weird and unfair concoction.

Why did the patties vendor sell me the stale stuff? He certainly did not intend to sell stale patties to me when he had placed his order. He was bad at inventory control. I remembered that they had taught me inventory control back in my fourth semester. Weird. I am a software techie who has a one in a million chance of ever having an inventory. They keep teaching the wrong guys. Our mathematics department had put me through a lot of trouble mugging inventory control. I wished they had spared me the trouble. The vendor selling the stale patties deserved it more anyway.

My thoughts were stopped mid-way by the gal. She stared at me. Or so I thought. I am never confident when gals look anywhere around me. A part of me tells me that I was the intended recipient of the gaze. The other part tells me that the gal looked at everything except me. By the time I make up my mind, the gals are long gone. No wonder, I was single and grumpy on that bench.

The train stopped with a jerk. The gal and her probable boyfriend walked out. I was done eating the patties. I realized that I had patties crumbs clinging to a substantial portion of my face. Even the bag on my lap had minuscule crumbs all over. I have never really learnt the art of eating cakes and patties. I took out my handkerchief and started to clean up the mess.

Sometimes I have these weird whims.

All of a sudden, I decided to create a rebel version of myself. So I sit glued to photoshop for an entire evening. I was trying to create a message for the world, just when I am about to leave college and move into it.

And this is what I ended up with.


I am really displeased with the end result. But I am a rebel now, and that means I don't care whether what I come up with is good or bad *wink*. (Being a rebel certainly has its advantages).

In fact I did not know what I wanted to do with it, so I put it on my blog. Cause not everything that I put on my blog needs to be satisfying for me.

In a now famous speech at Stanford graduation, Steve Jobs once talked about a piece on death. It said, "If you live each day as if it were your last, some day, you will certainly be right".

I'm not really open to the idea of dying anytime in near future, but a bit of introspection always helps. If I were to die tonight, could I look back and believe that there's nothing with my life that I would wish to change? That, I believe, is important.
It's hardly plausible that anyone would want to play Mahul Bhattacharya. So this is not a guide to being me. Rather, its an endeavor to find out what I am and what I am not.

So being me means:

• Daydreaming: Forms a very important part of my life. This is what I do when I have nothing else to do. Which incidentally is almost always the case. From winning the Nobel and Booker to rocking on stage in orange shirt and silver pants :D. From playing superhero to cricketing hero. Lamborghinis and Porsches and Hayabusas. And obviously, lots of hot gals fighting to win me over.Not all dreams are that rosy though. When I'm disturbed, the dreams get all dark and murky. I land up in jail and get bashed up on the streets. I flunk exams and get thrown out of college. In short, you name it, I've dreamt it.

• Profiling: That's another thing I keep doing. Profiling people and situations. In short figuring out how the world would react to stimulus. Most of it always turns out to be wrong. The rest never happens *wink*. Once in a blue moon, I get something right. And that gives me the incentive to carry on with this mindless monologue. But yes, it does help in understanding how people react to situations. And that, I like to believe, helps me react better.
  

• You will have to eat lots, digest that properly and still keep looking like a stick.

• Late to bed and late to rise. And keep promising yourself everyday that you will end the cycle.

• Procrastination: Somehow I can't seem grow out of my affinity for the Indian Railways schedule. And tell you what, when it comes to not being on time, I beat them by miles.

Being me also means you can say good bye to:

• Ladies man: Not extra caring and extra generous with the fairer sex. Another reason why gals find me obtuse.

• Spoilt brats: We keep a safe distance. Dunno why. But expect no special attention from me just because you were born filthy rich. If you have substance in you but aren't worth a penny, you would still have all my respect.

• Fashion: Not really my cup of tea.

• Anything addictive: However hard I try, they refuse to climb down my food pipe. Tea, coffee, smoke, booze whatever.

This list is no where near exhaustive. Whatever I write, there would still be more to me. That's why I am a human after all.
And yes, Instruo pictures won't be coming. Why? Because I found that I am missing from most of them.

Hello blogging world!!

I'm back. After a hugely successful stint in the college technical festival, INSTRUO as Internal Coordinator. This would rank amongst the most satisfying experiences of my life.

As a part of the package, comes the hype and the recognition. Only to dwindle and die away with time. Not that I'm complaining one bit. Yeah, I impressed lots of people. And as usual, none of them were girls. *wink*.

But that's something I will talk about some other day. Today, with the Instruo experience and the anticipation of the cultural fest just around the corner, I want to talk about something entirely different. I want to talk about the two mistakes of my life.

I would have loved a better physique. With an imposing physical appearance, some things would have been far easier.

I should have learned some music. That's one area I have never explored. Except listening to music; some idiots call that a 'hobby'.

Perhaps its too late to amend these mistakes. Perhaps its never too late. Only time can tell. Instruo pictures coming soon.

What's up, everybody??

The last few days have been quite eventful. I was depressed, I was happy, I was confused... life has been strange. I was burdened with responsibilities. And the burden will continue till the 12th of April, perhaps even longer. I hardly find to time blog these days. Sorry blogger buddies, I really could not catch up with your blogs through this time.

Life's strange. Through the four years of college, my hostel mates have formed my world. I have lived with them and I have dreamed with them. We have been sharing the highs and lows of life together. And I have never really thought about it. But when it is poised to end, it feels so empty inside. Because I know, with time and distance, we will gradually turn from buddies to college friends to acquaintances to long lost friends. It is bound to happen and there is nothing I can do that would change that.

I have always loved to be the guy in control, I like things happenning my way. When they didn't, I always knew that I had only myself to blame. But this one time, I feel so powerless. Whatever that I might have done, it would still be the same. And with cruel luck, no two of us would be relocating to the same place. In a matter of months, we would be scattered all over the country.

Life suddenly doesnt seem that rosy anymore. Add to that, worse things have been happening all this time. A friend got engaged and had to break up for no fault of his. That too in a week! I was always half misogyne, and I can slowly feel the circle comming close.
Whatever, there's always something to look forward to, and with the technical and cultural festivals just around the corner, I hope I'll be cheering up soon!

I sincerely feel that I should sketch more. But I don't. Maybe because I never saw any future with my little talent. Or it might be that I was more interested in science and technology. Whatever, though my career as an artist is over, there's no harm in wielding a pencil once in a while.

I'm currently trying to do one, so I thought a little bit of appreciation could help keep my spirits high. I posted my last sketch on orkut. Incidentally the last sketch was done around 6 months back and the one before that was around 4-5 years back, if not more. That definitely means I'm improving!

This one was inspired by Catherine Zeta Jones. All comments and criticisms are more than welcome.

We once had this poster on our wall with this pic of a tiger lazying in the grass and the caption

I would, if I could.
But I can't, so I won't.

That perfectly defines my state of mind on VDay eve.
Being the man of few words that I am, that's all I would like to say.

Life's weird.

It's been a month since I wrote something thanks to exams. All along, I had been planning to write that post. But one evening I watched October Sky and I am writing about something so completely different.

It's a movie about following your dreams. Dreams that sound so impossible that the world laughs at them. Dreams that do not seem logical, not even remotely possible. It's the story of a boy who dreams such a dream and then realizes it.

I'm not an emotional person, I never get too sad or too happy and cannot recall the last time I shed tears. But watching the movie got me so emotional that I'm writing a blog post about it. And guess what, the movie is no tragedy. It ends on such a happy note!

It was then that I realized that I'm a person who lives in and has always lived for his dreams. It's pretty odd for me to get so moved by a movie, but yes, I am moved. And why shouldn't I be? 'Cause a person without dreams is a dead person. Nature did not risk creating humans(given the havoc we have played with it), just because it wanted one more species that would eat, sleep, drink, go shopping, party and slug on in a job he never dreams about.

So, the next time someone tells you that your dreams are preposterous, stop listening to him. It doesn't really matter whether you live to see your dreams convert into reality. For if you can dream, you are better than every pathetic idiot who doesn't. And sometimes I hope I always had a dream to run after. Coz if I run out of dreams someday, what would I do?? Yeah, the society might consider me successful, but I would be no better than the labourer at a construction site who has forgotten how to dream. Perhaps we should teach them how to dream as well.

So DREAM ON GUYS!

For dreams might not always make success stories, but they do make extraordinary stories.