actions

Our actions define our journey in life. Our life is limited and mostly a mixed bag with happiness and pain accumulated together. Murakami says: “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”

Many of us continue living a sedentary life or make negotiations with it. We start making ourselves accept that this is how life has to be. We don’t take action or think about choosing another path.

Our action helps us is keeping us grounded and focused. The distraction we go through in our lives is enormous. We have to pick our battle and stay in it. That is where the action plays a definitive role.

mornings

I have read multiple books and how successful people wake up early and start their day. I would laugh at it reading in my 20s because of the IRC conversation and late-night beer bash.

I wake up early these days. It has become part of me. I feel like a different person: I get to make my coffee, hear birds chirping, and read for two hours without distraction.

I was also a non-believer in yoga and meditation. I remember doing it forcefully in the hostel days in early childhood. I enjoy it now. I don’t do it for hours but just 10-15 mins pranayam and Surya Namaskar.

My Evenings are for long walks. Waking up early means I get free early from work.

point

It is easy to point fingers at others about their life or how they are operating businesses. It requires nothing.

The person living a life or in the journey of it knows what they are into. They are the ones who have plans for it. As an outsider giving any opinion is a waste of time and, in most instances, a piss-off.

I saw over the internet: talks about SoftBank for their loss. These are the same people who don’t know of the past: SoftBank made bombastic returns with Alibaba and Yahoo.

Let the captain run his ship or a human their life. Who are we to judge or point fingers unless we are not directly involved?

true north

The world is a crazy place. You have to make a mark without cribbing, complaining, and crying. You have to work hard to go against all the odds. It’s a lone journey. It’s painful and full of failures. But It’s satisfying because you are trying and working for the bigger purpose of life. You have to battle the temporary pains and blockers.

Keep your true north as your guiding principle intact. Nothing can dethrone you or trouble you. No one can take you for granted and run over you.

You have one life. All your efforts matter. Your feelings matter. So keep going every minute, and focus ultimately on what you want to be. Don’t cry or complain about these temporary obstacles, don’t be weak.

granted

We take our parents for granted, as they will live till eternity.
It took me to realize how fragile life is after my father’s heart attack a few years back.
I don’t live with them but have promised to spend 3-4 months every year with them.
It is not easy for everyone because of jobs or other logistics.
In most cases, we see them for a few weeks every year.
As they age, they crave us more.
They will not express this desire of theirs.
They want us to be happy in our life.

Think about these things.
How many more years you have left to spend with them?
How are you maximizing your time for the same?

complicate

We make our life complicated by getting into numerous webs of untangled and complicated relationships. Everything around us feels like we own some piece of it. As a result, our decision ends up a maze of checkboxes involving the world around us. Is this who we are? Living our needs and wants on others? How much do we have to lead our life making the world around us happy? Why can we not be on ourselves to change our own responsibility for our decision and live life independently?

The allocated time on this planet is limited and we have to make the best of every moment. We have to live in it now instead of planning for the future and keep pushing it for later. Is this who we want to be?

Why do we have to complicate our life so much that we feel caged and decisions of our life not in our control?

kid

We are so swamped with work and satisfying others that we have forgotten ourselves.
The kid inside us has died or got forgotten.
We are acing in our professional life and fulfilling everyone else’s needs.

We should feel good about ourselves or act like that little kid who wants to break free and act crazy. It will make us more creative, and we will battle our failures and frustrations with more force.

How many of Socrates, Aryabhatta, or Van Gogh would have died because of this? We should not let it die. We are a few lucky ones.

Bhoot Bangla

I was told several stories about “bhoot bangla” since I grew up.
Our parents insisted that we avoid that broken bungalow at all costs. Everybody had their story about “bhoot bangla.” The broken house sits in the center of Andheri in Mumbai.
It has survived 70 years like this.
Nobody knows the original owners, but everyone has a story.

My grandpa told us about the mad saheb who lived in that house during British Raj. One night he was shot by a revolutionary. The police caught the killer and burnt him alive. The ghost of mad saheb is all around, and it’s his soul all around the bungalow scaring mare mortals.

My uncle grew up listening to another tale.
After independence, when the Britishers left, the bungalow was bought by some Gujarati Seth. He had a daughter in her early 20’s. She fell in love and eloped with her Bihari servert. The angry Seth got everyone from the poor chap’s family killed. After a few months, the kid came and burnt the entire bungalow killing everyone. That is why nobody comes forward for the ownership.

The only part I like about the bhoot bungalow is that in the concrete jungle in Andheri. We have a green belt with lots of trees.

learn


We don’t need to go out of our way to learn about life. We have people around us, and seeing and learning makes us better. We don’t have to go out or pay for some classes. These people around us motivate us and make us strive for the best. Every single minute we are learning.

The journey of life is small. It does not matter who becomes our guide. Our society has wasted enough dividing society by caste, age, or race. These divisions are a result of limited thinking. We have to grow up, accept to learn from everyone.

Insecurity

Has human insecurity resulted in consumerism? We want to look good, so we paint ourselves. But who defines: good or ugly? The fairness and whitening lotions. The anti-aging cream or artificial hair treatment. Is it, not an industry running on insecurity?

In the end, what matters is who you are inside. This look, Instagram followers, everything will fade with time. Why can we not be ourselves as we are? Our mental well-being should be the priority, not what others think about us.