The Leaves of Life

When I was a small kid, my grandpa used to tell me a short story. And I liked it very much. As much, as he liked repeating it to me over and over again. The story goes like- there was this man, old and depressed. Saddened by his dull life and the reducing strength of his body, he grew more and more weak. He got ill and had to be hospitalised. No medicine would make him better. There was no one to talk to him but his doctor. His wife had already died and his children had left him estranged. Lying on his hospital bed, he developed a kind of attachment towards this plant kept on the window. He would keep gazing at it all day and it seemed to provide some solace to the old fellow.

One day, he woke up and found that the plant had shed a leaf onto the ground. This made him sad as if he had lost a dear one. Next day, one more leaf fell. Everyday, the leaves kept falling. The old man grew more and more ill. He would not talk to anyone, would not even smile. He won't get out of his bed. Even breathing was difficult for him. His doctor abandoned all hope. One night, he called for his doctor and pointing towards the withered plant, whispered in his ear, "I will not survive tomorrow. I shall depart with this last leaf. I wanted to thank you for all that you have done for me". The doctor went out, his face beaming with new found hope. He knew exactly what he had to do.

The next day, old man woke up. As he slowly opened his eyes, he looked at the window as he used to do everyday. Much to his amazement, the plant had grew one leaf. He couldn't believe his eyes. It was like a miracle to him. He "survived" that day. He even smiled.

As days went by, he would wake up every morning to find new leaves on the plant. The old man improved with the plant. He now started taking a good diet and was breathing normally. One morning, he got off his bed and walked towards the window with his trembling but much stronger legs. He gazed at his beloved plant. The man's eyes split apart in astonishment. The leaves were artificial and were attached to the branches with some tape.

Not knowing how to react, he kept staring. The doctor came from behind, put an arm across the old man's shoulder gently and with a grin on his face, said, "Sir, isn't it amusing how much we are dependent on others for our hopes, happiness and life?". "It's even more amusing how some living people leave you to die and something as irrelevant as dead leaves gives you a new life", replied the old man.

A New Chapter

 “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” - Albert Einstein.

The current ways of my life don't fit in the the goals I have set for myself. It's all going to change now. One step at a time. I will change all of it.

The workout shall begin coming Friday.

"All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them." - Walt Disney

This time, I will stay the course. Amen!

Detour!

Leaving a secure job and the monthly pay cheques was not an easy decision. In business, you have to be like one-man army. When you own a business, the fate of that business lies pretty much in your hands and as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. And, I have never been very fond of responsibilities.

Well to be honest,I don't have those businessman-like traits. I am not very outgoing, not a quick decision maker, I haven't handled much responsibilities till now and certainly I have almost zero experience of marketing as yet. Only thing going in my favor is that I can work hard. Really hard. But you know, that's not sufficient to get you ahead of your competition and ironically, the nature of my work doesn't require that much hard work.

I was sure that the job life was not my cup of tea. And, the next available option was this business. It took a hell lot of restlessness and countless sleepless nights before I could arrive at this decision. Now, I plan to stick to it. I plan to stick to it long enough till it becomes the need of my life. My bread and butter. And, I am sure the needs will teach me everything that I need to learn. At least, I will be living a life of my choice.

I do feel restless even now. I get tensed. But I need to stay positive. Reassuring myself, I wrote down a few lines. They are in Hindi.

dagar kathin hai, dagar bhayankar..
ye dagar jo tune thami,
mat maan isko nakaami..
ye to ek pariksha teri..
kitni tez chale andheri,
tu chalta hi jaega..
rok na tujhe paega
koi bhi toofan;
tu manzil pa jaega,
tu manzil pa jaega!

Translation:

The path is difficult and scary..
The path that you have held onto,
Don't be bothered by the failures..
These are your tests.. that
however cruel the winds may get,
You'll keep walking..
No storm would stop you
And you'll achieve your target!

The Purpose of my Life!

I didn't have much work to do the whole day. In fact, that is the nature of my work. But, I am currently finding it difficult to adjust to. The days seem too long and bland.  Since, this has been going on for the past few days, a sense of negativity started to creep in.

It all started accumulating while I was lying on my bed in the dark. Why is this happening? What am I doing? Am I on the right path? Is this the purpose of my life? After a while, the questions started bothering me so much that I felt that I would have a breakdown. You can say that I take my life too seriously. I won't deny.

Then I thought, if I am thinking all this, then sure as hell thousands of others have been through it as well. And like, I am doing right now, they too would have shared it on the Internet. I went on-line.

People indeed had gone through the same stuff. I read a lot, from a lot of unknown people. They were facing the same questions.. What is the purpose of life? Why does life seem so pointless? After reading it all, all the turmoil inside me was pacified. I would like to share it with you.

Human life, like all other life forms is a result of an evolutionary process designed to survive with nature. We arrived in this world to carry forward our race, period. You can call this the meaning of life, if you like. But questions like "what is the meaning of my life" are as null and void as asking "what is the purpose of that bird or that tree". The question of life's meaning comes to human mind because man has evolved to such an extent (thanks to our ancestors) that he has secured his future and his children's future (talking about the more fortunate places) and the basic instinct of survival has been taken care of. If you see all these discoveries and inventions, they initially aided in assuring prolonged lives (survival, i.e) for humans. We did it all to survive, live longer and raise our children for them to carry on the race. All this purpose is inseparably fitted into our conscience. Take the wheel or the electric bulb (being able to read for more time would eventually lead to further discoveries) or a refrigerator (fresh food keeps us from getting ill) or the atom bomb (survival of the fittest, remember?); each of these discoveries or inventions had that innate basic instinct of survival attached. This instinct has been within us all the time.

So, the purpose of our life is to carry on the life. Now you would say, why do people watch television or go partying? This is not necessary for survival. Well, man has progressed so much that after all the time he invests in making sure that he survives, he still has time! So, to save himself from the ill-effects this time could have (which we call boredom, depression, etc.); he has come up with all these pursuits. You can also take it in this way that boredom and depression can also shorten one's life, even if by a few minutes. The instinct is to live till the last second possible.

Why the suicides? Or drug-abuse? Or other self-destructing tendencies when the sole purpose is survival? Now this is the result of misunderstanding the whole scenario (take no offence). We wrongly tend to believe that we were sent down to attain something or some purpose. Or life is unfair. In fact, life doesn't take sides. All of us start from zero and the aim is, I repeat, survival. We do not need to do any less or any more than what we require for our survival. But things start getting messed up when we throw ourselves in illusions. We think that we have to BE THAT or DO THAT and we think that are a failure if we can't. We break down and get shattered if can't achieve all THAT. But the fact is that, life is not judging you by all THAT. It just wants you to survive and carry on. You are being judged only by YOU and those AROUND YOU, because all of you have created some sort of imaginary standards for yourself to determine your success and failure; or happiness and destitution. Life measures your success by your survival. We are a result of our ancestors' success. You don't have to be a millionaire or a president or a rock star to be successful in life's terms.

So wouldn't I call an Einstein or a Lincoln or a Steve Jobs or a Mother Teresa successful? Undoubtedly, I would.  Because I am "imagining" that they achieved the targets they must have set for themselves. Also, they survived and carried on. I used the word "imagining" because who knows if in their mind they still had not achieved all that they wanted. I place them in such high regard because what they accomplished in their highly distinguished lives was far more than what I have done so far. Had, these people not done all this and lived a "common" man's life; they would still be successful in "life's" terms because they SURVIVED. But they won't be successful by OUR STANDARDS because our brains have created these standards to measure success. This is the entire difference.

So, we don't come down with a purpose. The purpose in our terms is what we generally use to describe the state where we are happy and satisfied and all good things and it is SET BY US AND NOT LIFE. So never ask anyone "what is the purpose of my life?". You will never get the right answer. NEVER. You yourself have to create THAT purpose!

The Helpless Human!

Lost in my thoughts, i began to ponder over the absolute helplessness of humans... Humans, who are the masters of this world, who have shaped even the mighty nature to facilitate their need and greed, and still, humans are so weak and incapable. How helpless we are when the plane we are sitting in takes off and lands every single time, and when we are sitting in the safety of our houses and the earth begins to quake. How helpless we are when we are saying goodbye to loved ones before setting out on a trip and the driver goes reckless.

Is the liberty of mind or soul a possible reality for such a vulnerable life living in or rather surviving every second of the unknown catastrophe. Can real and prolonged happiness be achieved amidst the uncertainty or the enlightened ones who claim to be happy in every given situation of life are actually not that enlightened and happen to ignore the uncertainty that each one of us faces every second because ignoring the absolute truth to justify some other truth can't be enlightenment. An enlightened being must know all that's true and all that isn't. And knowing the truth about such appalling uncertainties that we face every moment, i don't think that happiness can be achieved. That's why i was wondering whether real happiness has more to do with enlightenment or is it possible only with ignorance of some sort,i.e., closing eyes to a part of the reality.

Write to me in HEAVEN!

I wrote this down when a very dear one passed away 2 years ago. I was just thinking how much he must be missing all the 'life' down here, because he was such an outgoing man, always social and friendly and welcoming and all those good things..

I am sure he must be wanting that someone provides him with constant feeds of this world. I was somehow convinced about this otherwise ironical situation that he, siting there in heaven, would give anything to get back here. How much he loved this world and the people here, he surely didn't want to leave this early. It was like he was saying to me..

Write of the joy,
Write of the sorrows..
Write of  the lifeless
and the lovely boroughs..

Write of the endless pain,
Write of the sane, the insane.
Write of the greatest will,
Write of the urge to kill.

Write of the loves lost,
Write of a heart's cost..
Write of the deepest desires
and the alluring attires.

Write to me pious,
Write to me frank..
Write me about those
on whom i drank.

Write of the hate,
Write of the pain..
Write me of loss,
Write me of gain.

Write to me insults,
Write 'em loud and clear
Write to me a name
that can better bear!

Pass the MASALA, BABY!!

Now that I have quit my job, and I am more happy than ever and proudly self employed; I was recalling some of the memories of my old workplace, i.e, Gujarat. I can't help but share with you this phenomenon, this lifeline that runs through every corner and every street of Saurashtra (Gujarat)- it's MASALA, baby!

Well, to those lucky people who have not witnessed the masala magic, I may explain that Masala is a mixture of tobacco, supari and lime- served by the Panwala (The small tobacco shop guy) tied in a small polythene. You have to rub the polythene on your palm to mix it properly and then just put it in your mouth and chew it and savor the feeling (not that I have ever gone close to even trying that, I abhor it personally). The people there proudly chew the mixture till they squeeze the life out of that mixture (and calcium out of their teeth, lol) and till the red liquid like mixture, gets stuck between their hardly there teeth (the lime slowly erodes the teeth!) and till they can hardly speak- their mouths full to the brim with that mixture and then they spit it! Yes, they spit it on the roads, on the walls, on the neighbours' roof, on the cars, in parks... They spit it anywhere. Are you listening Singaporeans??

You wont believe I have seen the tarmac of Saurashtra roads change color to red. Such is the downpour of Masala on them.

While I was working there, I did quite a few interviews with my Masala chewing colleagues, lol.
They were funny. One said that though he knows the ill effects Masala can have, he can't work without it and if given abundant supply he can work for days without sleeping. You had to depend on your reflexes to save yourself from his spit, because the Masala had eaten up his teeth over the years.

Another said that since a babu always used to ask masala packs to get his work done, he one day stealthily mixed double lime in the mix and served it to him to vent his anger. The babu couldn't eat for a few days because of the ulcers.

Upon being asked if the Saurashtra girls mind the guys chewing up that Masala all the time (because I was pretty sure that the mixture cant help the romance), my young colleague said that the girls here grow up watching their fathers and elder brothers chewing Masala, so they know that their future boyfriend or husband will do the same. They are prepared.

Such is the acceptance towards this deadly addiction in that region. And it's ironical that the state has bans on liquor sale instead!

મને મસાલા પસાર?! નથી :D