The Elephant who didnt try long enough

The elephant was born somewhere in the dense forests of India. Home to thousands of wild animals with hills and streams and woods and plains. He enjoyed the wildness of the woods, where he could roam anywhere he wanted to, swim whenever he wished, eat whatever he liked. Life was good.

Until one day he was caught up by a group of hunters. He was still a baby elephant, shorter in height than even humans, when he got trapped. Next thing he knew, he was in a zoo with plenty of other animals but all of them caged like he was. Big strong chains anchored in the ground won't let him move. He tried with all his strength to free himself but he was too tiny and weak to uproot those shackles. He was young, lonely and frightened. Each day he tried to free himself up by using all of his strength but in vain. With each passing day he felt more and more hopeless and then finally one day he stopped trying.

Years later, this same elephant grew up to be a big strong sturdy healthy animal. His strength was at his peak and he could easily have freed himself up from those chains had he tried now. But he didn't. He had given up a long time ago. He had accepted his fate. Not that he was happy with it. He still wanted to get out of bonds but he didn't have the courage to try anymore. Plus there were other negative thoughts that bothered him now- What if he couldn't find his family? What if he wasn't accepted in the wild? What if he got caught again? He was afraid to disappoint himself once again. He had grown up to become timid and weak.

He passed away in the zoo at a very young age. Poor thing, he never tasted freedom. If only he had tried a little more, a little longer.

Happy Job Anniversary to me

It was a rainy day last year on the 1st of July when I made my way through a crowded bus to my first day at office. My first job. It was pouring cats and dogs, I was standing and suffocating inside the BEST bus but it didn't bother me much. I was more concerned about how the office would be. How and where I will work. How will the colleagues be. Who will sit next to me. And many many other questions.

But that was 1 year ago. Now we have finished 1 yr of office life. A whole year of work experience. Not much actually but hey its still a big number. 365 days. Would have been cool if the entire freshers batch who had joined with me could have celebrated it somewhere. But never mind.

A new freshers batch swarmed in the same day. Unlike our batch these one was big. And had quite a lot of girls. Our batch had only one. :(

We being seniors to them, got to interact with them in 1 small induction session on the second day. It felt good, those few minutes. Seeing their faces. Some nervous. Some bored. Some tired. Some anxious. The others, confused. I liked that picture. After some small talk and a few questions, it ended. We walked out with a smile on our face. Felt good at being seniors now.

Seniors :)

The Kite Runner was marvelous

Hello again. Long time since my last post. A month alright. Just couldn't gather the time to sit down and write something in peace.

Anyways its a really rainy day today. Its been raining for hours now and I am so pleased it was a Saturday so I didn't have to step out of home for anything. Wanted to do some shopping for rainy wear but I didn't. It can wait for some other day. Maybe tomorrow. I hate shopping anyways.

Got some time to indulge in reading. Finished 'The Kite Runner' by Khalid Hosseini just 20 minutes back. What an amazing story. So emotional and so riveting. Actually brings a lump to your throat. Do read it if you come across it and tell me if you like it.

That's it for now. Gotta sleep now. Bye.

Quarter life crisis anyone?

You may have heard of something called as 'Mid life crisis'. When people enter their forties, they suddenly begin to develop a feeling of dissatisfaction and resent towards themselves. They reflect back on their life and begin to wonder if things could have been a little better had they done something different in the past. They aren't satisfied with what they are now and how their life has turned out to be. It can be because of career, money, status, family problems, loneliness, guilt, some other reason or maybe a combination of many. Depression sets in and it grows and grows finally destroying their inner peace of mind completely.

What do you call when something similar hits you when you are in your twenties. Quarter life crisis? You are in your mid twenties having just graduated from a top college with a prestigious degree. You land yourself a job and are earning big money working day and night at a reputed company. Everyone around you is happy. You seem to be enjoying this new phase of life too.

But ...

Something just doesn't seem to be right. You ask yourself - Is this it? Is this what I will be doing for the rest of my life? You begin to question yourself if you are really enjoying what you are doing. What happened to the countless dreams you had way back in school when you were a small kid. Back then, everything seemed achievable. Where did all of that go? Maybe you wanted to be a musician, maybe an actor, maybe a scientist. You could have been anything. Back then, you were the brightest person you knew amongst your age. Goddamn! You could have done anything, right? And then you realize that you are not even close to what you had thought you would be.

And then frustration sets in. Life begins to suck endlessly. You shirk responsibility and your performance level at work drops. Enthusiasm reaches its lowest level and you become a living zombie. You drag yourself to your mundane chores not because you enjoy it or love it. No. You do it because you have to. Because that's what you have been doing and are expected to do. A sense of helplessness crawls in dampening your inner spirit and decaying your mind.

This is something, I am sure, many of us have been through at some point of time. All around I can see unhappy faces. You can sense the dissatisfaction on other peoples faces and wonder if you are amongst them. Scared, you peep inside yourself and you find that you are no different. What do you do then? Leave things as they are hoping that somehow life would turn out to be nice and that sooner or later, all those old ambitions would fade into oblivion. Maybe life would present you with something more fruitful than what you had previously aimed for. Everything's gonna be alright, you tell yourself halfheartedly.

Or do you choose the tougher path. Where nothing is guaranteed. There is a chance at every corner that you will flat on your face. That you will lose all what you have now. Maybe things get even worse. Society ridicule. Monetary problems. Pressure from family and friends. So many problems you may have to go through. Yes, if you succeed, there is no doubt you will be the happiest person in the world. But in case you fail, then what?

Its a tough call. What would you do when you fall in such a situation? Tell me.

My take on election results

So the election results are out and the results were a huge surprise for one and all. It was supposed to be a really close election and I was expecting the results to be very competitive. Even the major parties had acknowledged it by saying that the results would be touch-and-go this time round. But the margin with which the Congress have won has taken everyone by surprise, including the Congress themselves I guess.

People have voted for stability is what is being said. But if stability is nice then even change is good isn't it? Manmohan Singh, the respectable soft-spoken clean man that he is, will yet again swear to be the prime minister. Rahul Gandhi, the baccha, has emerged a hero and so have all the younger lot of politicians. New parties like the MNS lead by Raj Thackerey collected a huge number of votes(althought they didnt win anywhere) and did a lot of damage for the BJP-Sena thereby helping the congress.

Where on one side we have a group of surprise winners , on the other side we have a long list of surprise losers including Lalu who lost from one of his constituencies (he won in one though). There were so many biggies vying for the coveted PM chair. Sharad Pawar, one of the country's real heavy weights tried his best but was unlucky again. So was Mayawati behenji and thank you people for doing that.

In all of this the BJP seriously took a beating. They were nowhere close to the Congress and this must have been a big hit for their ego specially for the biggies like Advani. So where did they go wrong? I am not really sure but I think they just failed to impress the younger lot of voters. If you ask me, I would say the BJP needs a big makeover. Enough of religion based politics now. The Muslims and the other minorities have always been with the Congress for their secular stand(now if they are really secular or not is another issue). The Congress are real pros at sweet-talking and maybe the BJP should take a leaf or two from their rivals book. The youth dont really care about religion and castes anymore. They want a secular state with a performing government. Taking note of that, the BJP should open up to forming a secular party , encourage young leaders and be someone who dont just sweet-talk like their rivals but also walk that talk.

Hooked on to FakeIPLPlayer

Hey have you heard about this fake ipl player's blog? In case you have not, don't waste time and quickly visit fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com because this one is one helluva blog.

Now this one has created waves in the cricketing and blogging world. Some one from the cricketing fraternity has supposedly created this blog and is secretly publishing all the internal behind-the-scenes stories within IPL. Cricketers, commentators, coaches, support staff, team owners - none of them have been spared. With funny nicknames and a witty narration this has become my favorite online blog.

This guy seems to be playing from SRK's KKR team but one cannot be really sure. The number of digs he has taken on the players, support staff and owners have ensured his end in case he gets caught. There's every chance that he actually is a fake guy no where related to cricket and his posts are just figments of someones imagination but still it makes for a damn good read. Having said that, I personally don't believe he is fake looking at his popularity( even Shobhaa De likes this one) and by the manner in which he describes the finer details.

Please read this one from the start and I am sure you will truly enjoy it.

IPL 2

Cricket fever is back and how!

Our everyday talk revolves around cricket and IPL these days. I was never a cricket lover but this T20 format is great fun. Right before the tournament started we had these many websites providing super selector kinda contests wherein you create your own team by purchasing any player with the fixed amount of virtual money they provide. I have registered myself on cricinfo and indianfantasyleague. Me and my colleagues compare each others points everyday to compare who knows his cricket better.

Sadly this time round the tournament is being held in South Africa else I really wanted to see it live here in a stadium. Unfortunately, I have never been to one. Cheering for Mumbai Indians and screaming for Sachin with thousands of other people together in unison would have been quite an experience.

I voted ystrdy ... did u?

So yesterday was the big voting day in Mumbai and I was lucky to get a holiday from my company. A lot of hype was built around voting awareness by the media( read 'jaago re'). Plus with political parties requesting votes from new technologically advanced mediums like blogs and online advertisements I expected this one to be a very strongly active election.

So I went about around 3 in the afternoon to cast my vote with my sis and bro. It was my younger brother's first time and he was quite keen to exercise his voting rights. So we went to the nearby school in the scorching heat where voting was held expecting less crowd at that time of the day but were pleasantly surprised to see long queues for the different voting rooms. Fortunately we had no queue for our room and we were quickly done with the process in less than 5 minutes ( yes all the 3 of us).

If you don't know how things go inside the voting room please read on else move to the next paragraph. Once your turn arrives, you show ur voting card ticket to the person nearest to you. He will go through his book of voters, search your name and mark it out. The next person will ask for both- your election identity card( or any other proof) and the polling slip(which shows if you belong to the given locality). He crosschecks it and his approval takes you to the next person who will use a strong ink to draw a line on your ahem, ahem, middle finger. Now this ensures that you vote only once. The last person will pull out some coupon and ask you to proceed to the all important voting machine. Now this machine will be strategically placed to ensure complete confidentiality. You press the button adjacent to your candidate's symbol, wait for the beep and you are done. Simple and fun if you are a young voter.

This was mine and my sister's second time and before we left the house, my mom and dad tried to use their influence on our votes( they both support different parties as of now). Smart kids that we are, we slipped away and gave our secret votes( we never mentioned our candidate's names to each other and our parents). I voted for the person whom I think has done enough for our constituency. Who becomes the prime minister and who doesnt really doesnt affect the local man I believe.

At the end of the day we found out that 40- something percent people had exercised their voting rights in our block. Today morning, the newspapers stated that it was the same state all over Mumbai. What a shame! All those loud ads on television did nothing for the common man is born to cry and complain all his life. I agree that joining politics is a tough option for young people but at least you can vote. These very people are at the front of the line to abuse politics and netas. If you happen to ask any of their little children about politics, they would say that its bad and corrupt, government sucks and blah blah blah. These annoying stupid kids of their hopeless loser parents.I hope you are not one of them. In case you are then please have some shame on yourself and don't repeat the same mistake again. I am not one of them and would never be one.

Hi

Hey there and welcome to my first blog ever. Its been a long time since I wanted to have my own blog but being the gifted procrastinator that I naturally am I always found some reason not to start one. But now I have finally done it and would try to be a regular sincere blogger. This being my first blog I don't really know what I should write into it. But I think I will try to tell a little bit about myself and give you a fair idea of what to expect from this blog.

So what do you want to know about me? Don't answer that one coz I am not going to answer it anyways :P. I will reveal only what I want to. I am a young boy from Mumbai, a computer engineer by profession and currently working in a software firm based here in Mumbai itself. Although I think of myself as a gentleman I think I am quite boorish and unsocial. Someone who likes his own space and is not at all interested in the majority of the people he meets. I respect my privacy and anyone who crosses it has to face my psychotic wrath. I like to philosophise and think about life, mans ideas, his ideals and what not. Theres a lot more I can write about myself but I will save it for some other time.

Moving on to what you can expect from this blog. The answer is anything and everything. The primary thought was to create a medium to vent out my frustrations and sort my thoughts. But at this precise moment I have not much idea myself about what I will write, how much will I reveal about my personal life so thats for you to wait and see. But since this is a personal blog I would like to talk about my experiences in life, my ideologies and philosophies, my observations, things which all of us should know, my ratings on movies, books and stuff plus all other things that occupy my mind( believe me its a big jumble up there).

So heres expecting you to follow my blog. Any ideas, views or comments are always welcome.
Ciao.