Rule# 45

I don’t know if you remember #13 , where I stressed on the importance of dates, and what can be a better time to stress some more on it when a brand new year is about to begin.

So today’s rule is a combination of #13 and #36; and also as they say talent and luck are nothing but years/hours of hard work wrapped in glittering wrapper, also you must have heard about the 21 days or 3 weeks rule, i.e. in order to ‘cultivate’ a habit one must perform a task for 3 weeks consecutively. It’s kind of scientifically proven fact that it takes x amount of hours to train one’s mind to fall into a certain pattern.

Anyways, I’ll go little further than 21days or 3 weeks rule, I’ll call it “30 days” rule.

45) For 30 consecutive days, do 2 tasks daily, to make it more interesting or balance it out – do 1 task you really love doing but don’t do it due to any reason and do 1 task which you really dislike doing, which you know should be done to help you in longer run but you continue to ignore it.

उदासी बरसती है

ठंडी सफ़ेद रातों में जब उदासी बरसती है
चुपके से आँखों में यादें तेरी रिसती है

सालों बीते ..बीतीं सदिया ......
लेकिन आज भी आँखों में खुशबू तेरी सिसकती है ......

Is everything for real?

Or am I living someone else’s life in an alien land in disguise?

Sure?

Music 2011

We're just 15 days away from another brand new year - with every passing year I think my preference of music is changing, this year I either liked soft numbers or loud ones, but good lyrics and melody (at least to me) remained constant in both.

Here's the list of my favorite songs of the year.

10 top favorite Songs of the year --

1) Piya -- Tanu Weds Manu
2) Bekaraan -- 7 Khoon Maaf
3) Jo bhi main kehna chahoon -- Rockstar
4) Yun Hi -- Tanu Weds Manu
5) Kun Faya -- Rockstar
6) Awaara -- 7 Khoon Maaf
7) Tere Siva -- Delhi Belly
8) Der Lagi Lekin -- Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
9) Hona Tha Pyaar-- Bol
10) Rangrez - Tanu Weds Manu

Other favorites of the year include -
11) Tere Liye -- 7 Khoon Maaf
12) Saibo -- Shor in the City
13 Haal-E-Dil -- Bbuddah... Hoga Terra Baap
14) Señorita -- Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
15) Khwabon Ke Parinde -- Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
16) Accha Lagta Hai -- Aarakshan
17) Dilli -- No One Killed Jessica
18)Jugni -- Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster
19) Naadaan Parindey - Rockstar
20) Saadda Haq -- Rockstar

Needless to say, but still my top 5 favorite albums are -
1) Tanu Weds Manu
2) 7 Khoon Maaf
3) Rockstar
4) Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
5) Delhi Belly

Eternally looking for something which I have no clue about....…yet I'm looking.

Just like routinely I stand in front of my wardrobe looking for something which I know doesn’t exists but still I look for it.

Rule# 44

44) Casually said/stated negative remarks/gestures by your dearest friend can possess most toxic venom to crush your spirit whereas casually stated positive gestures by complete strangers possess the power to boost your spirit to the skies.

Daily I start for somewhere and daily I end up from where I started.

It’s a circle I know, its slopes are slippery, and it drags me along with it like hordes of rush hour commuters push me in and out of the metro, like flock of seagulls escort me along the sky.

I feel like an odd pigeon among all the pigeons who feed on the left-over bread crumbs or discarded sandwiches on the sidewalks, who are so frightened and yet so fearless to face the mad dash of pedestrians and their contraptions alike, who eat as if that’s their last bit of food ever, and fly away in circles on slightest sign of danger, and end up on the same sidewalk after performing mindless ritual of flying two blocks in circles.

Daily I start for somewhere and daily I end up from where I started.

:-)

It fills my heart with so much joy to see his interest in music :-)

not a Rule# 43 , actually

43) They say, “a problem shared is a problem halved”…but sharing it with wrong people it becomes “a problem shared is a problem SQUARED” – nope no one can teach you how to identify right from the wrong. It’s totally up to you, go ahead, square some halve some and learn the lesson.

Rule# 42

42) Beware of internet, if not used properly can overload you with information which can easily distract you from your original goals. Use it 'concisely', no more than 3 clicks in your search results.

Rule# 41

41) Always finish whatever you start, be a book or any mundane stuff like washing/folding clothes. Always finish it.
Unfinished business adds an unknown burden to the shoulders which unknowingly keeps dragging you down.

Season of sadness

Season of sadness, or not; may be uneasiness.

My favorite celebrities/intellectuals/artists have left us in past few days/weeks; it started with Shammi Kapoor, Tiger Pataudi, Steve Jobs, and then Jagjit Singh, and now Dennis Ritchie.

It would be juvenile to even attempt writing a post about any of these stalwarts, especially about Mr.Jagjit Singh, that’s unimaginable.

And now as I heard about Dennis Ritchie, I again experienced a sense of personal loss, I’ve spent more than half of my life sitting in front of a computer writing silly programs.

It all began with BASIC/FORTRAN then PASCAL/COBOL etc etc, after that I was introduced to a book by “Kenningham and Ritchie”, it was introduction to C language and all.
That along with their other ‘invention’ UNIX operating system changed my whole perspective towards all that boring programming and all and that eventually shaped my future, and life.

Thank you chief, RIP.

Rule# 40

40) If you’re newly married then think twice before wearing a white shirt and
also think million times before wearing a black shirt if you’ve baby at home.

Rule# 39

39) There are no real failures in life, there are only "feed-backs", pay heed to them.

Rule# 38

38) Embrace change.

one day...some day

....

Rule# 37

37) Don't panic, instead PLAN.

Rule# 36

36) Kids are the creatures of habit, oh wait, actually everyone is

Abhi na jao chhod kar.......

Dukh aur sukh ke raaste
baney hai sabke vaaste

jo gham se haar jaaogey
to kis tarah nibhaaogey

khushi mile hume ke gham
jo hoga baant lengey hum

mujhe tum aazmaao to
zaraa nazar milaao to

yeh jism do sahi magar
dilo mein faasla nahin
jahaan mein aisa kaun hai
ke jisko gham mila nahin

abhi na jaao chhodkar
ke dil abhi bhara nahi.....

tumhaare pyaar ki kasam
tumhaara gham hai mera gham

na yoon bujhe bujhe raho
jo dil ki baat hai kaho

jo mujhse bhi chhupaaoge
to phir kisse bataaoge

main koi gair to nahin
dilaaun kis tarah yakin
ki tum se main judaa nahin
mujhse tum judaa nahin

tum se main judaa nahin
mujhse tum judaa nahin

abhi na jaao chhodkar
ke dil abhi bhara nahin

Rule# 35

35) Think about what you enjoy doing most and incorporate it into your plans.

Rule# 34

34) OWE - Own. Worst. Enemy. Learn to get out of your own way.

Lord's test

My team for upcoming historic test match at Lord's

1) Gautam Gambhir
2) Rahul Dravid
3) VVS Laxman
4) Sachin Tendulkar
5) Suresh Raina
6) Yuvraj Singh
7) MS Dhoni
8) Harbhajan
9) Zaheer Khan
10) Ishant Sharma
11) Munaf Patel

I know, this won't be final playing XI and definitely not in this order.
Team management won't fiddle with VVS's position as he has done extremely well at his 5 position, and similarly someone with Dravid's credentials won't be handed the opener's role just like that; and There is going to be a toss up between Munaf and Praveen, both are similar bowlers but Praveen is slightly better fielder and can also wield his bat better than Munaf, so he might a get nod ahead of him.
So in most probability, team management will stick to more traditional approach for the first test, i.e. to open with specialist openers and not fiddle with already settled batting order.
So Mukund will open with Gambhir, and Dravid & Laxman will play at their usual positions.

Also Praveen will be opted over Munaf.

But in heart of my heart, I still feel India should take a pro-active stand rather than a reactive one. Opening with one brand new opener and other coming back from long lay off doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I'm pretty sure Dravid will be called out for duty within first 5 overs, so why not open with him?

Similarly, I will prefer Munaf over Praveen coz I feel Munaf is more disciplined among the two, and in test-match batting prowess of bowlers should not be considered at all.


Lets see, how it begins, I think later in the series management might agree with my views :-)
P.S - someone share this post with Fletcher/Dhoni ;-)

Rule# 33

33) Break the box.

Movie review - Delhi Belly

Here's my review of "Delhi Belly"


"Poorna Jagannathan" :-)

Rule# 32

32) Don't crib; Live with it and try to change it in small steps.

7 seven years!!!!

7 years, saat saal.....I still can't believe that I've kept this place alive for 7 full years. Of course , this is not what it used to be in jawani, but still I keep on sneaking 1-2 post a month.

Best part about it , I met so many interesting people just because this blog. And irrespective of my frequency here always make a point to visit their blog DAILY!!!

**
7 years, everything has changed, or nothing has changed; I clearly remember when and how I started this place, sitting bored/idle wasting myself, in pursuit of something unknown, something which is still eluding me, something of which I still have no clue.

That anxiousness, that madness, that emptiness, that restlessness, that something something has not changed at all.
On surface things look different too, well I gained weight, lost hair; I don't smile much but I do talk these days, all that crappy small talk about weather and sports; may be I'm mixing into 'duniya' or becoming one.
Anyways, at the same time I don't count those as negatives. I call it natural erosion of myself.
Positives are aplenty, God has been kind. First and foremost is my son, it seems that life before him was a total waste.
**
Life has been a sequence of "snoozes" or "dismisses" so far or that's what we control; however what happens in the background is like a flowing river, totally unbridled , sometimes violent sometimes serene, and beautiful most of the times.

*

Light...Leaves....Clouds...Shadows..Reflections....in water, on mirrors...in the dark....closed doors...locks...tree barks....empty benches.....parked cars....

...my list is endless, my list is incomplete...my list is my mind....

in case you are wondering, these are the things I want to click...

**
Uljaney ulajti rahi....dooriya badhti rahi.........

Team for first test match -

Abhinav Mukund

Murali Vijay

Rahul Dravid

Kohli

VVS Laxman

Raina

MS Dhoni

Bhajji

Zaheer

Munaf

Mishra

Rule# 31

31) जो करना है कर डालो .....इसके बाद...उसके बाद ...कुछ नहीं होता।

Rule# 30

30) Everyone you know will leave two kinds of memories, good ones and bad ones.
It’s up to you how you want to remember them.

Rule# 29

29) Wasting time is inevitable, so waste your time judiciously, waste it over things which may make no sense whatsoever to others but soothes you, imbibes calmness inside you.

Class 4 and randon ramblings

Hundreds of things get bouncing around in my head, and on surface I look most calm and laid back person on the earth. But inner turmoil sometimes gets so worse that I’ve to shut off my self from the real world.

This year one of my nephew and niece has stepped in Grade 4, as they call it these days instead of class 4.
A faintest mention of class 4 sends me back in time when I was there, and still I dread the day when results of class 4 was declared. And to date I dread 30th April (yes in those days results were declared on 30th April, not on 31st March like now), my heartbeat goes uneven and mind goes blank, I like it when my result was handed over to me in a yellow envelope.

I was like lost-in-my-world kind of guy who never cared about anything much, but always remained in his own obsessive over-analysis of anything and everything.
I used to look for patterns in everything, and after 3 years in big school gave me brilliant insight that, no matter what one does all year, on 30th April one will always get a result from school saying “Passed and promoted to next class”; it kind of become so monotonous and boring that I assumed result cannot be anything else.

And come result of my 4th class, and my imagined/boring world came down crushing, it said “Supplementary compartment in Science and Social Studies”.

Some laughed and some ridiculed, how one can get compartment in 4th class; but no one knew how scared and shaken I was then. World almost ended that day.

And then came the worst part, after results, school reopened for 15 days before summer vacations, and I was supposed to sit in class 4th only along with new promoted boys from class 3. Those were the most humiliating days of school life, other guys who failed or had compartment like me huddled together in the last rows of the class, and for other students and teachers there was no difference between failed and compartment cases. For them we were the duffers, the failures. And among those guys none of them were my friends. So I was left in a vast sea all alone, I never felt like going to school but never had courage to say that to even myself, after all I had committed the biggest crime in the world.

During recess my friends who were in 5th class used to visit me, and give me those bechara /sympathetic looks.

After those 15 days, started summer vacations of 2 months, as a ritual we visited our mom’s side of joint family, and that meant another round of humiliation and ridicule.

Anyway, after returning from there started my daily grilling, I was forced to study, study and study again and again. Even if I said that I know the stuff, no one trusted me and was forced to study again. Being youngest also made matters worst, everyone had their own way of teaching me and punishing me for not studying.

Finally the day came, sometime in June when I appeared for my compartment exam; I had to give both Science and Social Studies exam in the same day. We were made to sit in a makeshift examination-like arrangement in a section of school library. And finally came the result, and by God’s grace I passed both exams with “good” marks 

And normalcy returned in my world, I was delighted to join my friends in the class 5 but was permanently tagged as one of the weak students which took many more years to shed off.

**
And now I think, I’m still the same over-grown guy, who still doesn’t care much about anything, who still lives in his own world, who still indulges in his favorite pastime of over-analyzing almost everything, who doesn’t learn from past mistakes, who is still seeking something which even he doesn’t know, who still feel like a jigsaw puzzle whose some pieces are still missing and doesn’t have a clue about how big picture will look like even if he finds those missing pieces.

**
Sometimes I think, what if this is, this life is an over-stretched dream sequence, a dream over which we have no control whatsoever, which can be interrupted any moment and we can’t stop it from being busted no matter how dearly we cling to it.

Afridi is NO hero

I don’t understand why everyone is hell-bent to declare Afridi as a hero or a gracious loser.

Afridi has a history of all sorts of buffoonery that can be committed on cricketing field.

From abusing opposition players as well as his own team mates, to fighting on field, or in dressing room, to tampering ball, creating factions within team, he has done it all.

One fine day, suddenly he has been made a hero, just because he was smiling on the field, and was shaking hands with an even bigger smile after the loss?

I think we guys are so much drank in our victory that we’re conveniently ignoring the manner Pakistani team played.

This Pakistani team looked so uninterested in the field, there was no intensity, and not all looked hungry for win on the field (though there were superficial team huddles and all), that passion which is usually associated with them was clearly missing. They all were looking at different directions while fielding.

Something was clearly not well in their dressing room, and that was evident from the way the chased the modest score of 260 on a slow batting track. They made Munaf/Nehra look like McGrath.

Agreed, ball was not coming to bat as expected, but how can one justify the way Younis Khan ex-captain and a usually a better performer against India, paced his innings, he was playing like a nervous debutant, was struggling against likes of buffet bowler Yuvi.

His 13 runs of 32 balls, and Misbah’s 17 runs of his first 42 laid the foundation for their team’s burial.

How can Misbah (another ex-captain and a better performer against India) start his inning like that, what was he waiting for? Why the hell Razzaq came before Afridi, agreed Afridi is not in good form these days, but still any day he should be placed above Razzaq in batting order.

And if intention of sending Razzaq up was to step-up the pace but again the way he played his 9 balls, he hardly looked in any kind of hurry, there wasn’t a single Razzaq like ‘clear front leg and smash the ball over covers or bowlers head’ swing at the ball.

He too was content in blocking the ball.

Then came so newly crowned hero Afridi, when Pakis were some 70-80 runs short of target and difference between balls n runs was 20-22 only, and with batting power play still to be taken , and with last recognized pair on the crease, still he DID NOT take the power play.

Though power-plays are designed to suit players like Afridi who try to hit every ball they face in air and still he decided against taking power play. What was he waiting for?

What kind of captaincy was that? Why there was no sense of responsibility from his actions with bat?

Probably, he already knew the outcome of the match before hand, probably he knew that seniors like Younis/Misbah/Razzaq ( and non-playing Akhtar) would be leading a non-cooperation movement on the field.

Hence, his so-Manmohan-Singh-like smiles and laughter in defeat (which is so unlike Afridi).

He was smiling at his own helplessness rather being a gracious loser.

Rule# 28

This one is going to be pretty basic one, but I strongly feel that this should be the MOST important of all.

28) Aap ne apne aap ko khush rakhna hai. You, only you have to keep/make yourself happy.

Happiness has always been regarded as an relative entity; each has their own ways of feeling it.
And I say, whatever, what ultimately matters is one's internal happiness, if one is not really internally happy then he/she cannot make others really happy. And finding happiness in others happiness is another farce. It all boils down to every individual; you just have to go ahead and do what makes you happy, and when you are happy only than you can make others happy and radiate happy vibes across.

so bottom line is, aap ne apne aap ko happy rakhna hai. bas.

Rule# 27

27) Sometimes nothing recharges you more than by spending sometime alone.

Rule# 26

26) Wishing won't bring success or anything, but planning and working for it would.

Rule# 25

25) Hazy goals produce hazy results.

Favorite movies of 2010

Aahaa..so this is again that time of year…when everyone gets busy making resolutions, and then end up breaking them within next 2 weeks, and when gym memberships hit the sky, and sidewalks are suddenly crowded with huffing and puffing ‘over nightly turned fitness conscious converts’.

And here, I’m, neither making resolutions nor hitting gym…(insert evil grin here).


So here, I’m doing what I enjoy doing most, that is making lists-

My favorite movies of the year 2010 (of course from what I’ve seen this year).

Good ones

1) Love Sex aur Dhokha
2) Well done Abba
3) Tere bin laden
4) Udaan
5) Band Bajaa Baraat

Ok Ones

1) Ishqiya
2) Striker
3) Atithi tum kab jaogey
4) Once Upon a Time in Mumbai
5) Peepli Live

Timepass
1) Bumm bum bole
2) Road, Movie

Pathetic -
1) My Name is Khan
2) Housefull
3) Rajneeti
4) I hate Luv Storys
5) Rann

Which I wanted to see but missed –

1) Do Dooni Chaar
2) The great Indian Butterfly
3) The Japanese wife
4) Mirch
5) Phas Gaye Re Obama
6) Guzarish
7) Robot
8) Lahore
9) Road To Sangam

Rule# 24

24) Focus and discipline – these two words can make any thing possible.

Ek brahman ne kahaa hai ke ye saal achchhaa hai

Another year, and surprisingly this time I'm not just conned but convinced that "Two-Zero-One-One' is going to be a smashing year.

So no resolutions or re-solutions for me, I just want to start to my year with this beautiful ghazal filled with optimism.

Ek brahman ne kahaa hai ke ye saal achchhaa hai

Zulm ki raat bahut jald talegii ab to
Aag chuulhon mein har ik roz jalegii ab to

Bhookh ke maare koi bachchaa nahin royega
chain ki neend har ik shaKhs yahaan soyega

Aandhi nafarat ki chalegi na kahin ab ke baras
pyaar ki fasal ugaegi zameen ab ke baras

Hai yakeen ab na koi shor-sharaabaa hoga
zulm hoga na kahin Khoon-kharaabaa hoga

Os aur dhuup ke sadamein na sahegaa koi
ab mere desh mein beghar na rahega koi

Naye vaadon ka jo daalaa hai vo jaal achchhaa hai
Rehanumaaon ne kaha hai ke ye saal achchhaa hai

....dil ke Khush rakhane ko Ghalib ye Khayaal achchhaa hai

--Sabir Dutt