Don't's

What you mustn’t do..

1.Complain and grumble about the traffic jam.
Traffic situations exist, get used to it already. Stop questioning aloud why no body is doing anything about it. If you can’t do something about it shut up and suffer in silence. Also set out early if that’s what it takes instead of acting like it’s your first day in the city.

2.Let drivers get away with the ‘there’s too much traffic hence we won’t go there’ excuse.
If they drive in a city like Mumbai they should know by now that there is traffic everywhere. If they don’t want to do their job they should sit at home quietly instead of hindering others who want to do theirs.

3.Say “Oh you get that in India?”
You get everything in India. If you don’t know that you are plain ignorant and haven’t been to India in a long time. And if you haven’t, do you really think you deserve to pass comments?

4.Say things like “Indian girls are so hairy.”
Because so are the Indian men. And no, we don’t love that either. And so are foreign/white/Caucasian women. Many white women have hair which they don’t even get removed because they think it’s of the same colour as their skin. But of course you pretentious Indian men choose to ignore that just because…I don’t know, they are white?! So vain.

5.Start off with something and then say “Oh no I don’t think I must tell you rest” or say “I’m in shit but I don’t want to tell you about it.”
If you started off, have the courage to finish it right up till the end. If you don’t have the courage, why start at all? What kind of sadistic pleasure do you get teasing a story and leaving the other person bursting with curiosity to know the rest? Oh wait. You want the other person to beg? Get a life dude.
If you are in shit and want help, talk about the shit you are in so that you can be helped, rather than giving a one-liner and expecting people to understand what you’re going through by leaving them to go crazy with assumptions in their head. Two words for you – Drama. Queen.

6.Ask people to remind you about a gift you have to give them.
Why wouldn’t you remember yourself if you have to give someone a gift? You’re putting the other person through such a hard time by asking him/her to remind you about it. If the other person is important enough to you wouldn’t you remember to give the gift yourself? Or are you lying about having a gift at all? Oh then you mustn’t coz just so you know, the other person’s life will go on perfectly fine without your gift. You lying about it? That’s what’s causing the problem.

7.Lie that you will be going with someone to someplace only coz you’re scared that by telling the truth - that you don’t want to go, you will offend him/her.
In such instances it is really better to say the truth than stand someone up. Promising to be there and then not showing up is way more offensive than just saying the truth at the start.

8.Say you’re behaving the way you are (moody, cranky, annoying) because it is ‘that’ time of the month.
Come on (women), let’s stop taking advantage of the fact that we always have this excuse and the boys don’t have one such universal, constant shield to defend them. It’s so passé.

9.Get angry and unforgivable on someone’s ass just coz he/she forgot your birthday.
Not everyone has a good memory. Not everyone is good with numbers. And you sure as hell know that forgetting your birthday in no way means that he/she does not love you anymore. So why make such a big deal? It’s not the end of the world.

10.Force people to follow/like your status/picture/profile/blog/life..you get the drift.
It is okay to tell/inform people about such things but forcing them to like it is simply annoying. Shouldn’t the person feel like following/liking/loving your whatever it is because they really feel like, from within? How does such an enforced act make you feel happy anyway?

11.Say you will do things that you can’t or know you’re not going to do.
Get over yourself. The world will still go on if you can’t/don’t do something. Just accept it and be honest about it rather than letting people rely on you for a bit only to make them hate you later. If you can’t do something say you can’t, you will still be treated like a human and life will still go on, for you and for everybody.

Finally, it is okay to preach what you don’t do. What’s the harm in that, if it nonetheless manages to provoke thoughts and change lives? After all, the world is filled with such people. Wait, don’t take that seriously, I was obviously kidding.

Happy New Year!

Yours Spiritually

Ever since I’ve woken up to the consciousness of myself I have always curiously questioned the ways of the world. Of course all along I’ve had stories from the Bible answering my many questions. But being an inquisitive, scientific person, very argumentative by nature, it really is a hard job convincing me. About anything. So how did everything we’re living in come into existence? God created it all. Sure he did. But where is God? I’d love to meet him, I’ve often thought to myself at those Sunday School classes (Bible study classes that Christian children attend).

And hence the concept of religion is one I have a huge question mark in my mind about. But that would require a dedicated, full fledged post by itself. What I want to talk about here however is, Spirituality - a word that is today overly used since each of us seem to have our own ways of defining it.

So what is spirituality for me? For me it is about setting up a personal belief system for myself. It could be anything, there are no pre defined rules or ways of practicing it. Spirituality is what comes to the rescue of people like my self who are lost and confused in the big world of religion. The way I see it if you want to be religious, you must be able to follow everything that a particular religion preaches. If you can pick and choose what you want to believe in and only practice what you feel suits you, then wouldn’t the very purpose of religion be defeated?

Hence spirituality.

If there is anything that you do with the discipline that it requires, and it breeds self-development giving you pure happiness and gratification, that might just be your spiritual object. And spirituality is the relationship that you, the subject have with this object. For me, for example, it’s writing. There is a serene kind of peacefulness and joy that I experience when I put things down in writing. My ability to express my self through words is I feel, one of my most passionate powers. It could be anything from simply putting down words on a greeting card to putting together the feature article for my magazine before the deadline, to this, the rather infrequent postings on my blog about things I personally feel for. There’s probably one person out there who actually reads this. Despite all that, writing gives me a sense of self actualization, which most people feel their religion gives them.

Writing is my tool of self purification, of contact with a feeling above and beyond other normal feelings. For someone else it could be the music they are involved in. For a dancer, it could be his dance. Being keenly interested and trained in both music and dance I completely understand the divinity in terms of the feeling, of them both. For an artist, her paintings. What I’m trying to say is that spirituality does not necessarily have to be related to religion. If it’s a film maker’s film that gives him/her the divine satisfaction, so be it.

It’s as simple as this – if you can attain peace with yourself and others through your ways of self-expression, in whatever form, with self-discipline, that is spirituality for you. You don’t need to go searching for a definition or live with notions in your head of it (spirituality) being an extreme, out of the world feeling that will literally blow your mind away. Coz for all you know you are probably living it and you don’t know because you are not giving it, or your gift of self-expression the due credit they deserve.

I'm too sexy for my age!

Age is a mindset. And I can almost hear you yell at me and grumble about the meaninglessness of that statement. All I have to say is fine then, you can go on to live thinking that with every year that passes by, your bones are getting weaker, and that your system is going to give way soon. You can go on to sulk at every strand of white hair that you find on your head. You can keep increasing the length of that list of things that you should stop doing because you are not young anymore. You can also continue to look at your birthday as a sad day instead of a happy one. Go on. Let your age bring you down!

But why? Why would you do that? What’s in the number anyway? You could be 15 or 50 and still be the same person. Not that I know what it is like when you are 50 but I strongly believe you can be the same person by spirit, IF you come to terms with the fact that age is only a mindset. You are only as old as you think you are.

Being at the early 20’s stage of my life I am often appalled by statements like, ‘Oh God, we’re getting old’, ‘I don’t think that suits me anymore..too old for it’, ‘Gone are those days when we could just chill’, ‘From now on I only want to shop for things that fit in to my working-woman schedule’… Stop it. For starters, stop saying such things. The more you say these things, the more they start to feel like the truth. Stop dwelling on the thought that you are getting older because by doing so you are spreading negative energy to yourself and to the people around you. People around you will start treating you like an old person and even worse, you will start feeling way older than what you actually are.

Age should motivate you to achieve your dreams and not be constant reminders of how little time you have left. At the risk of sounding cliché I’m going to say that there is no age limit to anything. Sometimes things need to be put as simply as that. You can be whatever you want to be whenever you want. If you are sticking by something now just coz of certain priorities, don’t worry. Who said this is it? You have your whole life in front of you to do whatever else you have planned out.

So unleash yourself from age barriers and bring on the youthfulness. Raise the bar of things-you-can-do-when-you-are-22. Let people look at you and wonder how old you are because you are so passionately not ‘acting’ your age. And my last, most favourite advice, Laugh. Your body does not know if you are faking it or not.. and it helps you live longer.

You mean the World

We think we know who are the people in our lives that are going to stick (forever?), until a ‘fall-out’ happens with one of the persons we thought was going to be a constant in our life. This fall-out certainly does not wipe out all the past times during which this person may have been a strong part of our life… when he/she stood by us through our roughest patches and…. They all still stand. Because while it lasted, it was good. So let’s not cry that it’s (probably) over but smile that it happened.

But on that positive note I can’t help but question what does such a fall-out hold for the future? We cannot, however egoistic or least expecting of people we might be, not cringe at the thought of that. After all, this person was special and that is to begin with, the only reason we care so much. Would I care so much if such a thing happened with an acquaintance? Hell No.

But what can you do if the person stops talking to you once and for all, without giving you a reason? And what if at that point after the fall-out you learn new things about the person you held so dearly in your life? Things like, all along the person was intimidated by the very person you are. How can a matter so intense not have come up before? Or is apparent friend bringing it up now just coz he/she is running out of reasons to explain the scenario that caused the fall-out? How was such a deep relationship formed in the first place if the person had such issues with WHO you are?

We might never know. And like I said when I started off, in such situations we must just be happy with what ever it was that we had with the person. This takes great tolerance I know but keep telling yourself that it was good when it lasted... and that it left you with a whole bunch of beautiful memories. Make peace with yourself.

Because such is life. Such are people. Strange circumstances cause people to act in strange ways. People could be full of lies and nonsense on a day. Everyone has their bad days. Although most civil people would care to explain themselves the next day, don’t feel deceived if they don’t. Not everybody is civil. But for every person in your life who brings you down and makes you feel hated and betrayed, there is another person who makes you feel like you mean the world to them. And as you get through life with people walking in and out of it…you still know deep down inside of you that there is at least one person out there who will stick forever; and be the constant. Such reassurance is liberating.

Care to be Shallow?

Why are we trying to prove to people that we are not shallow? Why are we trying so hard? It is perfectly fine to accept that looks matter. It is. I will in fact have a lot of respect for you if you make such a comment. Simply because, such honesty is like a breath of fresh air. In a world where everyone is trying to define their personal beliefs for themselves, in such a way that it does not hurt the sentiments of a hundred other people…and live life in ways that will keep everyone happy, when I unexpectedly come by someone who can make such a comment with effortless simplicity it really is like a breath of fresh air.

It is the looks that make a first impression since it is the first (and the only) thing that is out there for others to see. I am not discrediting the power of facial expressions or body language; I am just saying that these things are secondary. The first thing you see about a person are the looks. Come on, get down to accepting that already!

You may want to say a million things like- you don’t decide if he is a good or bad person by his looks, you don’t decide if he is a snob or not, you don’t decide if he is smart or not, etc. So you are right. I really hope you don’t do any of that coz that would just be unfair. No body said that looks are the be all and end all. But looks are what we first base our normal human judgments of other people on. Very often after getting to know the person, our impressions change. These changes could be for better or for worse…but it still all comes down to the fact that to begin with, the looks were what you noticed first. And during that brief period of time when you did not know the person, you made a few mental notes of what he seems like BASED on the looks.

Attraction is directly or inversely proportional to how one looks. When you find someone good looking, that’s the first thing that gets you attracted to the person. Many relationships have been built on the foundation of looks. As much as you say that you want ‘man who treats you right’ or ‘man who understands your shortcomings’ or ‘man who has 5 bedrooms’, the truth is that you only start thinking of a (prospective) man at all, after Stage: Attraction (i.e. after you are convinced he is good looking). Here I’d like to add good looking according to your standards. If you think he is good looking that’s enough. There is no need to convince the world about it.

If you are in a relationship and want to argue with me by telling me that your boyfriend is not good looking yet you are with him, I’m not going to believe you. Because I’m going to believe that he is good looking according to YOU and that’s why YOU are with him; it’s just that other people may not think he is, and hence you say that. If you are going to argue saying that you’re boyfriend is too good for you and if it was about looks he would definitely find some one better…I’m just going to ask you to shut up and pull up you’re self esteem. Also wake up, I think it is about time you realized that YOU ARE your boyfriend’s-type-of good looking! If you are just going to say that it never was about looks for you and your boyfriend, I’m sorry I think you are lying to me. And to yourself.

Any other arguments please bring them on!

Yes beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. But do not dishonour the eyes for the indispensable role they play.

Go For It.

We think we are so many things. Fact is we can be all the things we want to be. But the fact also is, there are many things we live in a bubble of thinking we are, only to find out we're not.

Before diving into the world of 'work', the way I saw myself- the passionate, obsessive and compulsive sort, I knew I would be a workaholic when someday my work life would begin. But turns out, I'm not quite what I thought I was. And I found out the hard way. But there's this sweetness in finding out things the hard way...a sense of glory you feel because you found out on your own.

I read somewhere that human beings are the only living beings who have the ability to learn from other's experiences. True. We can be spoken to, told the right and wrong ways of doing things, learn from other's mistakes, learn from other's achievements... But what if some of us want to learn from our own mistakes? What if for some of us learning the hard way IS the only way the lesson sticks? What if for some of us we would rather hurt ourselves finding out the 'bad' way than by plainly seeing and hearing?

Consider this,
X: I made a mistake, and that's why I'm pushing you so hard...because I don't want you to make the same mistake.
Y: There you go. Maybe I'm just like you. I'll only learn if I make the mistake myself.
X: But I didn't know better then and I do now. That's why I'm telling you...
Y: I don't know any better now. But I will if I make the same mistake...let me make it. Let me find out on my own.

And anyway why do people mostly assume that we will make the same mistake they made? Maybe we can do things differently, maybe we will come out successful from something that someone else failed in and maybe, we might learn a completely different lesson from what someone else learned. So isn't it worth a shot?

We will be told the right ways of doing things. We will be told how to do things in ways that would hurt us the least... Let them tell, it's their duty to tell. It's also part of a responsibility of the role they play in our lives. At the end, it's always our choice, what we want to do and how we want to do it. If learning from your own experience is your kind of thing, Go For It.

Training the mind

'I will NEVER....' It's a line we say so often. Although most of the time we might not really intend on meaning it with the same passion that it might be said with, we still say it. Of course you're wondering, so? What's the harm? Tough luck strikes when you're faced with necessarily having to do that one thing which you said...'I will NEVER..' to. But we can do it. It's all about training the mind.

We have dreams. We dream big and we hope that everything turns out the way we want. We make maps of our lives, chalking out every turn and juncture. Okay, maybe all of us don't do this and I'm just a little over ambitious. But my point is we have in our minds, if not out there in the open a plan for ourselves. We strive towards making this plan work, doing whatever it takes.

But then, CRASH! Things don't go the way we've planned and our worlds come crashing down. And then sorrow prevails. We struggle in despair and hopelessness, cursing ourselves for not working hard enough. Wait a minute, did we really not work hard enough? Or are we just being too harsh on ourselves? We search for answers to the depressing turn our lives have taken. And no. We get NO answers. Absolutely none. The 'forces' we believe in will not grace us with their mysterious appearances and give us answers.

We moan about the unfair world and hence our unfair lives. It's true we rarely get what we deserve. We wonder what the 'forces' are doing when they give things to the wrong people! Wait, who said they are the wrong people? We question everything-our goals, our choices, our means, our ends. Where did we go wrong? May be we never did. Yet, we question endlessly, breeding pessimism.

I believe there are two kinds of 'we'. One, those of us who believe in the forces and how things are meant to be and two, those of us who believe that everything is a choice we make.

Here's the mind training- for the first set of us, we should never really engage in self loathing and questioning. Coz come on, wasn't that how it was meant to be? How could we change it anyway? And if that was how it was meant to be, doesn't it have to be for the best?
For the second set of us, if everything is a choice we make, then we should just trust that our choices are always right. If we regret a choice much later, we must remind ourselves of the reasons why we made the choice. I can sure as hell assure you that you will find a reason to believe that the choice was well made. There was something at that point of time that made you make it. And it was worth it. If it was worthwhile then, it has to be now as well.

The magic lies in training our minds...life is actually not that bad!