How It All Began

Okay, this is way past its due date, but this is all very instrumental to how Random Musings came into existence.

There was a time when I just felt like sharing some random thoughts with my friends. One fine day, my cubicle neighbour, Bhatti, told me he found them interesting and I should write them down on a blog.

Well, as it happens, that was just the push I needed. I thought those initial thoughts definitely deserve a place of pride on this blog. So here goes.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Ever notice how we never realize what we were missing until it arrives?
How we never notice the void in our lives until we find something to fill it up with?

There’s this conversation in the movie Failure to Launch which I found interesting:

Tripp: Do you have real feelings?
Paula: Of course I have real feelings!
Tripp: For what?
Paula: For you! And believe me I did not want that because I had a good life before you. Well, not good... but... it was okay. Well... it was empty actually, but at least I was blissfully unaware of how miserable I was. Whereas now... because of you... I am acutely aware of how completely and totally unhappy I am. Thank you for that.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Why is it that we feel like being left alone when we need to be with friends the most?
That we feel like not talking about the stuff that we most need to talk about?
That we find the best things in life where we least expect to find them?
And if we do find something good that we’ve always been looking for, we fail to recognize and appreciate it?

A little piece from Sleepless in Seattle that is rather interesting and thought provoking, although you might need to know the context somewhat:

JAY: Well, this is fate! She's divorced, we don't want to redo the cabinets, and you need a wife. What do they call it when everything intersects?
SAM: The Bermuda Triangle.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Disclaimer: no male bashing intended

I have a feeling that guys do not, in general, like it when girls make the first move in a relationship. Even if the girl is someone you’d otherwise find attractive and nice and interesting, you’d probably not like it if she asks you out first. A friend of mine (a guy) once explained to me at length that a guy would want a girl to ask him out, but he would not like it if she does. I was given a long discourse on the difference between like, want and need which I will not go into right now, but it’s an interesting thing to think about and to do some research on :P

A conversation from Sleepless in Seattle between a guy (Sam) and his son, Jonah, who’s about eight.

SAM: You see someone you like, you get a feeling about them, you ask them if they want to have a drink or --
JONAH: -- a slice of pizza --
SAM: But not dinner necessarily on the first date because by the time you're halfway through dinner you might be sorry you asked them to dinner whereas if it's just a drink, if you like them you can always ask them for dinner but if you don't you can go home if you see what I mean.
I wonder if it still works this way.
JONAH: It doesn't. They ask you.
SAM: I'm starting to notice that.

Oh, by the way, if some of you people have started to feel that I have started spamming you with total nonsense these days, you are more than welcome to express that feeling. Not that it’s going to make me stop, but I’d like to hear that expression of your feelings anyway.

Today

Thanks Bhatti, for pushing me in this direction.

By the way, Bhatti recently sent me a link to someone's blog. Now this someone is a girl I don't know, and I don't think Bhatti knows her either. But she is someone who is an engineer by qualification, who gave up her engineering job to become a magazine editor. I am having so much fun reading her blog! This just might be the push I need right now.

Distances...

I'm pretty much used to the idea of one or more of my friends moving to another city or another continent to study, work, or to be with their spouse. Because that kind of thing has happened to me a lot. I've learnt how to keep the relationships alive across the miles, through e-mail, over the phone, and the occasional get together whenever two or more of us are in the same city.

But I never contemplated what would happen if I have to move to another city or country some time. How would I deal with a situation where I have to move away from all my friends, my family, my current way of living, all in one shot? What happens if, one fine day, everything that I take for granted today, changes completely?

Of course, change is the way of life. Change is what keeps things interesting. Keeps life from becoming mundane. And I do believe that, in the long run, changes are always for the better.

Okay, I know I'm just rambling on with a rather random philosophy. But that's what I feel like doing right now.

I think a change of place, a change of pace may be just what I need in order to experiment with my career like I've long wanted to do. It might be able to give me the perspective I need in order to think differently, in order to find a theme for my book, and perhaps the time to write it as well.

Cleaning Up...

Today I spent the better part of my day cleaning out some of my closets. This is an almost annual activity for me, but I normally refrain from throwing out any of my stuff. Today I'd decided to be ruthless in deciding what to throw out and what to keep. Not to say that I would ever throw out something like my College Yearbook. No way, not even in a fit of extreme ruthlessness. But today I did throw out a lot of stuff I'd been hanging on to for five or six years for no apparent reason, except that I am a bit of a pack rat. By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with the term "pack rat," I looked it up on Wikipedia, and here's what their article says: "This article is about the rodent. For the human behavior, see compulsive hoarding."

Coming back to my point, I did find so many things that I should have thrown out six years ago, but I did find so many others that I would want to keep for the next sixty (if I do live that long, that is). There is so much stuff in my closets that reminds me of who I really am, of what I once wanted to be, of what I once was. The many issues of my school magazine that I edited and wrote articles for, the issue of Teens Today that reminds me that I do have what it takes to be a published writer, the innumerable prospectuses (I actually did not know the plural form of prospectus. This is what Merriam-Webster and wiktionary say.) of British Universities that I gathered towards the end of my undergraduate degree, when I was planning to apply for higher studies in Mathematics, the offer letters from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (the only ones I actually applied to), the sketches I drew in the days when I was aspiring to go to NIFT and be a fashion designer. Now these are the things I can never throw away. (Except the prospectuses. I kept the ones from Oxford and Cambridge, but got rid of the rest.) This is the stuff that forms such an integral part of my identity that I can never imagine doing away with any of it. I even managed to dispose of the first job offer letter that I ever got (from Flextronics), because I don't think that that defines me half as strongly.

And then, of course, there is all the miscellaneous memorabilia. The College Yearbooks, the cards and stuff I got from various friends on various occasions, the photo albums, the large school-leaving group photograph, the lovely picture of me as a chubby two-month old in my mother's lap, the pictures from the school farewell, the College Fests, Graduation Dinner, the Tech Fest we organized during our MCA years... it is such a good feeling to recount all those memories.

I'm not sure why I am writing this on my public blog, because it does seem like something that's meant basically for me. But these are things that all my good friends should certainly know about me. And for the others, well, like I do say sometimes, I enjoy irritating people by making them read stuff that is of no consequence whatsoever to them!

The Princess Bride

I was looking for something interesting to watch today and my brother suggested this movie. It actually turned out to be really interesting. It's a fairytale filled with a decent amount of insanity. All sorts of weird stuff, like oversized rodents, a Fire Swamp, a giant, a miracle man bringing a "mostly dead" man back to life, and a lot of the usual fairytale stuff. And the cherry on top of the ice-cream sundae is a very special appearance by Fred Savage (remember the cute little guy from The Wonder Years)?

I just thought I was going to watch a random movie and had no expectations whatsoever. Therefore it obviously surpassed my expectations, as opposed to what happened yesterday when I went to watch Imran Khan's second movie expecting everything under the sun. The Princess Bride is a welcome change from the usual stuff we see in Hollywood or in Bollywood, even though it has a very ordinary plot. Its presentation and treatment is different in an odd sort of way.

By the way, this is a 21-year old movie, not something released recently. I just happened to watch it for the first time over this weekend and felt like writing about it.

Some really memorable lines from The Princess Bride:

Buttercup: You mock my pain.
Westley: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

Buttercup: We'll never survive.
Westley: Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has.

Miracle Max: Sonny, true love is the greatest thing, in the world-except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe.

Oh, just for the record, this movie has one of the longest (possibly the single longest) memorable quotes pages I have come across on IMDb.

Colours

Jaane kitne rangon se rangi ye zindagi
Har rang kuch nayaa lagta hai
Ek hi rang ko alag nazariye se dekhiye
To wohi rang koi doosraa lagta hai

My Favourite Feel-Good Factors

I know the title phrase of this post is slightly odd, but I like it that way. There are a few feel-good factors in my life that always cheer me up when I am feeling blue. The day I am feeling low and one of these fails to lift my spirits, I will know that it is time to consult a clinical psychologist. Here are some of them:

• Writing about whatever it is that is bothering me. Sometimes I write about the exact problem, at other times I like to express it in slightly vague terms in a poetic way.
• Listening to a song that reminds me of an incident or a friend whom I like to be reminded of.
• Spending money on myself. Not necessarily lots of it, even twenty bucks well spent can sometimes make all the difference.
• Costa Coffee's chocolate chip muffins.
• Watching an episode of Friends or The Big Bang Theory or Mr Bean.

Some More Little Lessons

• No matter how great your work or your job is, it is, by no means, more important than your family and friends. These are the people who really care for you, to whom you actually matter, who should actually matter to you. It's really important that you see things in perspective, know how important everything is, and why those things are important. If you work really hard and make a lot of money, with the intention of giving your family a good life, and, in the process, neglect them, stop spending quality time with them, well, you need to stop and think about what you are actually doing to your life.
• Amidst all your responsibilities at work, at home, towards society, make it a point to chalk out some time on a regular basis just for yourself. Do something you like doing, relax, cool off, introspect, whatever catches your fancy.
• Let the people who matter to you know that they matter. Sometimes an expression of that sort can make someone's day. And sometimes, you may not express a sentiment of that sort, taking it for granted, and realize only when it is too late that you actually needed to express it. Expressing your affection for your family and friends and family on a regular basis helps maintain a strong feel good factor. And it really helps if you know exactly when one of your loved ones need to be told how special they are to you, and you do tell them at that point in time.