Can you die of happiness?

Tears of Happiness. They happens to all of us. But sometimes happiness comes in such enormous forms that you can’t contain it all at once. You can’t even shove it in a container and contemplate about it later. It is such an emotional moment that you are not sure if you are most alive in that instant or you are about to die, because you have never experienced such a thing before.

For the music by Ajay & Atul. And for the Lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya. And for the Essence of Happiness. Listen to this:

Why I Love Google Animated Videos.

Well, just like www.google.com home page, these videos have white backgrounds and bright colors on the objects used. The white color makes everything look bright. It helps the viewer focus on the important things being shown. Whosoever creates these videos, makes sure that the language and the concept is understandable to the layman. I am amazed at how easily they put things across in the most simplified format.

Here is an example:

The real ingenuity lies in making things easy. Just because they make it look easy, we think it is easy. The way they explain stuff is hassle-free and not boring at all. I wish school teachers used such videos to teach everything from geography lessons to number theory in the primary classes. Remember what Mr. Einstein said,

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Check another one:

To the team who creates all these videos, you guys make the world a better place. I hope the marketing teams & the creative people across the big companies learn from them. The bottom line : Simple is Beautiful, Friendly and Catchy.

A Mentor, A Guru, A Godfather

The greatest of the stories ever told and those which have been able to become immediately appealing to us all have one common thread. All of them have: a mentor, a guru, a godfather. Be it Dumbledore or Gandalf or one of those numerous guides in Robin Sharma’s books of greatness. Be it the tales of the overachievers from the countless sci-fi books or even the mythological stories where there is Lord Krishna for Arjun or Chanakya for Chandragupta.

There is always the one who brings solace to the distressed. There is always the one know-it-all; the one who has all the answers. There is always the one who has the experience and the forbearance. The one who will look you through thick and thin; and the one who will take a back seat and let you enjoy all the glory. That someone who is watching over you during the dark and miserable times and becoming your sole guiding light. In short, that one person makes you and your life ‘awesome’.

Just imagine, how awesome it would be to have such a person in your life, in real life. In times of unreasoning and confusion, you have someone definitive to look up to. Someone who may not give you direct answers, but tell you where to look them up. Just imagine for a moment.

The Unpleasant Uncertainty

Writing is becoming difficult by the day. For penning down your thoughts you need clarity of mind and unruffled thinking. With a clutter of things inside the brain and no outlet to the mess, expressing things has become inevitably tough.

Life is at a major turning point, though thank god for its not taking its toll. Now is the time to take decisions. Decisions! Something I am not very good at. (I just remembered my post – Choose or Lose. It was written in 2009. Not much has changed ever since.)

My state of mind

Having no idea about what the future will hold or which way to go next is something occupying moi mind 80% of the time. It is in our nature to fear the unknown. So many questions remain unanswered. I like to believe that the truth behind this uncertainty is simply a disguise, albeit an unpleasant one, for opportunity.

Rise of the Little Miss Sunshine

The Day is 18th November 2011. We rushed from my hometown to another city in quite a frenzy of events. The Granny-To-Be & Papa-To-Be are excited & nervous at the same time. I am trying to keep the mood cheerful, but I am the nervous-est of all. After reaching the destined place, as the clock seems to move at a slower pace than usual, we try to fake patient faces and try to tell the Mom-To-Be that everything is going to be fine. Minutes turn into hours and finally its 3:30 pm in our watches. The nurses & doctors are busy preparing the Operation Theatre. They rush the mom-to-be in. I close my eyes and offer silent prayers.
I have never seen the dad-to-be getting so frantic with anxiety. We are taking hurried steps across the passage next to the OT door & trying hard to listen to any kind of sound from inside.

At precisely 04:05:20 pm, I hear the sound of little cries from inside. And she is born.

Tears trickle down my eyes as I can’t control the extreme emotions. I hug her father and in silence, we both realize what ultimate state of happiness means. All eyes set on the OT door – her both grannys, great-grannys, aunts & father are on their toes to see her face.

Just then, the doctor appears with her all cuddled up in his hands & announces, “It’s a baby girl!”. And almost forgetting that we are in a hospital we shout cheerful cries!
I have never seen anything more beautiful in my life. She is a brilliant color of white & pink. As the doctor lands her safely on a cozy bed, she blinks eyes to her first ever rays of sun and glows in merriment. She looks calm & serene, as if she knows she is in the safe hands.
I lay down beside her & see her perfect profile face. It makes me realize what they mean when they say divine. She is one of God’s best creation ever.
Without anyone noticing, I whisper in ear, “You are going to be a apple of our eyes. The most beautiful, the most perfect, the most successful, the most knowledgeable that there is, is all going to be you and yours. You will always shine brightly in everybody’s life like the sunrise.”
You are my little miss sunshine & will always be.

Language is just a means of expression!

Being a part of the CrazyEngineers Forum and the social media (that you can’t get rid of even if you want to), statements from random people that are grammatically incorrect and inherently erred have become commonplace. Then again we belong to the land where dialect changes after every mile, so the actual, purest form of language gets lost somewhere amidst the chaos of one language impacting the other. My mother tongue being Marathi, I have a lot of issues with people who don’t pronounce Marathi words correctly or change the basic syntax or genders of objects around us. I used to interrupt people & tell them the correct usage. It used to be quite annoying for them & for me. That was till I came face to face with a foreign language, Japanese.

In the process of understanding the nuances of this new language and having a hard time remembering & later recalling the exact sentence formation (which was actually really interesting), I experienced changes in my way of perception.

Invention of language ...was an accident?!

From the ages when apes ruled the Earth only different kinds of sounds & snorts must have been used to interact with each other. These later put into organized formats and beautified with grammar and termed as ‘Language’.

So, coming to think of it this way, I realized that the rules of language are all defined by us, human beings & now we find reasons to impose them on one another. Isn’t the purpose of language fulfilled when the other person understands precisely what you are saying even though the words used do not adhere to the prescribed regulations? Language is in fact created to pull down the barriers in conveying our thoughts & ideas. It is meant to give us the chance to express. If not for the language, the most awesome things would have left confined in our brains.

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean. Therefore, does it really matter how we utter things when all that we want is the other person to just understand what we are saying? You must agree with me on the fact that there is that one expression, one nod, one smile, one sound or one word that conveys things almost perfectly to certain people without making it necessary for us to “describe” it to them.

Why then is there a so much clamor around perfecting a language we speak or write? Why can’t we give everyone the freedom of expression by not raising eyebrows at those incorrect pronunciations?

I guess, the answer lies in the fact that we feel bliss in the purity of the form.

I would like to know your views, so please express in the comments.

Carl Sagan Quote ‘We are one species’ – Zeitgeist Addendum

Just wanted to make a note of this:

An extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities.

Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars. We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins – star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth.

Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.
We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light.”

- Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996)

I am reading & watching a lot about The Zeitgeist Movement. This post serves like a time capsule for me.

You know, just for the records.

FOMO – The Fear Of Missing Out!

A friend asked me to read an article in ‘Oxygen’ – the supplement that comes with the local Marathi newspaper ‘Lokmat’. It talked about a new kind problem popping out in this digital era. It’s called FOMO – Short form for ‘Fear of missing out’. I don’t remember the exact content, but the idea of the article stuck with me. It had a story that goes something like this -

It’s a saturday night. Nothing to do. I have no thoughts of work. I am ready to spend a quiet night at home. I think of browsing through the internet before hitting the sheets. I switch on the Laptop and open my Facebook account. Suddenly I see a flood of recent notifications on the page. Some friends have gathered at a venue near my apartment. But why? What was happening there? Then I see pictures of other friends enjoying fancy milkshakes at a trendy restaurant. Suddenly, my simple domestic pleasures start looking pale in comparison with the things I could be doing.

The flurry of possibilities set off a rush of restlessness and indecision. I am torn between nesting in my cozy roost or rallying for an impromptu rendezvous, and I just don’t know what to do.

- That was a story published in the supplement along with a logical explanation of why this happens. Out of curiosity I searched about it and found a similar article published in NYTimes and the term ‘FOMO’ listed in urban dictionary. That proves, thousands of youngsters must be facing this state of mind (though were few will reluctantly agree.)

FOMO refers refers to the blend of anxiety, inadequacy and irritation that can flare up while skimming social media like Facebook & Twitter. Billions of Twitter messages, status updates and photographs provide thrilling glimpses of the daily lives and activities of friends, co-workers and peers. The upside is immeasurable. Viewing postings from my friends scattered around the country often makes you feel more connected to them. But, occasionally, there is a darker side.

When we scroll through pictures and status updates, the worry that tugs at the corners of our minds is set off by the Fear of Regret – The fear of missing out!

90% of the people, burdened by this ever-increasing peer pressure, won’t have a clue on how to handle it. This the reason why we see so many people going out of the way to do all those things that their friends are doing. No! Really! – How could I be the one left out?

PS: I agree that the image is quite irrelevant.