Do you know why Will Smith titled his movie – Pursuit of Happyness?
That’s because God had copy rights on the phrase “Pursuit of Happiness”. Yeah, that’s what He calls life up there.

And isn’t it what life is all about – Pursuit of Happiness. Just in case you think, key word there is Happiness – gotcha – you are wrong. Key word there is “Pursuit”. A pursuit that gets defeated by shortness of life. I suggest that next time they find a star really distant from earth – they should name it ‘Happiness’. Just think about the headline in newspaper next day :
Happiness discovered five million light years away from Earth
Apt. Isn’t it? Even if man can travel at speed of light, longest one has ever lived is 110-120 years, so no would ever get to even reach closer to Happiness. [- the star]

Did any of you used to see those mythological serials on Doordashan long back – they used to show Gods talking and whenever they wanted to punish someone they would pack him to earth. I used to think of it as a pretty easy deal on the culprit ;-) Guess, now I have discovered my Godliness ;-), now I can make perfect sense why anyone would do that. Probably, earth is actually a prison for souls that did something wrong on some planet beta and so they were given a jail uniform (read human body) and sent to this prison, where they get to do jail hours (read work) to earn their living and serve their time (read life) till they can go back again to planet beta ;-)

Now am sure you would have seen those smiling faces and must have heard those ringing laughter – don’t be fooled. It was joy, not happiness. Yeah, life does have enough joy to offer – that’s God’s way of making it up to us. So He packs the joy in small boxes and drops it from up there for us to catch. Remind me again of DD – news this time – that footage of army men dropping food packets from air force planes in flooded areas. That’s how life is - flooded with unhappiness – but for humanitarian reasons – God keeps dropping us those packets of joy – few of us catch them, thank God for that and rest of us wonder what’s there in that packet. We look at that smile and mistook it to be happiness, but its just joy my dear friends. Joy which will not last anyone for ever, coz it’s just instantaneous & ephemeral.

I wonder, why God even gave hope to humans that they can be happy – its sheer cruelty – I mean, just plain tell them, you gonna be a wretched lot down there. One learns to live with his lot. But nopes He chose to be sheer mean and cruel. And for His sadistic pleasure He invented ‘hope’, so that He can look at people living in a constant hope that they can be happy, things can be better. And poor us, we cling on to hope and keep up the ‘pursuit’.

I remember that tale about Lord Buddha, where he had asked a woman whose young child has died, that go get a bowl of rice from a home where no one has ever died and then He would bring her son back to life. Similarly, today I wanna play God, so just show me a man who has been truly happy in his life and I will put you in a constant state of bliss as well !!!

And so he stood again in the battlefield of Kurushektra with a feeling of déjà vu. It felt exactly the same. Same as it was a day before. No one else remembered it but him. Only he knew that what is going to start in few minutes has played out earlier also.

And he also remembered how it has ended. Abhimanyu was standing again in Kurushektra just a day after he got killed by Jaydrath. Army of Kauravas had the same Chakravyuh formation. He was still the only one who knew how to get into this chakravyuh, he still didn’t know how to get out of it. But this time only thing that has changed was that now he was aware that last time he got himself killed battling his way out of that Chakravyuh.

It was not supposed to be like this. Battle of Mahabharata was to proceed without him. He had played out his part and he was no more to be part of this. But he wanted another shot. Life rarely gives another shot but he insisted. As he stood before God in Heaven, he asked Him to let him live that last day of his life once again. He wanted to get it right this time. He wanted to beat Kauravas, he wanted to be the victor and so as he insisted, God relented. And so Abhimanyu got another chance.

He had thought that this time he wont make the mistakes he made earlier, he would be more cautious now, he would benefit from his knowledge of past. But suddenly as he stood in his chariot moments before conch was to announce beginning of day’s battle, he realized none of that was to happen. He didn’t even know if he made any mistake last time – he hardly did, he was also as cautious as he could be and knowledge of past was hardly an asset as it only reminded him that his best was not enough last time, that no matter how hard he tried he still couldn’t figure a way out of chakravyuh. And he suddenly realized that there is nothing that could go any different this time. If he chose to enter the chakravyuh, he would not get out. And then he remembered face of God as He agreed to let him go and live that last day again. He had just smiled, just as you let the kid has his way knowing fully well that he still can’t change anything.

He suddenly realized how naïve he was to think that he could change the course of life, that he could challenge the fate and come out winners, that just because has lost once before –he would win this time.

And then he heard the conch, and he made his way to chakravyuh. Knowing fully well how it could end but hoping it would end some other way. But when have hopes ever got better of fate? It all played out just as it did a day before. Jaydrath killed Abhimanyu again. Fate & life conspired to get their way once more.

Living on foreign shores, away from hustle and bustle of India, one thing that I have realized is that those festivals which used to announce themselves months in advance back home, slip by quietly like strangers here.

I remember that as I kid I grew up with, dusshera, lohri, rakhi, janmashtmi, basant panchmi etc. and navratri & ganesh chaturthi joined in during later years. And Holi & Diwali the Big 2 were always there. But somehow over years, I kept losing touch with them one by one, and am more or less left with only Holi & Diwali now.

And though I don't know why, but Diwali was always been my favourite festival. As a kid, initially it were the firecrackers which used to be the major draw but as I grew up and gave up on patakhas, Diwali's place in my list of favourites saw no change. Rather I only got further enamoured by Diwali; sight of diyas lighting up the night held me spellbounded every year without fail. Frankly, if I have a choice I would do away with all the electric lighting and just put Diyas everywhere on Diwali night. They are so beautiful and so surreal. Reminiscent of old world beauty and elegance.

I know I gonna miss all that this Diwali. May be I won't have any diyas that day, even if I find few for my house I know I can't walk out and find every house lit up, doors open, children running around, people all dressed up and smiles just having a field day on everyone's face.

But I just hope everyone back home in India will have lots of such sights.

And as for me, if i switch off all the lights and light up a lot of diyas - it would make a decent sight, rite ;-)

HAPPY DIWALI to one and all :)

शुभ दीपावली !!!

While putting together few words recently, I realized they ended up looking like couplets.
So thought will post some of them here...

कुछ हवा का ज़ोर था, कुछ बादलों की मर्ज़ी थी
वो उड़ गए वही से, जहाँ छीटों की कुछ ज़रूरत थी
-------------------------------------------------

किसी ने पी के भुला दिया ग़म को
किसी ने रो के बहा दिया ग़म को
इक मैं हूँ जो ना पीता हूँ, ना रोता हूँ
इसलिए तमाम रात, आँखों मे गुज़र करता हूँ
-------------------------------------------------

रश्क करता हूँ मैं सितारों की किस्मत से
काश की मेरे पास भी हर रात , मेरा चाँद होता
-------------------------------------------------

अब तो तुम ख़्वाबों मे भी नहीं आती मेरे
कोई भला किसी से कहाँ इतना ख़फा होता हैं
-------------------------------------------------

चलो कुछ देर और इंतज़ार किया जाएँ,
किसी उम्मीद से रोशन जहाँ किया जाएँ,
दुआएँ असर होने मे वक्त लेती हैं
इतने जल्दी मायूस ना हुआ जाएँ
-------------------------------------------------


Album Recommendation for the day:

While my attempts at poetry may not cut much ice with many but hear the Poems CD of Dus Kahaniyan. It has got some terrific pieces of poetry by none other than Gulzar. You better brush up your urdu though as it does have fair sprinkling of not so common words but trust me its a must hear.

My current fav from this album:

तुझे भूलने लगा हूँ मैं अब... & उसे फिर लौट के जाना हैं ये मालूम था ...

One of my friend’s gtalk tagline read “when you do NPV of life…u should use a discount rate of approx. zero”. Now given my interest in DCF (Discounted Cash Flow analysis for non-MBAs), it was quiet natural for me to get intrigued by this statement.

After all, if you use zero as discount rate than effectively you don’t discount future at all. So implications are:
(a) NPV (Net Present Value for non-MBAs) of your life gets artificially high,
(b) You come up with a seemingly tough to digest logic that say if you hungry today still you are indifferent to getting a meal now or a week later and
(c) Since you have made discount rate zero so it also means that any return on effort in life is equivalent to nil…so either you having a really wretched life or you just don’t have anything left to achieve or attain.

Therefore, I was a little confounded and I just assumed that what she might have meant is to actually live in present and not worry about the future in which case she should have ideally used a discount rate of infinity ;-)

It was upon broaching this with her when I figured that she came up with this line while reading a book called Secret by Rhonda Byrne and the philosophy inherent in that. So I picked up the trail to chance upon what is known as Law of Attraction. Now, I have a very strong opinion on this “law” but before I prejudice you with my perception, let me just state what it actually stands for, so I would borrow the definition from the link above ( while strongly recommending that you go through that link once):
“It states that people experience physical and mental manifestations that correspond to their predominant thoughts, feelings, words, and actions and that people therefore have direct control over reality and their lives through thought alone.”

Interesting right, let me put it a little simply …it says that “for something to happen, all you need to do is to believe/hope that it would happen” So how life will pan out is suddenly not a function of your actions but simply a function of your thoughts. Now, critics would argue that’s not what it means - one obviously needs to act on his thoughts. So even if I allow lee way for a one to one mapping between functions of thoughts and action i.e. we use a prototype subject who puts all his thoughts into action, then for him things should just pan out the way he wants them to. So suddenly life would become fixed and definite because now there’s no uncertainty. But wait, there is a contradiction, what if two equally deserving and earnest individuals decide to want the same thing with equal fervour and dedication. Now if both of them think that they should have that thing then who would eventually get it. When thoughts of different individuals are contradictory what course would nature take, how would the universe react?

It goes on to say that if you really want something just assume you have it. Now that’s an interesting treatise with long term disastrous results guaranteed. So if you hungry just assume you just getting back from the grandest buffet you ever had and try surviving on this assumption for a week, or if its raining just assume you carrying that black umbrella you lost last week (and hope not to get drenched) and so on… I know am pushing it to logical extreme but then this “law” kinda asked for it.

So now since you have assumed you have everything which you could have ever hoped for, life has suddenly nothing more to achieve. Rather life just becomes a constant wait for your thoughts to turn into reality. And then I see another logical contradiction here. If you assume that you have all you ever needed, would that satisfy you, give you delights of owning what you wanted to own – coz if it does, then there is no need for your thoughts to ever change into reality because you are pretty happy with the virtual reality of your own but if this assumption doesn’t give you any satisfaction or benefit then won’t it leave you disgruntled and dissatisfied - in which case you are back to where you had begun…

This philosophy did have some echo in another popular book – Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Another popular book that I couldn’t bring myself to like) – “when you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it'”. But here it’s far more subdued because it doesn’t guarantee achievement; it just talks about a conducive atmosphere where final result is still a function of your actions.

Nevertheless, my logical & sensible self completely revolted against the entire premise of this theory. But remember, few days back I wrote about little rules of faith and how each one of us need to have some illogical friends like that. Well, I would have let this one pass as one such rule of faith but then what made me write something this long about it is the pretense of this ‘law’ that there is more to it than faith, that you should believe it because it has its roots in quantum physics or its effort to gaining credibility through blatant misinterpretation of Hinduism or Buddhism.

Faith and physics - they make strange bedfellows. I have always believed that faith is as much an ally of a man as logic is. Just that when you base your actions on faith don’t look for support in science and when you act on science just don’t hope that it would turn out any different from how it always does…

I got back home by 6:30 today and for want of anything better to do, switched on Sony. It was showing some recent hindi movie which I don’t really think I would have seen in a better frame of mind , but when you are acutely bored –anything goes. So I ended up watching this flick.

Now it was another of those usual formula hindi movie – Mr. Hero and Ms. Heroine falls in love in first 60 mins, sing songs, exchange vows of true love. Then some misunderstanding crops up and they get apart in next half an hour. Enter Mr. Nice Guy, he supports our Ms. Heroine for next one hour. Mr. Nice Guy gets into good books of Ms. Heroine though our Ms. Heroine still cries all night for Mr. Hero in one or more of those sad songs. With half an hour to go, she comes round and agrees to marry Mr. Nice Guy. Now we enter the climax, just as they were about to get married, misunderstanding between Mr. Hero and Ms. Heroine gets resolved by some twisted stroke of fate. But all this happen almost always on the wedding day. Now Mr. Nice Guy is left with no choice, he steps up and lives up to his name by bringing together Mr. Hero & Ms. Heroine and walking away himself. And without fail, he does this with a perfect smile playing on his face at the end. Result – everybody is happy at the end of three hours. .

I have seen this plot numerous times, two movies I can immediately remember are Kuch Kuch Hota Hain and Mere Yaar ki Shaadi Hain and I seriously felt bad for characters of both Salman Khan & Jimmy Shergill. I mean poor Mr. Nice Guys, why should they always step aside. Why should fate be cruel on them? Why can’t all these misunderstandings get resolved well in time before these poor chaps make an entry? Now you can’t sympathise much with Uday Chopra but u can’t fault SRK for falling in love with Ms. Heroine at first place and we all want things to work out between the leading pair which eventually does. But someone must spare a thought for our poor Mr. Nice Guys. That way Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam was a little different, while Mr. Nice Guy, as usual, decided to step aside but in the end Ms. Heroine came back to him. But then that happened because Ms. Heroine was already Mrs. Heroine by the time movie entered its climax. Now in almost all hindi movies if Ms. Heroine ends up marrying Mr. Nice Guy then we all know happy ending requires our leading lady to stay put in the marriage. That’s why I think Mr. Johar came up with an excellent story for Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna though he spoiled it entirely with frivolous execution of that movie. Now that’s more or less the only movie I recall where Ms. Heroine walks out on a seemingly perfect hubby to pursue her heart’s calling – guess it was too mature and complicated a story for Mr. Johar to handle but I just hope somebody more competent tries a remake of KANK. Am sure this is one script that has immense potential to change the standard formula of hindi movies.

But coming back to tried and tested love triangles of hindi movies (which upon applying rules of geometry should be isosceles in my opinion), I was just wondering could these stories have any other ends? Probably not. On careful thinking, the very reason why the third angle of this triangle is called Mr. Nice Guy and not Mr. Hero 2 is because he is never supposed to be the hero. He is just there to fill in for Mr. Hero till fate plays one of its tricks and set right all that was wrong so far. I mean while all Mr. Nice Guys are immensely likeable but they are not really supposed to be loved or are they? Not really, if any of the hindi movies are to be believed … I don’t seem to recollect any flick where Ms. Heroine (and not Mrs. Heroine) chose to prefer Mr. Nice Guy over Mr. Hero (and not Mr. Anti-Hero).

Frankly, if you ask me if I would like the original formula changed so that Ms. Heroine forgets Mr. Hero and fall in for Mr. Nice Guy, I myself would have serious apprehensions. One or two offbeat movies ok but always …ummmmm no please. Reason – if misunderstandings did them apart in first place then it would be really hard on Mr. Hero as well as Ms. Heroine, if they are kept apart just because it was too late by the time it all got cleared. Guess that’s why our directors prefer to play the game of brinkmanship and chose to clear air just in time i.e. on wedding day ;-) And so if there got to be one sacrificial lamb in the whole thing, its only fair that it is Mr. Nice Guy. After all, Ms. Heroine was never meant to be with him at the first place.

But then, just for the sake of being different. I really wish to see one movie where our Mr. Nice Guy is both liked and loved. And it’s not him who is required to make way at the end. I mean even by the law of large numbers Mr. Hero should run out of luck at least once after repeated success in all the hindi movies in walking away with the bride. Some bright guy somewhere should come up with a believable excuse why Ms. Heroine can live happily ever after with Mr. Nice Guy instead of going back to Mr. Hero.

Now only guys I can trust to do justice with something like this are either Vishal Bharadwaj or Sanjay Leela Bhanshali. But given Shakespeare never thought of a drama like this so Mr. Bharadwaj might just be long way off a movie like this and as for Mr, Bhansali, well…does anyone know what’s the story of Saawariya ? ;-)



Song recommendations:

Now that I have established my knowledge of hindi movies beyond dispute. Let me recommend my favourite tracks from Saawariya. Excellent album and it was really tough to choose one song as favourite over rest and actually I couldn’t do it in the end.
So, two of my fav songs from this album are:

1. थोड़े बदमाश हो तुम, थोड़े नादान हो तुम….. sung by Shreya Ghoshal; &
2. माशा अल्लाह….. by Kunal Ganjawala

There are lots of things I like about night.

Like darkness which hides you from constant glare of the world, quiet that let you steal some moments of peace, solitude that let you be yourself.

After a long day, night is like nature’s gift to you. A gift, wrapped in a beautiful starlit sky and laced with a ribbon made of moonlight.

It's so beautiful and fascinating and still people spend it sleeping…

I wonder why...

I once told myself that tougher it gets for you to get something; greater are the chances that you would eventually get it. Because when something is very precious, God just wants to be sure that He is giving it in the right hands. So, when He makes it difficult for you it’s not to scare you away, but all He wants is to be absolutely sure that you really want what you asking for. And so all one needs to do in such moments is to stay put and not give up.

And while this may sound a little childish, but this invented “rule of life” of mine has stayed with me since then and actually helped me slug it out in moments when everything seemed lost. I would be the first one to agree that this little principle of faith may not be able to stand slightest of test of reason. But then I turn to it only when reason refuses to stand by me.

There are times when you want something very badly but you can’t seem to get it and in these times, your wisdom, your reason, your logic all gang up and ask you to turn back, assuring you that there is nothing wrong in giving up, convincing you that best thing to do is to just step aside. And still you just don’t want to give up, because something deep down tells you not to – at least not just yet.

And in such moments, all of us need our little friendly rules of faith, ones to which we can turn and who can tell us to ignore all the sane advice and just heed to call of our heart – rules of faith which can tell us to stay put and not give up as yet. And they may be childish but all of us need one or two childish friends like these. Because just like little kids these little acts of faith also don’t question you, they don’t argue with you, they just look at you and smile approvingly – and that smile is enough to bring back your confidence and hope. And sometimes this little faith is all that’s needed to bridge the last stretch between your dreams and reality.

And even if it is not enough to take you to the end but it at least takes you as far as you could have possibly gone and doesn’t leave you with a regret of giving it up when you could have still made that last ditch effort.

After all, so often what comes back to haunt you is not that you lost but that may be you just didn’t try right till the end…

It was very dark. Nobody could have seen it. Nobody could have even seen the drops of red dripping from his fingers. But he could feel the hot blood on his hands. And he could see her body lying in front of him.

It must have been a very painful death. He had slit her throat and as blood drained and her body twitched, he stood there watching. But she didn’t scream. She had not even shouted when he took out knife in that dark alley. She had just looked at him for a moment….and then she closed her eyes. And in that single moment, her eyes didn’t ask him “Why ?”, rather those eyes asked herself “How could he?”. She didn’t say a word thereafter. Not when he pressed the knife to her throat, now when he made the first cut, not when he slit her throat open and not a sound when she lay there fighting a painful battle with death. She just took it all with a stony silence.

And silence is all that he was left with now. He touched her body, it was cold - it had none of the warmth that he was used to. Her eyes had popped out - they had none of the twinkle that he has known. Her lips had turned blue – not the rose red that he remembered.

He had killed her.

He knew he had killed her but it was still very dark so no one else might have seen it. So he decided to wait by the body till the day break. They might just need a witness or two to prove that he killed her…

And he didn't want to take any chances with the hanging....

It was just 5 in the evening, on a normal day this time of the day would have been mildly lit by a sun preparing to call it a day, but not today. It was dark as a night outside, clouds held the rein, flashes of lightning were warning about the thunderstorm that was readying itself to strike and destroy. May be the cloak of darkness was borrowed by the storm to hide the destruction or may be it was just another tool of its, when you can’t see clearly, you often get sucked in by forces of self-destruction.

But thunderstorms just don’t appear out of blue. It was raining since morning, clouds were building up and light was fighting a losing battle since day-break. No one can complain that storm just slipped in, whoever didn’t see it coming was guilty of either looking the other way or closing their eyes in a hope that all this would just blow over.

Clouds were roaring now and it has started raining harder. How strange it is. Same rain that till yesterday was a welcome relief, a thing of beauty, an object of romance has suddenly turned into a terror, a dance of destruction. There were people who waited for rains, waited to take a walk in the light drizzle or get drenched in the mild one. Waited to smell the fragrance of raindrops falling on the soil. Waited to sit by the river to see raindrops creating ripples in the river. Waited to pick freshly washed flowers from the garden. Today all of them were scurrying for shelter, praying that rains go away, wondering if those summer days albeit a little hot and dry were better than the current madness. How strange it is that situations and events can turn something that was an object of desire till so recently into a distant disenchantment.

But wait, not everyone was hurrying for shelter. There was a lone soul out there, looking up in the sky as if challenging the storm for a duel. He too had waited for rains and he has not yet given up on his dreams. It was pouring hard, nothing like what he had expected. But he was ready to brave these rains, in a hope that at some point they would relent, skies would give in to his desire and storm would pass on to let him dance in the rain. But hopes, that’s what storms enjoy destroying most. Longer he stayed out, harder it rained. Each shower was striking at his confidence, trying to weaken him, making him to give in. But he held out. He fell few times but every time he stood up again. Each thunderstorm comes with a shelf life, and in only that much time it needs to destroy all dreams, desires and hopes. If one can hold out for that long then storm does blow over. But you hold out not by hiding but by facing up. And that’s what he was doing. The storm was running out of time. Soon victory was to be his…

And then the lightning struck.

And this time he fell for one last time, not to get up ever again.

Storm won again. Storms always win. They always do.

I just wonder, why?