Follow?

Follow your heart or follow your head? An age old question posed in various forms over the ages. There is no right answer though, is there?

In all my (admittedly few) experiences with life so far, I've realized one thing - what I want to do is never what they want me to do. Who's they? They is family, they is friends, they is peers, they is people I respect, they is all the unspoken and unseen parts of society I somehow seem to be offending. Every time I decide to follow my heart and break free of societal shackles, there is a gentle tap on my shoulder. When I turn around, there is a multitude of questions staring me in the face, chief of which always is 'Are you doing the right thing?' 

Accompanying these questions are the thousands of faceless people staring at me like zombies like I’ve committed a terrible crime and should be ostracized from society forever.

It's like I've broken free from the darkness of a dark tunnel onto a beautiful green hillside, but there is always something that draws me back to that dark underbelly of the earth, teeming with rats. The rat race is a really apt term, isn't it?

A lot of this probably stems from my own ego. Acceptance and satisfaction often go hand-in-hand, but think again. Do they really? Societal acceptance and fitting in with the rest (and often bettering them) might give you an ego boost, but at the end of the day, you're still a rat in the darkness. It's always a choice one has to make - a choice between doing what everyone's doing and doing it better than them or doing what one wants to, at the risk of ridicule. Not always an easy choice to make. As I said, follow your heart or follow your head? Because in life, there is no middle path.

The Other Woman..

Love is love.
It can happen to anyone, any where, and You can't control it. It controls you.

I was going through a couple of comments and post on the various views that have come forward in the discussion about Love, Sex aur Dhoka.
 

We have tried to defend the whole thing, stating that love can happen to any one, and every one. We have talked about how society is reacting, and how it should be reacting if not the way it is reacting now. We even know the perspective of a husband, who has been betrayed, and there are more than enough accounts of a broken heart of a woman when she finds about how her husband/ boyfriend has been going around behind her back.
But have we really thought about the other woman? The one, with whom the said affair is going on. How does she feel, knowing that she is the other woman... does she love the boy, or is she also in it because there is some sort of a sexual satisfaction involved in it.
 

Things are easier I guess, if she is in it because there is just sex involves in it (Or so I am assuming) but what happens to her when she is emotionally involved too? Knowing the fact that she is the other woman... do you remember Priyanka Chopra from the movie Fashion ? There, it was a professional relationship with Arbaaz Khan that went all the way to becoming personal and then went sour, because Priyanka started demanding more of his time and eventually had a fall out, and went on to destroy her career once. Of course, one argument is that, she made a mistake and did get a chance to redeem it back.
And she did get her chance too, because, he was in it just for the lure of young sex and excitement.

But what happens, when, both of them are in it for love. The emotional attachment, when she knows that she is the other woman  and she understands that he has responsibilities too.
What does she do? Where does she go? She cares for him, wants to make sure that the world is a better place for him and survives the pain of sharing her love with someone else.
What would you label her? The marriage breaker? Someone who has done a mistake, or someone who is plain stupid to have fallen in love without really giving a bother about the world? but then, when was the last time you fell in love with someone caring a damn about the world...

I know that this post does not really make too much of sense, but I am trying to look at the other side of the coin as well... in law the Principle of Natural Justice says, that you cannot pass a judgement in a case without giving a fair chance to both the parties, so here is my case for the other party.. opinions please?

Love is...!

Some sadist out there must be sitting happily in his heaven! Because, he created the concept of love, and decided that he is going to let the world work on the concepts that he has left behind. And somewhere out here the concepts remained and the practicality of the entire thing parted ways!
And trust me, coming from me, a person who firmly believes in the concept of love and a happily ever after, there must have been a hard hitting reality that must have struck Me!

You know the romance doesn't last forever, but the fact that he or she understands your full stops in the smses also, lives on for a long time!

But the long lasting live based relationship not only requires a lot of patience and compromises, but it requires a lot of self restraint, because there is always  better fish out there!  I am not going to preach as to how, one can imbibe these qualities or run a relationship because no one but the two people in the relationship know how to run their relationship, and what works the best for them!

But here is the thing: you will go through a heart break each time you have a fight with your other half! Each time, a dream shall be broken, but the good part is, that you will always have bandwidth to build a new dream! Just remember, that, the new dream may or may not be drastically different than your own dream, that you had woven before the relationship!
Because, the number of people in your dream increase!
To think about it, we always make that compromise in every relationship, to accommodate peace in it! We just hype it when it comes to the special some one relationship! If you want it, you will take that first step!
Gone are the days when the guy ran behind the girl, but now its totally different..!

Love hurts, accept it! 
It is it's own medicine, 
an unfortunate truth, a
misconceived lie, 
take your pick! 
Love, dream! But above all- 
Believe!!

Some funny thoughts

I 'm pissed that i had to come to work this Friday evening, because I missed Redbull Air Show, and the worst part is when i see all my friends tweeting about how great the show was! but i was left with no other choice so while browsing through Internet  I saw these really funny pictures. I thought maybe they belong here for you guys to have a good laugh at.. Some of them are so true and show's the sad reality of this post modern generation.

 

F***ing - Yay!!

I am seriously pissed off.

Above all, I’m pissed off that not everyone is pissed off.

What the f*** is the big deal about the World @ 7 billion?! We should be ducking our heads and hiding in shame. SHAME! Instead, here we are, just like the f***ing apes we descended from, thumping our chests in pride about the fact that we have all been ‘fucking’ so much and pushed the world’s population to this incredibly unnecessary number. According to National Geographic it would take 200 YEARS just to count out loud to 7 billion!!

Some say that the world of 7 billion is both a “challenge” and an “opportunity.” Surely the word ‘challenge’ is the grossest understatement ever! And opportunity???!!! If I were to wager a guess, ‘opportunity’ here would probably mean some typically Unrealistically optimistic tripe about how we now have 7 billion pairs of hands to help solve all the world’s problems. I guess they’re using our glorious past as the basis for this brilliant hypothesis. Just FYI, they ‘celebrated’ the World at 6 Billion in 1999. That campaign must have been seriously awesome because just look at how those 6 billion pairs of hands have helped make the world a better place! In fact, that 6 billion gave us a whole billion more to help fix all the world’s problems!!

Do you know what happened to the eagerly awaited 6 billionth baby? He turned twelve this year. The good news is that the UN at least still sends him a birthday card.

Some say that in many ways a world of 7 billion is an achievement: Globally, people are living longer and healthier lives.

Why the f*** should this be considered an achievement? The way I see it, call it pessimistic, this just means MORE people have MORE time to fuck up the world some MORE.

I’m not angry because there are too many people in the world living longer and healthier lives, in fact, all figures available indicate that the rate at which the population grows has been reducing steadily. I’m angry because there are too many blissfully ignorant people in the world. 7 billion people standing shoulder to shoulder would fill up the city of Los Angeles. Clearly the issue is not space. It’s the contradictions we live in. The Tadiwala Road slum in Pune is right behind Le Meridien. In fact, they share a wall. That should sound strange, no?

Have you watched planet earth? The “Ice Worlds” episode shows this beautiful female polar bear and her two cubs who are crawling out of their den for the first time since their birth. It ends with this sad, hungry polar bear, struggling pathetically over melting, wafer-thin slabs of ice, and then having to swim for miles and miles and f***ing miles looking for food, risking drowning if it didn’t find land before it staggers on to a rock packed with a large saber toothed walruses. Hide and blubber so thick, this once proud predator curled up and prepared to die.

Who are we trying to save and more importantly whatever for!??! Are we really so f***ing anthropocentric that we don’t give a damn shit about the rest of life on our planet? We’re parasites. Locusts. With us gone the planet will survive. The polar bears will keep hunting seal.

Some say that the world at 7 billion is an “occasion to recognize and celebrate our common humanity and diversity.”  Why do we need to get to 7 billion in order to recognize and celebrate our common humanity?

Where’s the ‘common humanity’ in this picture? We don’t care. Why should we? We have our lives. Our families. Our communities. Our problems.

Celebrate our diversity… yeah, tell that to our gay friends, that they get ridiculed in and forgotten. Tell that to the person using drugs on the street, and then selling her body to buy more. But that’s no Benetton add is it? No, not a safe celebration at all, in fact, f*** celebrating that kind of diversity. We need punitive laws for some of the 7 billion.

Yes, they are not part of our culture I am told. Sexual violence, child abuse and rape appears to be right at home though – as are the culturally acceptable.?

But let’s return to the rest of the ‘normal and culturally acceptable’ 7 billion; like I said before, it’s not too many people on the Earth. It’s just too many pointless existences. You don’t like it. Tough. Stop reading. If you’re continuing, here’s what I think about there being 7 billion people on earth  And here is why I think that some of these existences are pointless: bad parenting. Yes, you read right.

None of us had a choice. We didn’t choose to be born. We’re a result of other people’s choices/accidents/tragedies – call it what you will. But we are at least born with the chance to redeem ourselves – what a waste when we remain unaware about life and continue to breed more unaware philistines.

There’s bad parenting here. On a large scale. And we’re perpetuating cluelessness when we don’t think about these things. How many of us can say we set the best example for our kids. And really, that’s all you can do – set the best example.

All the time we tell our kids to share. Don’t fight. Share. And yet, we never do. And 7 billion not sharing resources fairly is a disaster.

What example are we setting for our kids when we say – go to this international school, study subjects like geography and history – learn that in October 2011 we  hit the 7 billion – learn about the poverty in Africa and starving children in Somalia –but be ready at 4 when I come to pick you up to take you to Marry brown , feed you, shop for you from  the most expensive shops and Gucci for kids, then when you’re 18 you can go to university and study international relations and join a large multilateral – preach tolerance and don’t forget to stone the gay f***ers living next door – don’t worry they deserve it because they’re acting anti-cultural – one day you will find a wife (because you can’t be gay and that’s the way to prove it) – then you and the wife can f*** in this one secret position to ensure you don’t make a gay baby – no not gay – just as clueless as you are though – don’t worry about those Somali kids – nothing you can do – you’re all the way over here aren’t you.

Being angry isn’t a bad thing. Anger gets an unfair amount of bad press. All this focus on being happy and instant gratification – we forget that it’s ok to be angry or rather we’re angry about all the wrong things – why aren’t we angry that women are being raped by UN peace keeping forces that are supposed to protect them, why aren’t we angry that some rapists were acquitted,  why aren’t we angry that children (just like ours) are starving in so many parts of the world, why aren’t we angry that there are just 790 mountain gorillas left in the world – it doesn’t seem right that we get so caught up with our lives and our loves that we can’t stop to wonder why we want children.

If you really believe you can be a good parent and really believe you can contribute positively to the upbringing of another individual, think a little, why doesn’t some other parentless child somewhere in the world deserve your contribution? Surely wanting to procreate more than twice using your own gene pool is just arrogant??! I’m not saying limit the number of children you have. But my god, just be a little generous with your heart. You’ve got two of your own and now you want more, do something good for someone else’s kid. I know some of you might say, it’s a little scary to pick up a seed when you don’t know what tree it’s fallen from, and I’m not about to get into the whole nature versus nurture argument. But if you’re really worried about that, you can’t be very sure of your own parenting skills, in which case you have no business having ANY kids, least of all more unstable, insecure versions of yourself.

It still comes down to the basics of parenting – how many of you can say you set the best example for your children? How many of you can say you talk to your children, on a regular basis, about being socially and environmentally aware?

Because given the time and world we’re living in, nothing has been more important than that.

So many reasons why you won’t, or want to but cannot help…. Only one reason why you should… because really the truth is you can…

It seems only fair. And if you can’t help.. at least don’t continue to procreate.. what’s the point? If your kids are going to be as unproductive as you’ve been, why bother? That’s just a bit selfish no? Not to mention delusional arrogance in imagining the world wants or needs more of your unproductive, selfish selves in the world. Are you worried about your next life? You think God will thank you for sitting on your ass and continuing to f*** and make babies while others are dying? Didn’t he say to help people that need it?

We’re greedy. We’re telling our kids it’s ok to be greedy. And we’re getting away with it. For now.

I want rain

I want rain. Not just piddly showers that are blown around with the wind, stinging your face as a thousand mosquitoes would. I want showers, the kind that no umbrella can really hope to keep out and any reasonable expedition outdoors means that a change of clothes is forthcoming.

If the clouds are going to keep the sun out, I want them coming in huge rolling banks, ones I can stare at with awe as I sit by the sea on a promenade. When it finally begins to pour, I want to retire to the Pizzeria nearby and watch it do so.

I don't even mind having to deal with leaky windows and muddy shoes, rain soaked clothes and the occasional sniffle. It seems like a small price to pay now, at least when compared to depressingly glooming days, no rain and biting wind. I may still moan about mud-splattered jeans and dirty floors and the occasional flood, but I'll take them over grey days and empty promises of an almost-monsoon.

Even a thunderstorm would be nice. There was a time I was really scared of both lightning and thunder, but that has given away to awe. A not-so-gentle reminder, perhaps, of the fury and power that nature can be capable of. And I miss the smell of the earth. Just once I would like that fragrance of freshly drenched soil, that even a concrete jungle like Male' can't hide.

Is it too much to ask for?

Social Networking!

At what point do you draw the line with adding new people to your "Friends" list on your choice of Social Network?

I'm at the point where I see daily requests from people who I knew in school\college, or worse, those who don't know me at all. Some of these I haven't spoken to at all or even while in school simply because they were either not in my class or belonged to a different circle of friends or I don't know whether they exists or not.

I am also both cursed and blessed with having been a recognizable kid in those days - for reasons good (being a leader/president of student association n for being my dads daughter!). This means there are more people that know me than I know them, including a fair set of juniors who I probably only met while either going around begging for votes or shouting at them to walk in a straight line! And I'm glad you people remember me, for it does wonders to me ego. But add you to my list?

Why would you want to know about my life today? I mean, it's not going to be of much help to you. If they needed information based on my location, education or occupation, surely a personal message would suffice. I don't even mind meeting them in person. Heck, I'm game for the occasional reunion in Male’ when I can catch up with old acquaintances and find out who's doing what and has how many kids; I would look forward to it. But that's an annual event, not a daily broadcast.

And there are those people I don't *want* to get back into touch with. How do you tell someone who you never really got along with back in those days that "I had no reason to like you then and I don't see why I should expose some of the more personal details of my life to you"? And so I either ignore the request (and watch the count pile up, gnawing at me) or I say "Not Now" only to get another request a few days later.

I'm not one of those people that like to see a ballooning 'friends' count. Having a thousand people on my list would be meaningless if I was nominally in touch with only fifty. At some point, all the relevant signal will be swamped by noise generated when hundred of people I 'know' change their profile photo, or get into and out of relationships, or check into some restaurant in Male’ or in somewhere else. And I'm not sure I want this attention.

At the same time, I remain aware of the fact that if I ignore them here, at the next reunion I will probably get a cold shoulder from a whole lot of people who know I'm active online through the pages of other friends but have been obviously not accepting their requests to be 'friends'. I'm not sure I will have an acceptable excuse then or even if I do, I'll wake up next morning to find two dozen new friend requests.

I suppose one solution to this is to take a little extra time in organising and sorting contacts in your network, either in the form of Lists in Facebook or Circles in Google Plus. This will probably help me be selective about what information I share. But do I want to know more about their lives too? If not, and if I don't want to share my life with them, why have them on my list in the first place? There are times I've been on some people's friend lists only to have no access to their albums, info or their Walls. Why have me on your list then? We could as well communicate through private messages.

The only other move would have been not to play at all, but I'm already in the game. I *like* being in the social network. There are friends and family and even people on the internet I have never met that I enjoy interacting with and knowing more about. I get to stay abreast of family events that happen in my absence. I like the links, the videos, the funny statuses I so often see. And from an egotistical point of view, I like having my thoughts heard, my links commented on and my photos "liked" (or +1ed in the future, I guess). So logging out forever is not an option.

Which means I remain in social network limbo, neither able to leave nor liking the visibility that comes with it. The irony of musing about and asking for a solution to this on a social platform doesn't escape me either, but I'd love an insight into what people think about this, and what they do in such situations.