Those Innocent Eyes. . .

I was walking to hostel the other day and found a li’l angel standing with his back facing me, his li’l bums facing me rather. :P He was a poor kid, his shirt all torn to rags. He had only a top to cover his body, which in fact revealed most of it. Nice long hair, chubby cheeks. He turned and stared at me for a little while and gave me a wide flawless smile. Oh! How do I describe it! That smile, really made my day. I had almost set my cell out to capture him in the camera but a friend dragged me away for some work. After the darned work we headed back home through the same lane. I wished I could see him again. I did see him; hung to his mom’s waist with the clutch of her thin yet strong arms. He was weeping, and finding his mom in shear rage, I could not dare to take his snap. I wished he glanced at me again with those gleaming eyes, but that didn’t happen and we took off. The li’l episode made me wonder about the innocence of children and how much I love them!!

I am almost crazy when it comes to kids. I loved Ishaan Awasthi from Taare Zameen Par (not his rabbit teeth, I Loved the way the film-maker projected his character and showed various imaginations of a child’s mind); I loved Jamaal from Slumdog Millionaire (how cute can somebody be!). I love every baby I see on my way to the college. I am glad about the fact that we have thousands of young married couples here at Kharghar for whatever reasons. But I enjoy this demography when I visit the parks and see the little sweethearts running around, exhausting their poor parents, who have to fetch their toys each time they throw them far away. I wonder what fun they find in tossing away their toys. By the way, if you haven’t experienced it yet, try it out, its Real fun throwing away things here and there and not being punished for it! Learn such things from kiddos. Great stress busters. I’ve never done it to get rid of my stresses though, but thinking of doing it the next time. Seems like fun when I think of it :) Anyway, I was at the parks. I see them fighting with their siblings for their toys, for the hold of their dads’ hands; I see them looking at the stars and wondering God only knows What! They stare at bikes, dogs, cats, toys, lights, exploring each of them in their li’l minds, running their brain waves at secret angles. I can go on with billions of my observations of kids!!

I don’t think there’s any better movie made, completely dedicated to children, other than TZP. I love it’s tagline: Every Child Is Special. How true is that! I love and would recommend (Rather request :) ) all my readers to watch the video which concludes the movie with the title song TZP. Watch the video and do pay attention to each word of the lyrics. Please do! I am sure you will fall in love with them :) The video, the song, is like an asset to me in my collection! I might be getting overwhelmed with this but that’s what touches me the most – Children!
There’s nothing more pure in this world than a child’s smile and nothing more innocent than a child’s eyes. Give them a glance once and you’ll get it all! :)
Go, fall in love!
Keep Smiling :)

'Many things that i hate.........

i Really Hate It
WHEN :
1. I have to search for veggies out of a vegetable sandwich.
2. The shopkeeper doesn’t give me 5 Star Crunchy (worth Rs.12) for Rs.10, even when I promise to give him the change after the lecture : (Even after my great loyalty towards his store!).
3.The laptop hangs right when I click on an important link.
4.My clothes-to-be-washed are deep in lather/detergent and the water tap and tank betray me.
5.I am all drenched in sweat and come back home to find no electricity.
6.I take a new pair of sandals to wear from the shelf, while rushing for the bus and find it full of filth and dust.
7.People sit with their legs cozily spread in local trains when the trains are jam-packed, difficult for others to even stand on their feet.
8. People pretend or really do not remember names.
9.Girls sing out loud believing they are the only disciple of Lata G unaware of the fact that they’re not near to even Aditya Narayan (He’s Udit Narayan’s son, if you’re Pretending not knowing him : ).
10.People (esp girls) in the same (so-called) group bitch about each other.
11.Our warden gets into giving lectures on the society we live in when we are actually asking about simply holidays.
12.We call a restaurant, after long minutes of deciding what to order, and he refuses for the home delivery.
13.My tall friends wear heels and prove me Even shorter.
14.Anybody says he/she doesn’t like kids.
15.People dispose off their used band-aids on their beds.(I’ve seen this!).
16.People dig their noses in their reverie, not realizing that others have stereoscopic eyes.
17.People turn American when it comes to ordering in a restaurant or a smaller food joint rather where the waiter replies embarrassed in hindi.
18.People feel English is the only dignified language on earth.
19.People block the airtel network during the happy hours making it difficult for misers like me to call good ol’ friends.
The I-hate-it-when list goes on… and it keeps getting appended each day. This was a snapshot of the list.

So Many 'Why's . . . :)

Why are we all so very mean with everyone we meet? Why is it that when you meet a person, you build a perception in your mind immediately about him/her? Why is it so that the perception is a highly variable term, say x? Our variable x varies either from good to bad or from bad to good. But my big question is, on what grounds does this value of x change!!?
For instance: You meet a person for the first time. Say, you kinda dislike him in those couple of first looks. You form a perception in your mind that you don’t really like him (or he isn’t worth your liking or whatever!) **Here you assume the person to be inferior to you in some way or the other. The ways could be their attitude towards life & people, maturity, intellect, ego, etc.**
Maybe you find that person not much important to be even noticed or given a thought over, by you! Maybe it’s not the case that you find them inferior, maybe you just don’t find them worth your thoughts or attention! Frankly, I don’t mind such an attitude towards others At All!! Live and let live!
However, this attitude changes dramatically when you get to know about some of their huge achievements or their popularity for that matter, their hidden talents which had not been revealed yet, or something that they have that’s certainly more than you!
Why!? Tell me why do we judge people as WE wish! For instance, there’s this guy, you met the other day, found him a mediocre, there’s nothing special in him as such and you preferred maintaining that formal distanced relation. Sometime later, you get to know he’s a highly talented guy with umpteen achievements in some field! Being a humble and modest guy, he never really made any attempts to display that side of him.
However, right after that day, you started talking to him (more), admiring him for his achievements and always trying to stay ‘connected’. Why so? When will people stop being mean and when will they stop believing that ‘it’s they who decide what the worth of the other person is’? OR maybe it’s true that ‘the rising sun gets all the salutes”!! Stay mediocre and nobody notices you, come up with some achievement publicity and they’ll all come after you!! Even those who didn’t seem to know you before!

Auto! Eh! Will I reach home today!

There was this tiring and hot afternoon when at around 3 pm we decided to go back to hostel and take some rest, maybe a li’l nap… There we go in search of rickshaws, right under the hot sun. We actually had to start begging from far away before it reached us to say “Nai, udhar nahi jaega!” :| We would cry out to each auto “Sector – 21” and every damn one would refuse to go! Completely worn out, and when we almost gave up, one of us suddenly realized she’s hungry! She went to a nearby shop to get some snacks packed. Meanwhile, we got an auto who said “ok jaega!” They have choices here, you see!!
“Bhaiya, Please do minute rukiye!” (Our friend was still in the shop paying for the snacks!) And there goes the noble man in a very rude and hostile tone! “Jaldi bulao, Mujhe aur kuch kaam se jana hai!” Now what other work does he have other than this rick we thought! We yelled at Ms.Hungry while she came running after a few heavy-handed minutes that we spent in the auto, waiting for her. The minutes in which the driver kept whining about how we were wasting his precious time while we kept praying for her to be back asap!
Finally she hops in and we all heave a sigh of relief that we WOULD reach home today, and that we had caught an auto in the end, no matter how busy he was with his own schedule! But this doesn’t end here. The climax is just about to come! Right after getting into the main road and passing a quarter of the distance, our dear friend notices the shop guy had forgotten to give her the Jalebis. Hell! “Bhaiya, wapas wahin le chaliye!?” And… Shoot! “Pttchh! Mujhe kitna kaam hai!! Abhi 13 rupaye lagega, and fir mai jaega!”
“God! Do whatever! Just take us there and don’t kill us!” We were already too frustrated after those long tiring and hunting minutes. Hence, we went for the Jalebis and left the busy auto walah! Took the damn snacks and headed for the hunt, yet again! No auto – either not ready to go, or no auto at all for many more torturing minutes. I walked through the market and decided to buy some fruits (as we always made rules but never actually went to the nearby vendors to buy them!) As soon as I asked the vendor to pack some grapes, my friends grabbed my hand and pulled me into the auto they had finally conquered!! Finally we got an auto who dropped us home – Tired, sweaty, frustrated and with no fruits!! :’(

The way we live here...

Kharghar is a nice, clean hilly place in Navi Mumbai, very unlike Mumbai! And believe me, it’s completely unlike it! Clean roads, greenery all around, lesser pollution and lesser population too! However, your habits at Kharghar make you seem ridiculous in rest of Mumbai. Absurd to believe, but true!

It happens many a times when we visit main Mumbai – We ask the rickshaw or cab driver “Bhaiya, kitna loge?”, (receiving that weird look which says “hop in kiddos!!”), before realizing that it’s not Kharghar!! And that the Meters DO run at other places! Neither do we have to plead them to take us! I would share one of such pleading experiences of Kharghar in my next post. . .

Anyway, the usual morning classes drag you outta your bed just a few minutes before the bus timings. In MBA, no matter what all you learn from the college and life in the two years, you definitely learn time management! I never knew that a person could bathe, get ready, have milk/a fruit* and be all set to leave for college in less than half an hour. Maybe fifteen minutes! Well, I won’t forget to mention my dear roommate who has even done the above in merely five minutes and has yet been successful in catching her bus on time!! The hostel is at about 5 minutes distance from the college. And for the 8.30 classes it’s very often that you miss the 8am bus. We go, looking for auto rickshaws, and rarely find any nearby.

In Kharghar, we have found that the auto drivers apparently drive as their part-time jobs as they have lot more work to do other than their transport job! If you do find one after a long struggle you have to agree to their prices. The autos here do not have the meters running!! So they all, in agreement, set some prices and we have to pay it no matter what the distance is! Huh! Monopoly you see! Well, It IS a matter of concern when you live in hostels. When you check your expenses at the end of the week or month, you quite often end up feeling either guilty or sorry for yourself – because most of your expenses were on cabs and food!! Don’t wanna get into the food thing now!! We spend on that coz its Really very difficult to gobble down the canteen food at times! Most of the times!

And by the way, every time you check your weekly/monthly expenses, you end up making a resolution that you will not eat out from tomorrow(not just to save money, but coz anyway junk food IS junk indeed and gives you no health factors!).. You decide you would spend that money on fruits and juices instead(which never happens after a couple of days of following the rules!)

eh....philosophy...eh...spirituality...ehh

Experiencing the sand rolling down your fist is indeed a depressing moment. Things going outta your hands… Feeling like “Maybe this is what is meant to be…”, “And what I had dreamt of was not feasible at all..”. These are very powerful negative feelings. Once you open doors for these, they’ll take time to leave you and would surely make you weak deep inside. We dream of thousands of things; we do have thousands of dreams which we think of making true someday. Most of them are long term.
God watches everything; He knows what you really want and importantly what you deserve. It’s a great saying, “If you wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans!”. Very well quoted. Our life has already been planned, very well, even before we could think of it.
What we do is try a hand at guessing what’s next. We dream of many things and also plan for many. You may end up with a failed plan, you may come across a very strong feeling that your long, well-chalked out plans have gone in vain and you might have to go on a new way leaving the one which leads you to your dream. But what I personally feel is, no matter how bad the current situations get, no matter how strongly you feel that you’re not gonna see THAT day as you had dreamt of; something good will come outta it. God allows you to go ahead with a plan only if He really wants you to!! And out of it, He either wants you to live your dream and get that ultimate happiness OR He wants you to learn something really huge from it. No efforts ever go in vain. No dream is left unfulfilled.
Your hands would never lose all of the sand. . . either you’ll get all of the shore, or you’ll at least learn what it really meant from the cold palm that the sand left. . .
Staying positive takes nothing. Getting negative thoughts needs just a little, a hairline diversion from positivity. It will make you weak from deep inside. It’s better to realize the fact that “you’ll never be left alone, empty handed”; and go ahead in life welcoming things with a smile :)

"The Answer To Our Life"

[one of bsb's bests]
You see me sitting here, a smile upon my face
The time has come but you know that it's not too late
There's been too many things, together we have seen
It's not that hard if we start to believe
And we're not gonna take anymore
Can we try to erase all the pain
So please
Show me a reason, give me a sign
Tell me the way we, fall out of line
Is it today or is it tonight?
We'll find, the answer to our life

This world is not at ease, we seem to hide the truth
Thinking there's only so much we can really do
It's up to you and me, to face our destiny
The jury's here so let's take the stand
And we're not gonna take anymore
Can we try to erase all the pain
So Please
Show me a reason, give me a sign
Tell me the way we, fall out of line
Is it today or is it tonight?
We'll find, the answer to our life

Tell me why we have to cry
And not try
When there's so many things we can do
To help this troubled world start a new
I need a reason, I need a sign
There's no turning back I'm here by your side
Is it today or maybe tonight?
We'll find
The answer to our life....