'When was the last time you did something for the first time' goes the tag line for an advertise of a particular movie series on a movie channel. What a lovely line it is. Really, how boring we make our lives as we grow up. We go to the same damn place to work, we go to same restaurants, we always eat same kind of food and so on. As we grow up, we become more and more afraid of trying something new. Most people spend their entire life without really understanding what is that they enjoy doing the most. The place where I work is so personified by this attitude of 'afraid to change' that everyone is just stuck to their work they have been doing from years, the routine they are having from years. Sometimes, I wonder whether my insistence of putting a logical completion to my earlier work is really my need or am I also afraid to change? At least at this moment, I think it is my need and hope it never becomes fear to change something in my life.
I think at some level most people are not really afraid of trying new things. It is just that in today's world (or for that matter as much as we can see back in the history) we average people have made our life so miserable, so much constrained by conventions, social rules, etc. that once we reach adulthood we are supposed settle into routine for rest of our life or at least till we retire from so called work. We are afraid that our work (rather a beaten path called career) will suffer or family will suffer or health will suffer or what will people say, etc.
In a way I like, the way people in some European countries and countries like Japan, work for 11 months without taking any extra holidays and the go for a vacation for a fortnight or a month. Of course, most of them visit different place as tourists. Although it is nice to visit different places (especially it is nice to relax in naturally beautiful places), countries or cultures, tourism also becomes a kind of routine after some time. One can learn a lot through travel but for that going as a tourist, staying in a hotel, visit museums or some nature related points, take photos and come back is not really good idea. If you spend just one month in a different country or a culture interacting with people there and understanding their culture, you will perhaps learn more about life than your entire schooling may have taught you. You will realize how many stupid assumptions we make about life, about how we should behave, about what is good for us and what is bad for us, how many things we think are sacrosanct and then see those things have no value in other culture and it does not really make any difference or sometimes even betters your life.
Well, all these things apart I think it is nice to have one month off in a year, where you can get away from routine and have a nice recreational period, when you can be like small children with curiosity in eyes and itching to understand, try and experiment with new things. Ideally, entire life should be like that, But, why not start with one month? Well, can I do it? Hmm....

Have you ever imagined, how difficult it can be to take a good photo of the moon in the night without having a 'lovely big zoom camera with freedom to choose many manual settings' and a tripod. Yesterday was pournima and probably better day for taking photo but I tried to take one today. Why? I don't know, I just went into the balcony, because it is very pleasant outside with little cool breeze due ti drizzle we had in the evening. I just had a look up and thought well I got to take photo, how often have I tried to take a good photo of the moon which I see daily. So, I took out my camera after almost 4-5 months and tried. First few photos, with auto mode could not capture anything except a white dot in the middle of plain black background and for the first time I started missing having a nice SLR or digital SLR camera with good zoom lens. Of course, the failure to capture a good image must be more of my lack of photography skills but what the heck, machines can always be considered inadequate, can't they? So, I went into manual mode, disabled flash, increased exposure, tried higher ISO settings and long shutter times, but to my dismay my hands are not steady enough to capture a good image for long shutter times and increased exposure only change whit dot to very bight white dot. Finally, the best image I could capture is the one uploaded here. That too, it looks better because of some small clods surrounding the moon. Well, sometimes simple things are very difficult to get or capture.

Nowadays, writing has become such an arduous task for me that it doesn't just happen. It is as if, somebody has sucked up all the mental energy needed for writing. I can react to people's writing through my writing but I don't feel like writing something on my own. Although most of posts are not really great, some of them do have good thoughts. Writing has never been my strength but sometime 5-6 years back, I found that it gives me some me some satisfaction. The funniest thing is that almost daily there is at least one thing I feel I should write something about, but I just can't get to my keyboard and start writing. And, if I sit to write, after two-three sentences suddenly all my thoughts dry up. All that chain of thoughts gets lost somewhere.

Well, this is not only happening to writing but almost everything I am doing nowadays. I wonder what are those things in our brains that help us going from just thinking to doing. I really need to fire them up. Or, may be convert some thinking energy to doing energy, can somebody invent such a transducer? It will be really useful for me, as I think too much. Well, sometimes even if you energy to do something, you still don't fill like doing it. You can hear a lot of lectures on how to get rid of procrastination but until the reason why you procrastinate is removed (assuming that reason is not just being lazy), nothing really is going to improve the situation.

Well, tomorrow I have to meet somebody who is going to question me, why I am not working. I feel like vanishing somewhere.

The Great Dictator - Last speech

Chanced upon this wonderful movie by Charlie Chaplin while surfing channel on the TV. This was his first talking movie, satire on Nazism and typical lovely Chaplin movie. At the end of movie jewish barber played by Chaplin who is mistaken as Adenoid Hynkel gives a speech. We may not have dictators like Hitler any more, but most of the speech still pretty much valid for today.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed, and brutality. Look up, Hannah! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope, into the future! The glorious future, that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up!

Long time, since I wrote. Why did I not write (asking myself)? Well, I did not feel like. Sometimes, in your life it becomes very difficult to sit and write something nice. When I started writing on blogs, for long time I hardly wrote and then I sometimes wrote about frustrations and some time about very random topics. Not that, I am trying to put my history of blogging here. I still observe a lot and feel like writing on lot of subjects but somehow the things are not coming together.
Overall, it has been a quite an unusual day today. For some reason I have been really relaxed today, to the extent that for some time I felt like, I don't have any work to do. All my work is done and of course as a result I was also feeling a bit bored. But, from last two days I think if there is one thing to learn that is people can really surprise you. Someone, I never expected will invite me for dinner, invited me for dinner; someone I thought generally is not very inclined to give feedback gave me a very nice and clear feedback on one of my ideas; and someone else who I always used to think is above some bad things in professional life seems to be stuck in those very bad things. All that I can see, is some difference of circumstance. The first someone, has probably come to accept the fact that however ever these guys may be (me and my colleagues), they are here working with me and some relaxed informal interaction may be nice. The second someone is looking relaxed since last two three weeks, may be some end of trouble for that person and that has changed that persons professional interactions very positively. While the third someone, seems to be changing from the moment, that person felt some threat to his reputation and his understanding of himself. I think it just highlights the fact that you might never understand a person without really taking his circumstances at present into account. It is always worth giving a chance if the circumstances are changing. I wonder how many people do I understand as they are their natural self, rather than the way they are in some forced situation. Of course, it is impossible a task. I think it is well known that forget about understanding someone else, we often do not even understand ourselves.
I guess this is enough for today's rambling.

It is not a very common phenomena to wake up in the morning with the feelings that "I must fail tomorrow's exam". But it happened to me day before yesterday. As if to realize this feeling I could not give answers to many questions that I knew in yesterday's exam. What was even weird was this will probably the first time that I will be failing an exam and I did not have any bad feeling about it. However, almost in comical turn of events, I have not yet failed, but I have been given a chance, where I need to put in some work and I can save myself from failing. Some wise people say that most people quit just before their goal is about to realize, but how do I know whether it is about to realize or it is right time to quit. If you don't quit, finally you will achieve the goal but at what cost? Will it really be worth it?
I don't know what kind of answers am I searching for, but I am searching that's for sure.

I was one of those lucky students in the childhood whose school was just five minutes walk from the house. I went today to a xerox shop in front of my school for copying some documents and after a long long long time, I was looking at my school with lot of time in my hand. After leaving the school, I must have passed my school thousand times, but somehow I don't think I waited and looked at it for some time. It almost the same as it was when I was studying there; at least from the outside. Except on the front sign showing my school's name, there is this funny text added that says, "ISO 9001-2000 certified"; couldn't help a chuckle. My beloved school has also fallen victim to trend of getting into standards unnecessarily. Well, let it be that is the most unimportant part. The building was never the part I was very attached to, although I do remember those classrooms and corridors. Whenever the school comes into my mind, I remember two things; one, my wonderful teachers and second, those carefree days. I wish I can be so carefree today. Adult life somehow doesn't make sense at all. Few months ago, I had this great urge to visit the school and meet my teachers, incidentally one of my classmates and long times friends happened to visit the school that time and informed me that hardly any teachers from our times are left in the school. Although that was expected ( I myself is 29 now), I felt sad and dropped the plan to visit the school. Many time when I am here and roaming around my place I will come across some of my teachers (especially my favorite ones like Chandane bai, Pawar bai, Afle bai,), but that hasn't happened. My school wasn't one of those hi-fi schools. It was simple school with limited facilities, but it was my world in my childhood and along with my home, that is the place which shaped the most important part of me.
Well, I just thank all my wonderful teachers. Wish they are having a great life and thank them again on behalf of all their students whose paths have been brightened by them.

sometimes, they say you need to compromize;

sometimes, they say you need to lie down;

sometimes, they say you need to let go;

sometimes, they say you need to accept the orders;

sometimes, they say you need to accept the world as it is;

sometimes, they say you need to forget what you like;

almost always, they say you need to be different than what you are

and yet...

sometimes, you just need to be you, gather the courage and fight the world

yet another day when I don't feel like doing anything. I just feel like writing and that too on paper using pencil or rather I am feeling more like drawing something using pencil and paper. So, what can be done?

Likhne ko to bahut ji chahta hai,
magar likhne ke liye kuchh sujhta nahi hai,
likhe to likhe kya,
vahi do-char vishay rah gaye hai,
kabhi karyalay ki murkhta pe likhte hai,
kabhi likhte hai khudki jindagi pe,
kabhi likh dete hai is jahan ki buraion pe,
nahi vo bhi sujha to likhe dete hai pyar pe,
kya jindgai yahi reh gayi hai,
kya inhi chakkaro me vo khatam ho jayegi,
kya kabhi vo nayi subah hogi,
jab hum khoye rahenge apni hi dhun me,
har ek pal ka maja le rahe honge,
na sar pe mandara rahi hogi koi chinta,
na bachegi kisi ko kuchh sabit karne ki aavshyakta,
na hogi kabhi kami jindagi jine ke liye,
pyar hi pyar hoga is jaha me,
ulajh rahe hai hum is khwab me is tarah,
ki hakikat me dur ja rahe khwab se,
ye likhte likhte hum kaha pahuch gaye hai,
kyon khudsehi hum khafa ho rahe hai,
likhne ka to bahut ji chahta hai,
magar likhne ke liye kuchh sujhta nahi hai.

First impressions

One often reads that “first impression is the last impression.” However I have learnt through my experience that first impression probabilistically is the most deceptive impression. I also think that I probably know the reason why it is so. I think it is because in today’s world (probably as long as human kind has existed) most people pretend to be someone else or trying to follow some rules set by some religious or philosophical gurus or some babas/matas or some religious scriptures or some self-improvement stuff. Most people go by these rules rather than the intent behind them. Throw them in difficult situations or situations where they have to hurriedly interact (without having chance to remember and follow the rules) and their real personality starts coming out. When you really want to change for better understanding the intent rather than following some rules, your actions come from your sub-conscious, very naturally, you don’t have to remember to behave or act in certain way. Of course, there are many self-improvement gurus who say that of you follow something with enough regularity and make it a habit, it starts coming out naturally after some time, just like riding a bicycle, once you learn it, you can do it any time again. It is hard to argue against these statements, but there will always be some difference. It is like no matter how many languages you become expert of but in some sudden event first words that come out of your mouth will be of the first language that you acquired as a child. Of course, this was all about the people who are unintentionally pretending to be someone else; I don’t think I need to write about people who pretend purposefully to get some thing out of you.
And, last but not the least; you never know under what conditions a person is behaving in a certain way. I am not saying you should totally ignore somebody’s bad behavior but you can definitely decide to give the person a reasonable chance (I am not talking about crimes, that’s a totally different discussion. Here I am talking only about the day-to-day behaviors). Only when you give another chance and interact more with a person, you start understanding the real personality of the person. When we act in a particular situation or dialog, there are so many different things going in our mind and each of those things affect the way we act. And, then there always our biases that make us interpret a certain behavior in a favorable or unfavorable way. I am sure, you must have met with at least some people, who look extremely repulsive in the first impression but as you start knowing them more and more, you like them and sometimes they even become your best friends.

Was just watching an ongoing sports tournament of a famous sports worldwide and found another fine example of the fact that the company in which work is run by bunch of brainless morons. My company is one of the sponsors for the last time champion team of the tournament, the players are sporting logo on their shirt and helmet. This would have been wonderful if my company sold products or provide services so that individual psychology matters and like when you go out buy a toothpaste, you remember some brand name because you saw it on your favorite sports person's shirt but my company provides services for big businesses. In the time of recession, where they are laying off (well, they are so called ethical people so they can't lay off, so kicking out people using all kinds of lame excuses) people, reducing salaries but wasting money on one of the most ineffective marketing strategies for the kind of business my company is in. I mean if my company sponsors some team or some event it should be technology or consulting competitions and events. That's where, CEOs or senior managers of the prospective customer businesses might notice the enthusiasm of the company or its willingness to learn new technology or to get into consulting space and demonstrate abilities in the same. Anyways, can't complain much, because this might not be as costly decision as some other decisions these brainless morons have taken in last one and half years.

I have final exam tomorrow, for the subject I started studying only today and here I am doing as much timepass as I can. Well! what should I say about myself. I am caught in two minds. At one end I am thinking that anyways I don't want to continue so why am I bothering, just enjoy as much as possible; don't think about studying and all. At the other end, I am still pretty much hoping that things will work out. The situation is quite silly since I am neither able to enjoy nor able to study. Indecision is definitely the biggest immobilizer for a man. One should take decisions, it doesn't matter, everyone makes mistakes and that's how you learn. I can preach all of this, but finding it difficult to follow. Probably these four months were biggest waste of my life, so be it or I should do something and make them count. There is no use just brooding over it. I also know that things never work out just by hoping they will, you have to make them work out; you have to stand up and take some action towards it. I am not taking any action. May be I should do something about it, well at this moment I am writing about it, may be this is the first step or may be my inertia of inaction will continue, who knows?

I want to walk a different path. I don’t know what that path is, I don’t even know where I will find that path. I don’t even know what the destination is. Once I know the destination I might find the path. My opinions and belief are so different from most people in this world that all the paths that are currently visible to me, promise only unfulfilling journey or rather journey that will suck life out of me before I reach the destination. I have faith in myself but I am so lost that the faith itself seems to be hanging. I wish I had faith in god or divine or something that would have made things so much easier. May be I am trying too hard, may be I should stop trying. May be like, ‘Govinda’ in Herman Hesse’s “Siddharta”, I am also obsessed with seeking and this has closed doors for things that will present me what I seek. What should I stop trying, I don’t even know, what I am doing. It seems more like random things that I am trying to put together hoping that somehow it will make sense.

(hmm... I have been writing, but don't feel like publishing. I have one big post on politics but still mulling where I should post it.)

It is amazing, I have so much work, so many things to do, and quite a lot of it is what I would like to do on my own, and yet all I can think of doing right now is to avoid everything and just go and hide somewhere for two-three weeks. I don’t know whether those two-three weeks will be enough. I don’t want to do anything for these two-three weeks, just laze around. May be I will do something if I really feel like doing something. I don’t know why I am feeling like this but the feeling is very strong. I have been planning to do lot of things today, but all I did was just nothing. Well, I did some bank work, but apart from that, nothing. I opened my laptop several time to study and write two documents I am supposed to write, but all I did was played stupid card games, connect to intent and keep reading webcomics. And, I always keep finding really interesting and good webcomics.

Hardwork kills....

Hardwork here is refered to doing only one kind of work/thing for long time, typically more than 10-12 hours in a day.

(Knowing that one of my office colleagues checks my blog once in a while, it may not be a good idea to post this. I can not say this post is entirely my idea, I think somewhere it is inspired from an essay written by Bertrand Russell which I read about 2-3 years back. I don’t even remember name of that essay. This post goes in bit different direction than Bertrand Russell’s writing. )

One bad thing happened to me in last few years is that I have stopped believing in hard work or rather. I am yet to see a person who works 14-16 hours a day and is truly happy. As the Indian proverb goes one must visit physical, mental, emotional and spiritual side once everyday. Working so much almost always screws up some other dimension of life. Yes, you can work for 14-16 hours on something that you really enjoy but can you be really happy if you are failing in some other dimension of life. I have seen so many times that people who have gone ahead working so hard, do repent on something or don’t have good relationship with their spouse or some other reason. If at the end of the day, when you are dying if you think, I wish I would have taken time out to do so and so thing, does it really matter whether outside world considers you one of the most successful people in the world? Sometimes the very fact that you are supposed to be happy by doing lot of hardwork and being successful by some outside world criteria  but you are not makes you do stupid things. All these so called hardworking people buy lot of totally unnecessary things to show off or rather to prove to themselves that they are happy and successful. Or they derive this illusory happiness by buying more things than someone of their same age or same field or position or something. Material happiness is the only thing that can be tangibly seen or shown so most of them run behind it. Of course almost all corporate support this hardwork theory because that is the way they can get more from you with the same money. They don’t really care about people, all they care about is resource utilization, after all for most of the companies people are just a resource and resource means cost. So you are a cost for them, unlike some machines used for long term or typically land is considered as asset, you don’t have the fortune to be called as asset. They want high resource utilization. And, no I am not a communist, I believe, communism is as much bullshit as capitalism. Just think, there is so much overproduction in the world, not just in terms of physical products but also in terms of services. Almost everywhere or sometimes the whole countries are going bankrupt because they can not sell their products or services. Even if we just go ahead and reduce working hours to half of the current for all the companies in the world, the world will lose absolutely nothing. Although just as every industrialist becoming a billionaire is creating few thousand or more jobs, almost each one of them is indirectly causing almost same or more number of people in the same or different country to not meet their basic needs. Being a human being I feel extremely sad for this. The business has somehow become strictly negative sum game, where there are too may losers per winner and even for those winner companies normally except for promoters and top management executives, most employees are losers. Efficiencies, cost cutting and automation have become synonymous with having hanging swords over employee’s head.

And, by the way, I am yet to meet anyone who can do quality work for 14-16 hours in a day. Most people steal the time in between some or the other way.

In the end, you don’t know what to do. Hardwork as a great virtue, has been so much ingrained in our system that you don’t know what to do. Even though I have written so much about it, I have started this particular post by saying that it is the bad thing that I don’t consider hardwork is necessarily good. Of course, there is also other point of view in calling it bad thing. It is always easy to believe what most of the other people believe and go with the flow. It is very difficult to questions these beliefs and even more difficult to follow those if they conflict with majority. It complicates life too much. Unfortunately I have got too many beliefs that do not go with the majority.

Just as I was looking out of the conference hall, there was this bunch of ducks moving around. The most fascinating thing was each one was independent, finding its own food and what it wants to do and yet as a bunch they were together and moving in the same direction. It seems like each one of them know what is their destination. None of the ducks bothered about being first or worried that it is last. They did not need any leader and there was no follower. How wonderful it would be if our organizations also worked like that; where each one of us have same destination, where we all go in the same direction, without anyone to feeling the need to control others. I don't understand, why as humans we have this enormous desire to control? Especially in organization, the desire to control also comes from mistrust. We never seem to trust each other. Almost every organization has 'trust' in some or the other form, directly or indirectly in their values, yet, I am yet to see any organization where trust is followed as value or embedded within its culture. In fact, most organizations, if you read the policies and procedures, you will discover that almost half of those are based on the assumption that employees can not be trusted. Well, less I say about man made organizations, better it is.One interesting this was, behind that bunch of ducks, there was a crow following them, walking on the ground just like them. What was the crow doing there? I guess it was also curious what those ducks were doing?

It is easy to get distracted from the goal you want to achieve when the way things are happening are not in your favour. I am always amazed at some people's capability to adjust to ever changing goals and be satisfied with it or perhaps be happy with it. One of my senior colleagues in office always keeps advising me that I should be flexible and always take direction that other people (Seniors in office, etc.) want me to take. As always, I just smiled knowing within my mind that I am going to be adamant in my position or at least I will try my best to be adamant. I have every right to be like that. If I have given my whole and soul to some work from last three years and people just want me to change its direction because of their lack of understanding and their incompetence, I am not going to do that. I don't care, how bad reputation I get because of that. My life and my career is mine, not others. Well, my senior colleague made a very interesting statement, that success is when everyone happy. I chuckled, on his statement, because I presume that everyone includes me also, so if something is going to make me unhappy, it can't be success, can it be?
Its good to be adjusting and you can probably be very successful, by adapting to the world around fast. However this success is only the success as the outside world sees it. If in the end, you think, that I wanted to do that in my career or it would have been wonderful and immensely satisfying if I would have finished the problem the way I wanted to then that adaption hasn't brought any success to you. If one keeps just adjusting to the world around, he can never become what he wants to become, he always be someone what others want him to be, or what thousands of others already are. I have firm belief that happiness and satisfaction comes within you and not by what people consider what you are. It all might sound selfish, but it is not. It perhaps sounds so, because all the above discussion is about career, which is only one dimension of the life, if you start thinking about other dimensions, you automatically will go much beyond self.When you start thinking about your interactions with people, you know you gain more by giving than receiving. Even with respect to career, everyone must contribute to the goodness of the world, but in his/her own way. We all like doing something, we all have something that gives us immense satisfaction, that brings out all our intensity. If whatever we do, we do listening to our hearts that chasing the illusory goals set by the society and people around you, I believe we will always end up making positive contribution to ourselves and to the world.
Hmm... I didn't know, I can write such crazy stuff also.

Tips to complicate your life

Be honest and sincere
It is amazing how far these two simple desirable characteristics of a human being can take you towards complicating your life. Every time, you come across something to do, if you do it sincerely you make your life miserable by compromising on other things (for example if you are talking about office work, compromising on family and social life, etc. and vice versa) and if you give an honest reason you are in trouble. My experience of lie especially as I have grown older is that honest reasons always get you in trouble. In corporate world, you can be considered a unprofessional or a person who is very bad at team work or worse if your boss might hate you for your honesty, especially honest opinions. In today's world, dishonesty and insincerity is perhaps the most effective ways of spending life without much work. Of course, this only at the deep level, the key is to show that you are honest and sincere when you are not. That's where the smartness comes in and that's why you see so many top people in the companies who seem to be damn smart but somehow don't do any useful work.

Have multiple useful interests
If you look around, the successful people are normally those who have one great passion in which they totally lost themselves ignoring all other things or the people who are naturally gifted with multiple talents. If you want to complicate your life and perhaps if you are not one of those naturally gifted people whose enormous talent allows them to do multiple things in the same time as we do one thing, you must pursue multiple interests. The interests can be as simple as learning a musical instrument, or reading books or traveling or writing or complex things like organizing charity, working with NGOs. Nothing gets you more tensed than knowing that you want to do so many things but you simply don't have time and energy. Nothing frustrates one more than the fact that doing one of the things that you enjoy doing robs you off the other things you equally enjoy doing.

Follow yourself rather than going along with the wave
Ha, this is perhaps the best one. This creates all types of possible complications in your life. Many people will consider you a fool; hardly anybody will understand why you are doing what you are doing, you won't fit into their simple logic; you will have to answer all kinds of silly questions that people will ask, and you will feel lost half of the time wondering what the heck is happening. And the biggest of all, even of you are happy with what you are doing you might be considered an unsuccessful person even by the people closest to you and that can create havoc in your life.

Always aim higher
As much as it might be step towards success, it can make you do more than what you can. It will also make you put lot of efforts in one area of life compromising on other. Unless you are the lucky one aiming higher on one area somehow coincides with ignoring some other area of life and then that area will keep troubling you. If you are successful in the area in which you aimed high, you are in the trap of success and you don't have the courage to step back and let it go. And on the other hand if you are not successful, you have to put too much effort to come back now and you perhaps don't want to give up remembering the quote "most people give up when they are just about to succeed", you are saying to yourself "Mera number jarur ayega".

well, same tips can be considered useful for having good life. Hmm... is good life equal to complicated life?????

"Seven Blunders of the World" by Mahatma Gandhi

"Seven Blunders of the World"
1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Commerce without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Worship without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle—Mahatma Gandhi

I came across this today. Well, quite depressing, because last 4 are quite common across the world and second is not that uncommon.

TED Talks

Here I am having enormous amount of work to complete before March end and I am completely drowned in listening to all the TED talks. Its a great treasure. Everyday I come home from office and listen to some of these talks. I came to know about them few months back but forgot in between. Now 3-4 days back, found the link again, I am going on watching the videos. It is magnificent experience to listen to some of the best people in the world not just in scientific area but also in literature, social work, etc. I wish I will do something so that someday I can also be speaker in this conference.