Random Musings

Isn't there too much negativity around us - more so in the online world? Do you feel disillusioned as you grow older? Do more and more people around you seem cold, harsh and selfish? No matter how much you try to be unaffected by external happenings, it still affects you, right? I do understand everybody has a different perspective about life & a lot of things I interpret as negative might be perfectly normal for others. But still, I can feel the toxicity and often end up thinking what being human means anymore? Can't  you? I find myself longing for the serenity of offbeat mountain villages where people are so warm and the vibes so positive. I still want to believe in the inherent goodness of people. Maybe somewhere along their way, something was so broken that they ended up being so negative/toxic. Maybe the parameters of success are a little fucked up. Maybe if there was a way to measure happiness and make it public, the world would have been a different place. ...

Recently somebody said he doesn't believe in God because he hasn't really seen him. But then I asked him a few questions - # Do you believe in Oxygen? # Do you believe in black holes? # Do you believe in Gravity? # Do you believe in love? # Do you believe in anger? Have you actually seen any of the above? Probably you have felt it or believed somebody else who claims to have seen or measured or proved its existence. If you really think about this, there is no concrete way to justify the current nature of our reality? Complicated, right? Whether you are a man of science or a man of religion or both, if you really ask yourself, all you have is faith - the choice to believe in whatever you want. And then probably finding out logical reasons to justify it, isn't it? You might be thinking some things are facts and others simply hearsay, and you choose to believe in only facts. There should be black and white and not just grey, right? Well, the scientific fact is we sti...

The simplest answer is – within us. In our minds. Not in external reality. Let’s understand this. Imagine your favorite food item – a jar full of butter chicken or rich creamy chocolate or chole bhature. Whatever it is. Can you remember its taste and the fulfillment it provided when you had it last. You absolutely loved it, right? Now imagine having the same dish just after a personal tragedy – an ugly breakup or a bitter fight or a missed promotion. Does it still feel that delicious? No, right! Mostly, you don’t feel like eating only at that point of time right and even if you do, it tastes like any other food item you would have had. The butter chicken was exactly the same in reality. But it didn’t feel the same at all, right? Because your perception was clouded by the negativity in your mind. What if exactly this phenomenon is happening with you 24 hours of the day? What if you never experience reality as it is but just respond to mental storie...

I was an extremely emotional kid and teenager – tears welled up in my eyes if I saw people begging in the streets or sleeping on the pavements. It was just painful to see poor people suffering everywhere around me and the only achievement which differentiated me from them was being born in a relatively well to do family. There wasn’t remotely anything fair about this (though I later accepted perhaps it wasn’t supposed to be fair). As years passed and scientific principles of practicality and logic were super-imposed on my feeling mind, I started taking pride in becoming more practical and less emotional by rationalizing it was the only way to avoid snapping. I started my corporate career as a marketing analyst and it was my job to break down sales into the 5Ps of marketing mix. Basically, I learnt to measure effectiveness and ROI (return on investment) based on what-if scenarios and it was a wonderful skill to apply to my personal life too. Consequentially, practicality kicked...

Let’s start by defining Nice-ism first – Being polite, kind and respectful towards others and behaving cordially are various facets of being nice to fellow living creatures. Nice-ism as a philosophy is the backbone of all religions and spiritual endeavors and probably the first lesson imparted by a mother to her children in most societies. By all logical means, this should mean that a majority of the human population would be nice but practically speaking, this isn’t true. And no the façade of appearing nice doesn’t count as the real thing – Indians seem to be masters at that! However, I don’t want to explore whether people are nice or not. I just want to delve deeper into the consequences of being nice. Let’s put it straight - I have concluded that nice-ism is a weakness these days. Even when I am a proponent of positive thinking and have tried my best to find reasons to believe otherwise but experience and observation have a different story to tell. Also, maybe my observations ...

It’s a tricky headline, right! Counter-intuitive maybe as common sense says bad intentions mostly lead to ugly consequences but even good intentions cause a lot of havoc in our daily lives, everyday and everywhere around us. Let’s go a little deeper. Don’t you observe ‘good’ people trying to do the best for others – shielding them from sadness, pain, disappointment etc. etc. by hiding things from them which ends up messing things up even more? Every day I see a lot of actions born out of positive deep-seated feelings causing immense pain to those around. The pain is simply delayed and in majority of the cases, multiplied by a factor of 10. Why does this happen so frequently? Despite the best of intentions, why do people end up fucking things up? Is it because we are too optimistic about the consequences of our actions? Everything Will Get Fine syndrome we are caught in Is it the over-confidence on our own abilities to make things right?           ...