Satisfaction...

Honestly, 5000 a month is not enough to sustain in Pune but that is what my dad sends me and will keep sending for the years to come. I have a room mate and his father sends him upto 9000 a month but when he is really serious and honest, he says 9000 a month is really not enough. One of my other friends gets 12000-15000 a month and mostly she's cribbing about how less she gets. A college mate who's worked the all way through says he stays very comfortably in 2500 a month only. I don't know how much is enough and I'm not trying to answer that question either.

A friend called Karan Malhotra of mine just renovated his room. It will be very difficult to explain what changes he made in his room because I'm no professional interior decorator and so I dont't have the terminology it requires. It will, however, I guess, be sufficient if I say that he has made his room much more luxurious than what it was like before. The bed has been replaced with a larger and a softer one. The furniture is smoother and shinier and the bathrooms and the wardrobes look royal. Karan is happy but not content. He still wants to buy that bed in the store that was the costliest. It is softer, smoother and shinier according to him. He wants to be more comfortable.

Akshit Mehta isn't really happy with the new swimming pool with slides that's been built on his old farm house. He wants tp pull down the entire farm house and rebuild it. "I will do it when I have enough money of my own" he says.

Do I personally have no needs, wants or aspirations? Or is it wrong or right to have them or too many of them? I do not know. What I know however is that life is not about satisfying your needs and wants. Life is about being satisfied with yourself, with or instead of them.

Its 1:00 AM in the night. I am awake because I cannot sleep. Hence, I decide to clean my room. I start with the old question papers, the old short notes and all other old old stuff that I once used to study for Law School Entrances. As I'm gathering it I feel emotional. A lump comes up and holds itself right in the throat. I feel as if I'm gathering pieces of my shattered dream.

I somehow manage to cool down and tell myself "Hey! its not as if you are not going to be admitted anywhere! You are still going to a good college! What's more now that you'll have more time you can complete your french course, learn the flute and even intern anywhere you want almost everyday. Now you have all the choices open! It's as if everything you ever wanted is lying at your feet!! You only have to choose what you want to pick up!"

The other voice however comes out too. It is weaker that the first voice, but it comes out. It says "Look at X. Look how happy X is. Only if you had worked a little harder you'd have been there! After all you've lost NALSAR only by 4 marks! HOw could you Prince...How could you??"

One side of me wants to attempt these entrances again. The other however refuses. It says "Look at all the world that is now open! You'll be more than just a lawyer if you use your time well!"

Inside of me there is this third voice which I think is my conscience mixed with my emotions. It says "Why can't we have both? Why can't you be at a law school and do all those things you want to do too??"

I don't know whether you remember what I told you that day on that katta of mine. I'd said every question has 3 ends. 1st is that you get an answer. 2nd is that you don't get an answer and the 3rd is you put the question off. Kill it. Ignore it. Try to draw your mind away from it. Suffocate it. To do just that I came online at this unearthly hour.

I dont know whether it is your help, ear, advice that I seek or is it just my own way of clearing my thoughts. Just read this and do what you think is apt.

Prince...

There are no answers...

Fun, Frolic and Fish! Yes! The trip to Goa was all that and a little but important more. On way back we decide to take a night halt at Chiplun. My room has an A/C, a TV, a huge double bed to be shared between me and my sister and my mind that has just received news from a friend: I have done miserably in one of my Law School entrances. I am not as much thinking about the result as much I am of my future. Knowing that HSC results are going to be a complete disaster I am more of wondering what is it that I am heading to?

Answers don’t come easily. In fact I have just learned some time back when I met my father’s long lost friend Nandakumar Patil that there are no answers at all. Nandakumar Patil used to be a hot looking material 29 years ago women including my mom used to be crazy after. Never did he care about his studies as much he did about acting in various plays. Dad's account later confirmed that he won the best actor state level award for 3 years consecutively. What is interesting is now he is neither an actor nor does he account or audit being a commerce graduate. He works in the State Transport Services as the controller of traffic. Now he sees whether the drivers follow the planned schedule and whether the broken vehicles are looked after properly. Interesting isn’t it?

More interesting is the fact that he’s married a doctor wife, a girl who’s more educated, more independent and more able than himself. In course of conversation when a question arose how did she say yes to someone as weird as Nandakumar she said she didn’t really care what her life partner was up to. She was confident that it was she who mattered if she wanted a good life and that no other person really mattered for a persons good life.

Then when the layers of past memories were being undone by this crowd of 4 who happened to be long lost friends for the last 29 years, they started remembering their other friends they are no more in contact with. Some 18-time failure, chain smoker had married the most beautiful girl, a girl who could have anyone she wanted. An 18-time failure that too at commerce undergraduate level? He was not good looking or wealthy. An 18 time failure cannot be smart! What was it that she saw in him? But then, their wedding did happen. It is a truth, a fact that no one disputes.

Then as members of ABVP in their time my mom also knows Nandakumar uncle’s wife, the doctor. She asks her about some other friend who used to be a miserable failure at everything then. Studies, co-curricular or extra curricular, he was of no use. Today he’s a multi millioner doctor at Kolhapur with three three-storied hospitals. An evidence that academics has nothing to do with real life successes.

And as these thoughts are scooting through I fall asleep to wake up 2 hours later at a doorbell. It’s my dad calling me for tea to his room. There is a person sitting there on the chair in front of him in his room. His name: Mr. Relekar.

Mr. Relekar is B.Com, LL.B, CA from University of Pune. B.Com from BMCC and LL.B from Symbiosis. He teaches in the college at Chiplun and takes commerce classes for students. As the trend goes he asks me about what my plans for future are. Which stream have I done my +2 in? I answer Law and Commerce respectively not knowing the above data. Had I known all that before I would probably have answered the second question as Science or Arts. And then begins my 1hr long interview. What is debit? What is credit? What is suspense account? What is the entry for this? What is the entry for that?

I cant answer even 2 questions to his complete satisfaction. He tells me “beta you need to read all your books form 11th standard again” in my mind I say “you are right sir except the last word. I dnt need to read them “again”, I only need to read them”

And then he tells me how privileged I am as compared to people from Chiplun. A person from Chiplun lacks big ambitions says he. They don’t want a car, they feel its fine to walk even 15 kms.

May be he is right. I just don’t have a big ambition to drive me. May be I just don’t need that A/C and TV room with a huge Bed? I can sleep on the floor just as sound. May be I am happy with a bicycle…who knows? But if everything continues the way its going where do I think I will end up? Will I get the only girl I love more than anything ever with only a bicycle and no bed to sleep?

Again…there are no answers…

21st Century

Don’t sleep; don’t eat
Don’t drink; just think!
Just learn; then unlearn, relearn
Not winning is sinning
So be the best, without rest
Strive! Dive! But don’t live!
Stress! Distress! No peace! But still press!
Lifelines no more matter, meet deadlines; they do
Die if you can but get through!
Production, sale, bank balance
Marketing, HR and blood pressure
If you can make them all at once rise
Only then you’re wise!
And then when you die with a heart stroke
On your tombstone you must write
“Come One! Come All!”

This isn’t a cemetery! Its 21st century!

If a man is not a lover in his 20s, strong in his 30s, rich in his 40s and wise in his 50s, he will never be so”

Now that is a line I don’t remember where exactly I have read but I do know that I want to be each of those alternate words above: lover, strong, rich and wise though not necessarily in that order. If I were given a choice I’d rather be wise, strong enough to stand by my wisdom, love something unconditionally and finally be rich if at all time and wisdom allowed me to.

Success is not about which law school you pass out from or how rich you become. Success is a feeling of satisfaction about your own life and what you have been able to earn from it. “Success is a journey and not an end” might sound clichéd but it is nonetheless true. When I picture myself 80 something wondering how I spent my youth and where did all my middle years go, I want to be satisfied more than being sitting at a back of a Mercedes or a Ferrari that I frankly think is a waste of money when a Swift or an Indica does the same job for me in less than 10% of the price.

Satisfaction does not mean not having worries, regrets or failures. Satisfaction means the over all experience of life being treasure-some. It is when you are happy not with what you have achieved but with the way you have achieved it. Its not about traveling long, its about traveling well and being happy about what the journey has given you.

Satisfaction comes when you know what you have is all you think you need (as against want.) to give a vague idea of what I mean I can use the example above. A Mercedes is a car people use to show their wealth. It has softest of leather seats in the world, best of suspensions, TV, radio, a drink vendor and what not inside it. But the point is, do I need a car or a living room? If a car is all I need then what’s all the show off about? A normal small car like say Swift or Indica will do the same work for me. Hence, I do not need a Mercedes.

Knowledge is something that has many advantages. Firstly, it is cheap. Secondly, it is useful. Thirdly, no one can steal it from you once you have it and most importantly, the more you have it the more you know that what you have is less. The difference between money and knowledge apart from it always being with you is that complete knowledge is harmless. Its greed (also called curiosity) doesn’t harm anyone. Hence I presume that the most important priority in any mans life must be knowledge rather than anything else. Moreover it might also lead to wealth in future.

What is more important however is to stand by your knowledge and your opinion about it in adverse circumstances and also to be able to state your knowledge and opinion candidly, artistically, simply and stubbornly at the same time being understanding of the counterview, respecting it and being open for a change in our view if it indeed is convincing enough.

When it comes to love however there can be as many views as people on this earth. Love is something that you do irrespective of what people think of it. When you do it only because you want to do it and because you enjoy doing it its love. Love gives you the reason to live. Love is the longing, the one thing that you’d do the rest of your life you were told that it was to end a week later. If you don’t have something like that, go find it!
That’s all there is to life, to success and to satisfaction. I think I need to write no more, but what I know is that I’m searching it myself and I shall find it soon.

THPrince.

Bridging The Divide

After browsing through the recent issue of a national magazine I switched to reading an academic competition magazine as a preparation dose for the National Law School of India University Entrance Exams (Popularly known as Big Daddy in law aspirants) that I have been dreaming of cracking. Both the issues had one thing in common; they were about bridging the divide. While the formers’ arguments scattered all over from bridging the divide between haves and have-nots of various kinds ranging from poor and rich to Information technology savvy and unsavvy the academic competition magazine boasted about bridging the gap between rural and the urban India.

But are these the only gaps that need to be bridged? Is there nothing more to a human than material wants of money, technology, of being able to reserve railway tickets at home through the Internet or withdrawing cash from an ATM?

As far as my belief goes, there certainly is. The gap that needs to be bridged in the true sense isn’t and never was of having or not having or of possessing or not possessing materials or resources until recently. It is and has always been of thinking like and thinking unlike. Poverty always there until richness arrived, so was hunger until food. Before poverty or hunger came however, there always lived Humans.

We all agree to the fact that one thing that separates humans from all others is his ability to think, to think independently and act accordingly. And these thoughts come labeled in various forms. Some call it “philosophy” some “religion” and some have their own way to live without labeling it. Conflict occurs when the two thoughts contradict or one is threatened of being wiped out due to the other. Islamic terrorism, Naxalite Terrorism or violence in any other form as of today is the result of this very conflict. The bloodshed, the violence, the loss of life and humanity is its price. It is the price of not being able to coexist along with each other, respecting each other without being a threat to each other.

This inability of not being able to digest foreign thoughts is the result of judging others on our own experiences. It is about looking at life through our self-designed design of pigeonholes denying to believe that some other design may also exist. Unbelieving in some other or every other design than our own makes us want to destroy it or if we can’t, we prefer being away from it. Until and unless a position of respect is achieved by every human mind for itself and every other, the true gap shall never be bridged. Because true gap isn’t about someone having more than me, someone will always have more but the true gap is about someone not thinking like me. One doesn’t require food, money more than necessary to live peacefully but one does require respect to his thoughts to rest in peace.

Dream...it costs nothing!

People who read my blog are used to the edited versions of my works. Mostly when I write, I think about it first, write it, edit it and then only cut paste it here for all of you to read. But this is a different post. I'm writing it here right now!

I never thought I'd ever be inspired about writing on personal feelings on public things like blogs. But as the saying "Expect the unexpected!" so here I am writing about my personal feelings for the first and might just be the last time.

I dont remember the second last time had a dream while sleeping but the last time I had it, I was shouting out "Dont talk or move! Just stick to me there and sit freezed!" and that was on my Ducati as I was breezing her along at 400 kms/hr.

Its no joke! I think I was about 30yrs old in it. An NLSIU pass out and I'd done my Post graduation from Oxford or Harvard or something like that. I didnt earn much though. Just a few crores here and there. Bill gates even then was the richest man on earth follwed by Lakshmi Niwas Mittal.

It was when the alarm alarmed all of a sudden that I knew it was no more my Ducati engines firing. All of a sudden here again I was. A worth nothing almost spoilt brat who hasnt even touched his Board texts or entrance books. And again I made a "new year" resolution to start studying today. Funnily even when the elephant has passed me and only his tail remains wagging, I still feel I can or will defeat it. I still feel I will win, do well in boards and get through into a decent law school. And as my day started again with new hope, new enthusiasm and new spirit of winning the world all I had as my capital to think what I keep thinking were the words of a man people consider great:

Listen to the mustn't's child
Listen to The Don'ts
Listen to the impossibles, The Won'ts
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Listen to the shouldn'ts
And then listen close to me
Anything can happen child, ANYTHING can be...

And as my mom yells at me again to convince me that I wont even get 50% in my Boards I look down into a book I have never had any interest in....

Prince...