Book Review: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Best thing about this book is simplistic language. When the ideas being shared in the book are complex and difficult to understand and relate to, it really helps to have the ideas in a simple language.

The story is fairly gripping in the middle of the book and starts on a comfortable note too. I would say that the ideologies shared, especially at the end of the book are somewhat difficult to imbibe or even understand in one go and it does require to read them again. Presumably the thought of the author is to give the readers a small insight into the concept and hence this book can just be a beginning for the readers to think on such lines and then explore more by themselves. This book is indeed a short read but it makes you think time and again and hence I would say this is an impacting book to me. Certain sections of the book (some specific conversations) are extremely enjoyable and hence I would surely want to read the book again. I highly appreciate that the author seemed to have ensured that any religion aspect is not touched upon. To conclude, this is a must read book. The book is publicly available online, you can go to http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2500  to get the book. Also, I am happy to announce that this book is going to be the first specific book being discussed in Pune Book Lovers Club.

Why make a fuss?

It’s been a while since I wrote something, elsewhere or on this blog. It literally feels like the fountain pen being used after years. The ink has dripped through inside but is unable to dribble through the nib of the pen, and smoothly on to the paper. As you try to write, you scratch the paper and mildly damage the nib. Just like the ink, I have thoughts in my mind but am unable to carve them out into words.

Why? What happened? Has it not been a good time in the past? Am I so engrossed in the day to day life that I forgot how to express in words? No, I did not; well, I hope not.

I know that the wheels are a little rusty now, but they sure can still move. It will take a little time, I will need a little inertia to push myself and that indeed will take some effort and some pain.

Pain, oh yes. That, we always experience; every time something begins (or ends) that little word pain is like the threshold energy we need, to get started, to begin and to endure.

So, what is there to exaggerate in this? Why make a fuss?  Is this the first time I am experiencing this? Surely it is not. There is nothing new in this. Also, don’t other people undergo the same and just still keep going? There is nothing unique about it.

All you got to do is keep going. Can anything else help? I highly doubt it. But, given my little experience of life and of people, I might be wrong. Over time, everything fades away, just like the early morning fog, like it was never there, was just a dream.

Yes, the visibility is currently low, it is indeed hazy all around; there are some things to remember and there are some to forget. But all I need to remind myself is that; this too shall pass, this too shall pass.

It's easy to feel hopeful during the good times

Hope. It indeed is one of the strongest emotion human beings can conceive. It defies reasons and logics and keeps our spirits almost unnaturally and impractically alive when we need it the most. I recently came across a wonderful graduation speech given by the lead female actor in the movie “The Amazing Spiderman-2”.

“I know we all think that we are immortal. We are supposed to feel that way. We are graduating, but like our brief four years of high school, what makes life valuable is that it doesn't last forever.”

“What makes it precious is that it ends, we know that now more than ever, and I say it today of all days to remind us that time is luck”.

“So, don’t waste it living someone else’s life, make yours count for something. Fight for what matters to you, no matter what, cause even if we fall short what better ways is there to live.”

“It's easy to feel hopeful on a beautiful day like today, but there will be dark days ahead of us too. There will be days where you feel all alone, and that's when hope is needed most. No matter how bad it gets, or how lost you feel, you must promise me that you will hold on to hope. Keep it alive.”

“We have to be greater than what we suffer. My wish for you is to become hope; people need that.”

“And even if we fail, what better way is there to live? As we look around here today, at all of the people who helped make us who we are, I know it feels like we're saying goodbye, but we will carry a piece of each other into everything that we do next, to remind us of who we are, and of who we're meant to be.”

--- Gwen Stacy

May we all get the strength to realize and attain hope when we need it the most because it indeed is something which is deeply imbibed in all of us but, it’s just that we tend to forget this fact when we are going through the ‘not so sunny’ days of our lives.  

Youtube link to the speech: Here. 

Your personal goals - Shout out loud or keep them to yourself ?

The new year 2015. I know it is kind of late to write about the new year but still as the first quarter of the year has ended I realize this indeed is a good time to write about it. As per my opinion, the problem with being too much energetic or enthusiastic at the beginning of the year is that we end up making too many commitments to ourselves and then end up not being able to live up to them.

Now, since those commitments had been made to ourselves alone, we fail to monitor ourselves well enough to check our progress time and again and hence we lose the track. The cycle repeats itself over and over again every year.

The solution to this, I believe, is to become accountable to someone for your achievements and goals. What I mean here is that we can try to be explicitly vocal about things that we want to achieve in the year to some people we can trust and we know are going to push us when we feel like drifting away. These people can be your best friends, siblings, parents etc. But a minor detail that is important here is that that person(s) should motivate you when you are going off the track and should not rather draw energy out of you. 

So, when we are accountable to others about what we do and do not achieve, we tend to push ourselves in the times of crisis because there is a certain aspect of social reputation that is attached to it. This is something to be tried and tested to see the results.

If we do try and implement this, we would not impractically over-commit and would also have a feasible method of going about our goals as we would know that the status of our progress is being monitored.

Ah well now you may or may not agree with whatever I just said but still you should watch this TED talk below by Derek Sivers that is completely opposite of what I just discussed.

The blog link for the same is here http://sivers.org/zipit 

I personally do not agree with Sivers here but you may choose one of the two methods and see the results for yourself. I would love to know which of the two methods you tried; being socially active about your goals or keeping them to yourself and which one worked for you, do let me know in the comments.

P.S: Reference link that goes in my favor is here.

Your idea of Success, is really Your Idea?

Today's TED talk was about the current society's idea of success and failure and its repercussions on the humanity as a whole.

The speaker started with the days of grief that he used to have on the weekends when he was dealing with the career crisis thinking where is his career headed. He talks about how these days snobbery has become a global phenomenon. Snobbery i.e. the practice of observing a part of a human being and assuming and making image of the individual as a whole based on that. 

This happens a lot in the social settings where "What do you do?" has become the most prominent question and we make the whole image of the person in our mind based on response. So, what is written on your Business Card has become important for the people than the real you. 

We are living in the times where it is a general belief that if you have the right talent, resources and hard work anyone can achieve anything There is nothing particularly wrong with this ideology apart from the fact that this also means that if someone is not very successful then it is because of their own reasons and hence are responsible for it.

Because of this, in general, there is more career related anxiety in people these days. Earlier people did not used to expect much from themselves and from their careers but now with "anyone can achieve anything" mentality most of the careers are in grief.

In previous days human beings used to centre the life around other forces like God, Universe, Nature etc and used to worship them to find the answers. These days, on the contrary human being believes he doesn't need any of that and can pray to himself and believe in himself to achieve anything.

Due to this situation, there is a contrary thinking that if I am a failure I am because of my own; which increases the suicide tendencies in humans while the truth is that Success and Failure are just random events and should not be made to be the centre of the human lives. 

This also takes us to the reasons as to why this sort of mentality has prevailed. Primary reason is the media that keeps highlighting the success stories of the people making it sound easy, logical and likely rather than being random.

Because of all the media hype, the idea and definition of success for people has not been unique rather, has been dictated by what they consume from the media. It is such an unfortunate moment when you achieve someone else's definition of success and realise; after investing a significant amount of time and energy in it that you did not want it in the first place.

To conclude, it is important that we think deeply about what our idea of success really is and then go about achieving it rather than running around the media's or society's idea of success. 

Let's Write

This might sound a little odd but I have no clue what I am going to write about in this post. Okay, you may still read it to know what am I going to write about as you and me both get revealed to this together. Oh well, before writing this post, lets just talk. So, I would like to know how are you doing these days, what is going on at your end ? Hmm? Sorry?... 

Ohh.. How can you answer, this is not voice chat, is it? :P Hmm.. Let me think... how about you leave that as a comment? I will take up from there, thanks. Okay, yep I am doing good too, just that I am still thinking what should I write about? Experience, travel, politics, opinion, festival.... Ahh there are so many topics I can take and get myself started with any one but still I do not know. 

This is weird. :( But, has it never happened to you, that you have to select any one out of so many permutations available and you end up investing so much time in selecting one that you just lose interest in all of them? Well, happens a lot in my case. :-/ I am just afraid that this post might not end up like one of such cases. Ohh no, I will think, choose, decide and select one to get started.. I do not want you to get bored. 

Oh by the way, in case you actually are getting bored, you should check the Popular Posts on the right side block, you surely would find something interesting posts to read there. 

So, how about writing about writing? No really, I mean I am writing this blog post and here you are reading it so why not write about this itself? So, tell me why, according to you, I am writing this blog post? Yep, you can use the comment to answer. I will reply in comment itself. :) 

Actually, well, again it may sound weird, but I just am writing this to make sure that I do write something today. To get better at something, we need to ensure we do it as planned and try to make it a habit, isnt it? Only then we get better at it. Hence, in spite of being confused on the topic, I am just writing it. :)

Do let me know your thoughts about it ? in the comments of course and also give your feedback on this blogpost (only if it is good :P). :)      

“गुज़रा ज़माना”

बहुत याद आता है वो गुज़रा ज़माना,

वो प्यारा सा बचपन वो मासूम फसाना,

सुबह रोज़ उठकर वो यूनिफॉर्म पहनना,

वो टाई में उलझना वो पापा का सिखाना,

बस स्टॉप पर बस का इंतज़ार करना,

वो खिड़की वाली सीट की ख्वाहिश होना,

"स्कूल प्रेयर" और "थॉट ऑफ द डे" से दिन की शुरुआत,

वो "PHE" और "फ्री पीरियड" की राहें ताकना,

"लंच ब्रेक" से पहले "बोरिंग मेथ्स" पढ़ना,

और लंच ब्रेक में सबके टिफिन टटोलना,

फ्री पीरियड में होमवर्क पूरा करना,

फिर शाम को ज़्यादा खेलने की उम्मीद होना,

हर "आन्सर" के बाद वो लाल लाइन खींचना,

और हर एक "डाइयग्रॅम" को सुंदर सा सजाना,

घर जाके सीधा टीवी से चिपकना,

वो मम्मी का डांटना खाने के लिए,

शाम से पहले होमवर्क की जल्दी,

छत पर फिर फुल ऑन क्रिकेट खेलना,

वो दादा दादी से क़िस्से सुनना,

"पता है, आप सुना चुके हो" ये बार बार कहना,

वो मम्मी के हाथों का गर्मा गर्म खाना,

वो पापा के आने का “वेट” करना,

सब का छत पर जाकर फिर बातें करना,

तारों और सड़क की गाड़ियों की गिनती करना,

वो पापा का कहना जूते पॉलिश करके रखो,

वो मम्मी का समझाना स्कूल बैग भी जमा लो,

और कुछ ही देर में,

फिर जल्दी से सो जाना,

वो नया दिन फिर वैसे ही जीना,

पर हर दिन में खुशी, हर दिन में कुछ ख़ास होना,

हक़ीक़त था जो, अब हुआ है फसाना,

हक़ीक़त है जो, होगा वही फिर फसाना,

बहुत याद आता है वो गुज़रा ज़माना,

वो प्यारा सा बचपन वो मासूम फसाना |

Thinking, Planning, Doing - One at a Time

In our daily life there are so many chores that demand completion. Some of them require no or little thinking while others may require not just thinking but a session of detailed thinking before we are convinced and are able to complete or rather say start it.

Amidst all such thoughts and actions cycle what we may tend to forget is about priority. Unfortunately, the systems around us are all architected in such a way that there are so many issues and problems that do not deserve our attention but we tend to scale them at a higher position in the priority list. Consequentially, these no so important issues or tasks or problems start taking a decent amount of our mindshare and concentration while, considering what their actual significance is, it is best to postpone them and not provide our mindshare to them.

The other way round, we also need to identify those tasks, traits that deserve to be on our priority. Some of them are being happy, introspection, knowing one's strengths etc. 

Oh ok, there is no need to think much about this. Just keep in mind the not so important things in life may actually be very important and those lists you made but did not complete may not be that important that you need to loose the peace of your mind and some time to observe this world.

So, we need to Think, Plan and Do. But, the first step, thinking, needs to be of much more significance.

To Do or Not To Do

No matter what field you are working in, at some point of time we all use the concept of the To Do List. This is something that people at times use not only in their professional life but also in their personal life. It indeed is a very effective method to keep an eye on all the tasks at once and to ensure that we do not miss on anything. Though I am not really into such kind of planning etc. but ever since I have been into the working force I have had to start using it and I have to admit that it really does helps to complete the tasks in time.

I have been using the To Do lists in diary rather than any electronic form because I was more comfortable with it. Also, some people who had tried the electronic forms of To Dos recommended that the hard copy format is effective. Nevertheless, you will find that people preferring the electronic form are more than that of the hard copy. I personally believe that writing by hand has its own aura and conjuration.

Anyways, I then started off with the electronic mediums for the To Do lists. Now, there were ample numbers of options available, which one to choose? After some basic search around I started off with Evernote and Wunderlist. Initially, you may take some time in being familiar with them and being habitual to them but slowly and gradually it becomes an important component for your day to day activities and also to plan the week or month well in advance.

Evernote is an amazing tool for taking all your notes, web pages you like, images etc in one place and has amazing methods to categorize data and retrieve as and when needed with the help of Tags, Notebooks (and similar jargons) etc. So, this is something you can use for long term thing.

For day to day, Wunderlist is an awesome tool or actually not Wunderlist but Wunderlist 2. It has a very neat interface and is very simple to use with the options of creating different lists for different tasks, adding notes to individual tasks, marking them crossed when done, setting up reminders etc.

So, you can use Wunderlist for short term planning and Evernote for long term planning & single point repository for notes, content and data you would like to visit time and again.
To add on to that, you can use both of these on your cellphones as they have their apps available.

Amazing tools they surely are but every now and then I also use my diary, not sure if any electronic tool would be capable enough to make me switch entirely to the electronic form!

Do try them and happy planning.

Find them here:

• Evernote: https://evernote.com/
• Wunderlist-2: http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist

Go do something wonderful

The title of this blog post is actually taken from an advertisement of intel processor. Find the video below.

Indeed it is very true that it is an innate tendency of every human being "to create". This tendency cannot be denied and is true for every individual.

Though, we, as a part of a mechanical society try to fit in, unaware of the fact that this is not an ideal or perfect community of which we intend to be a part of.

In the process of our aspiration to fit in, our innate creativity, because of not being properly nurtured, slowly yet strongly keeps depleting day after day. Moreover, in general, since we do not take any efforts to replenish those energies, we hence tend to lose this characteristic. Not a good thing to happen, is it?

Hence, the need of the hour is to be more creative, everyday. It may be in any form art, craft, prose, poetry, song, article or any other thing; the primary objective is "to express" in a creative manner irrespective of the medium or method used.

So, lets do something wonderful. :)

Which story do you prefer?

This very simple statement "Which story do you prefer?" has left a great impact in the movie "Life of Pi". Primarily because the statement is strong enough to make an adventurous movie a suspense one and more importantly, it makes us "think". Yes, in today's era of smartphones, computers and media, if something is there which we do very less, is thinking. This is because even our thoughts and perceptions are biased due to overdose of information lying anywhere and everywhere. Media such as TV, news, print media have always had an impact on the general public since ages. But, what has now changed is their "reach" to us due to the newly built ocean of information everywhere around us. This reminds me of one of the very well known poems "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

The lines being . . .

"Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water,  everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink."

The current situation is no different, we have a huge ocean of information all around us and this can be attributed to the fast pace growth of technologies such as smartphones, internet etc. which have given all that was there in your PC and was there on TV, right into your hands. So, eventually the media and the people who can control the perceptions of the public have become even more strengthened.

Hence, the question "Which story do you prefer?" holds a great value because more than ever before this is the time when your perceptions and preferences need to be your own, you need to think and decide what your preferences are, to do that we really need to "think" and observe the happenings of our surroundings; otherwise as I said it is easy for "those" people to guide your thoughts, your ideas, your perceptions and your preferences as per "their" comfort.

So, the question prevails. . . .

"Which story do YOU prefer?"  

Altered States of Human Mind

Recently watched a really interesting episode of Strange Rituals on History Channel, about the Altered States of Human Mind. This episode was about the altered states that humans don’t really attain normally, and various cases demonstrating various different methods by which this has been achieved by a very few among mankind.
To begin with, this discussion has a lot of scientific research to back and hence it cannot just be related to spirituality and religious thoughts. I will also be giving the names of a few scientists who have worked on various aspects of research work regarding the altered states.

The history is full of instances that reveal the existence of an alternate world which is way beyond our understanding and since ages it has been believed there always has been a gateway of communication between our world and this alternate world. Previous civilizations have referred to it in various different ways but the one whose references have been found quite frequently has been the human mind. It is believed that human mind is indeed the gateway through which the communication is possible and the communication has taken place time and again, in the past. So, the only probable method to attain this is the discipline of mind. This is where meditation comes into the picture.

Meditation has been widely accepted by the people to attain a disciplined mind. In some of the tribes, it is believed that people used to have the ability of separating their soul from their body and their soul then could travel at a different place altogether. They could achieve this through a certain level of meditation. This also is been considered a method by which their soul actually used to enter that alternate world while their body used to be in deep state of meditation.

Another instance that justifies this is the superhuman abilities depicted by Wim Holf who can easily sustain in freezing cold temperatures in which a normal human being can never stay alive. He is a world record holder for this case and hence is known as “ice man”.


Obviously the scientists have been quite interested in finding the reason for the same and their study revealed that before undergoing any act of facing extreme cold Wim meditates for a while and then when he faces extreme cold, his body produces white blood cells immensely because of which his immune system rapidly increases and eventually his body temperature gradually increases, easily coping with the extreme cold.

Another phenomenon that aids the existence of altered states of human mind and the alternate world is the phenomenon of “Remote Viewing”. To state it in simple terms, remote viewing is ability to transcend space and time, to view persons, places or things remote in space-time using paranormal means, in particular “extra sensory perception”; to gather and report information on the same.
There have been claims that during the days of cold war among US and USSR, US defense used “remote viewing” via special spies to get armory and other information about the USSR, they also later on funded this research for a long period. You can find a lot of information about this here and here.

Scientists like Herbert Benson, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Rhine have researched a lot on these topics and hence IMO the existence of the alternate world and the concept of altered states of human mind indeed has a scientific backdrop.
In fact I think our scientific community is still too young and naïve to understand these supernatural and paranormal phenomena and it will still take huge amount of time and resources for science to understand these.

On the contrary, in the spiritual and religious community, the significance of intensive meditation and its effects have been recognized since a long time. They have believed the existence of an alternate world and the reference to this has been found in different religions in different scriptures (not going in detail) but have lacked in reasons and logic. If you follow science religiously, you need not believe this but at least it gives us an insight that such phenomena and incidents that science is not completely able to explain are at least acknowledged by the other community.
The discussion indeed has many perceptions. Anyways, to conclude I would say that in the current age we use a very small fraction of our brain hence, it may be true that these worlds are actually intensely integrated but attributing to our current brain usage, we just don’t have the intellect to understand this and as of now, neither does our science. After all, we are still too young in universe and have a lot to explore. ;)  

P.S: This is an interesting topic, I would like to know your take on this.

A Quiet Place

We all are missing something which used to be quite frequent in olden days. We are missing the silence. We are missing a quiet place where you could brainstorm your ideas to get the best one out. You could utilize this quiet place to simply observe the nature and its marvels. Not only that, you could observe the most marvelous creation of the Almighty, you could observe yourself. At times, it's just vital to observe yourself, your thoughts and your aspirations. Knowingly or unknowingly you did tend to observe the fore said items. It used to lead to better understanding and better clarity. Self worth and self knowledge still are the greatest tools to achieve what you truly desire and a quiet place indeed triggers the environment required for such attainment.

Interestingly, we may be missing such silence, but we rarely recognize it, why so? Because the entities that have replaced them, in itself are lucrative enough to keep us engaged. They are called as notifications. We keep getting them, in terms of mails, or comments, or trailers, or promos (refer TV).

Think for a while and look around as an observer, only then you will realize that you really are missing them. Just a few minutes everyday at a fixed time, observe yourself. That is all it takes to fill this void.

Find here, A Quiet Place on Internet . Observe 21 Sep as the Quiet Day. Follow the campaign here. 

"Post Traumatic Growth"

Recently while watching one of the TED-TALKS, I came across this word, “post-traumatic growth”.  This is a talk by Janie McGonigal about "Game that can give you 10 extra years of life". (You may see this video below.)

Well, my first reaction was that does something like this even exist?  Then after some initial looking up on the net I found out that it really does. Post traumatic growth in fact is a very inspiring and interesting concept. As the name suggests it says that any major roadblock in life, a major setback can actually be used as a springboard to unleash the best qualities and lead better lives. If a person has successfully overcome a traumatic event in life then he / she can see his / her life and its purpose in a better way and with more clarity, and may be that’s why this newly acquired knowledge brings them eternal peace and perfect clarity which we mostly miss.

This indeed is true, how many of us actually take a step back for a minute just to think where exactly we are headed to. Do we take some minutes off to plan the week? (Even I myself don’t do it, planning to try it after this post.) This habit not only helps us to keep a track on ourselves but also keeps our long term goal in check.

Anyways, umm.. returning back to the topic, well frankly speaking we all need the positive effects which post traumatic growth brings along but obviously none of us would be interested in the “trauma” coming along. Hence, the only solution to this is that we need to acquire these qualities which a person recovering from “trauma” possesses. We need to have more clarity towards life. This can come by 2-3 short habits such as planning our day, week etc., but more importantly we need have a goal, a destination where every step taken by us should subsequently take us.

So, let’s try and get better at our lives, without the real trauma coming along.. ;)

P.S.: Stay away and always ignore the evil twin of our friend, it’s known as “post-traumatic disorder”. I got the picture and this evil twin concept from this link.

The Road To Change

As we move on with life, we tend to realise that every moment, every fraction of second it is changing it's course. The course of our lives is decided by numerous factors indeed, but I believe somewhere down the line we do play a major role in it's formation. The fact is that, at times we don't even realise that these changes are what later on go on to define what we are or what we become. 

Considering that, the phase of change ie the transition is never easy to handle. The reason being, that we get accustomed to what our traits are or what our situation is, and any change in that puts us out of our comfort zone and hence the transition is not easy. 

But, that being said, it is necessary for the caterpillar to bear with the difficulties of the transition to become a beautiful multi-colored butterfly and it is not it's destiny to stay a caterpillar forever. Also, it is vital to adapt ourselves according to the changing situations only then the transition can be complete and only then it's purpose can be accomplished.

So, it's time to welcome every small or big change in life..:)