We Stand, Together...

I am a wanderlust. I love to travel to new places- more remote the place, the better- meet new people, learn about different cultures and just discover my place in this wide world. That's why it pains me to say, I haven't seen much of my own country. Let me rephrase that, no matter how much you travel you never really see any place completely.There is always that one spot that we may have missed, one small part of a culture that we might have overlooked. But then again, we notice somethings that we might not have at first sight...

I don't pretend to have seen the whole world... But sometimes the it doesn't need a whole lot of travelling to know about a country. What I learnt about my own country can be a little appalling. Its appalling because it is a disease that has spread throughout the whole country. What I noticed was that there is a widespread lack of empathy, human to human, among the people who live here. And it doesn't stop there. Along with that people are judged by the circumstances under which they are born. Other than being a big problem, this is a very shameful issue faced by this country.

We keep saying to everyone and to ourselves the very catchy phrase "Unity in Diversity". We say to anyone who'd listen to us that we stand together regardless of where we were born, and under what circumstances. But the truth is, the people in this country place far more value on those aspects of a person. Case in point, the elephant in the room: Reservation. But that's a whole other topic that I do not wanna go into.No, mine is a more fundamental issue.

This lack of empathy stretches far beyond the, the resume of a person. It stretches to the fact that people don't care about anything as long as it doesn't happen to them. If a guy gets into an accident and lies twitching in pain on the road, he will lie there until Death pities him..or the ambulance, whichever gets there first. He gets no immediate help despite the thousands of people who walk past him. If a guy wants to raise his voice against injustice done to him he has to raise it on his own.. He finds sparse, if any, support and even then it is short lived for 'it is impractical'. Here most people prefer to be silent to extending their arm towards someone who's fallen down. Here, people prefer to mind their own business than to say "Hi" and have friendly chat.

So, how do we change this ? That is one question that every young citizen of this country who doesn't give a damn about a person's background ponders on every minute. For the current generation, what matters is the people they come across. They do not care where he's from. They do not give a damn about the person's background. Somehow, they have unwittingly grown beyond those boundaries. So, the solution becomes obvious. The Youth. We, are that turning point that this nation cries for desperately. We, are that factor that change the equation completely. We, are that force that turns this world upside down. And all we have to do is to keep in mind those things. Because very soon we are gonna be in charge of this world and then we can get rid of the bullshit concepts that divides this world: color, race, caste and we can turn the world into one big city, a big organism whose hearts beat as one, as its meant to be.

#MoreToCome

The Dark Horses...

Have you ever lost..? A bet, a race, a competition..? If you have then you will know everything that I'm gonna  talk about. If you haven't then buckle up, because it is rare when what you're gonna read comes from the king of losers.

Everyone has lost something or other in their lives. For most people the loss proves to be an unexpected blow to the gut. They are so discouraged that they start to think that what they tried to do was a mistake. Slowly, the idea creeps into their minds that poisons the grit of the person. Despite any number of efforts they still find themselves in the bottom of the table. They are left with nothing but remorse and eventually they succumb to the social protocol. They take up regular jobs and get on with their lives all the while thinking "If only things had worked out differently...".

For some people the loss doesn't affect or change anything in their lives. They never put in the actual effort required of them and they never expect anything to come of it. For them it was just another defeat in a long list. They blame a whole lot of things for their current state and they do not care what their life would be if they tried just once. For them "winners are children of luck". They don't care about what goes on behind a scene. They have an ever-present fear of failure and hence they never try.

We all belong or belonged on either of these two kinds. We either take a loss to the heart or we start thinking winners are guys who were at the right place at the right time. There is, however, a third kind...

A guy walked into an interview and presented his resume to the recruiter. The recruiter took one look at the resume and found that despite having enormous potential this guy wasn't at a place where he was supposed to be. He was able to determine that the guy had tried numerous times but achieving very little. He asked the guy, "I've got a number of top scoring freshmen out there who have records much better than your own. Why should I hire you..?". The guy replied, "Because I have experienced defeat and come to this stage where half of those guys out there don't even know what success is..."

That's the third kind guys, the underdogs, the dark horses. They do not depend on luck or chance. They make their own luck. These guys fail more than any of the rest but they try even more number of times. They go down often, but they are never out. For these guys it doesn't matter if the odds are stacked up against them. It is because they make a living by defying these odds.They understand that everyone gets knocked down. But to these guys failure never matters, what matters is how quickly they get back on their feet. For the rest it is always about that one shot, when the stars line up for them. But these guys take the shot until it sticks. They do have a fear of failure, but they also have a bigger fear...the fear of not knowing what could have happened if they hadn't tried.

It is never easy to get over losses guys. But we can only do so if we figure out what's our goal is. We don't have to be a winner to be successful. Every one who calls himself a winner has lost at one point or another. So, being a winner is over rated. What matters is how much we gave for it and that we never gave up.

We kept running,

despite our bloodied feet...

despite our tired legs...

We kept running,

ignoring the thirst...

ignoring the thorns...

We kept running,

With a strong soul...

and an unbreakable heart...

We kept running and we found Glory

waiting for us with her arms wide open.

#MoreToCome

Living in the moment...

Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if you had made a different choice..? Anything big or small..? I'm quite sure everyone would have such an instant. At some point in each of our lives we all think about the choices we have made thus far in our lives and wonder about what would have happened if we had chosen differently. Or we lament to ourselves and sometimes to a close friend about that one instant of our life and how we'd give anything to change that moment. But are we justified in doing this..?

Be it a career choice or an ice cream flavour we all have these thoughts run through our minds constantly. Though nothing could be done, we still think about those instants that may have probably changed our lives. I may be going a little overboard saying "changed our lives", but most moments in life are exactly that: Life-changing.

A wise man once said, "The lifetime of person is not measured in years but in breath-taking moments that he has lived through." So ask yourselves this: How many breath-taking moments have I lived through in my life? What comes back as a reply may make you realise that despite having lived so long you have lived so little.

Trust me, I'm in no position to be saying this for I know I think every day about the days in my life I wish to change and those days I wish to get rid of altogether. But luckily I realised that nothing real ever came of it, only that sad empty feeling that we get when we have lost someone close to us. But slowly I realised that, the sadness I was left with was not because of that moment long past. It was because of the moment that we leaving me as I was regretting a dead and a rotting past.

Take it from someone who spent much of the better part of his life regretting his past, it is better to forget it and move on. The road back is not easy, but at the end of this road lays that sweet place we all so badly want to go. Life is full of beautiful moments and they are happening around us every day, every second. If we close our eyes to that beauty we close our eyes upon ourselves. Enjoy those breath-taking moments and we are left with a breath-taking life.
#MoreToCome

New Kid on the "Blog"....

Beginning

Well this is it...a decision that's been coming a long time. I think I kinda nailed it giving the name: Cloud Callouts. Although grammatically incorrect its one of those rare personal flashes of brilliance; and I can't stress enough on 'rare'. Cloud callouts are those dialogue boxes that appear in comics when a character is thinking of something that's deep. So, you may say this is gonna be a weekly portal into this mind of mine. If you're gonna think this is a weekly bitching session of a guy with helluva lot of issues then you're not off mark. (Fair warning, expect a fair amount of profanity for I luckily do not have a censor board and, c'mon guys let's face it: saying "gross" every time someone speaks a little freely doesn't make you look sophisticated...)

This blog is gonna be all about gaining perspective, about how the little things around us, the things that happen to us makes us realize the most profound of ideas or just how those things turn out to be nothing but jimbalooshi. But these are gonna be my personal opinions, so no arguments about what's right and what's wrong.If you wanna do that start your own damn blog.

I know what you're thinking: "New Kid on the 'blog'..? Could anything be more tacky." Well, it was a result of three cups of coffee and an attempt to impress. I think I may have over-reached a little bit there. But that's me I try hard, a bit too hard sometimes and some people may find that annoying. But i don't mind. If anything it shows how far some of us may be willing to go to to get something. I think when we wanna do something you love, we wanna do it to perfection. Because if we didn't have that desire for perfection it would no longer be the thing we love and we'd end up living a lie. In this attempt for perfection    we sometimes tend to over-reach and that ends up with the scoreboard showing less than what we wanted in the first place. But guys like me would say, "It's ok...I can now sleep knowing I gave it my best." 

That's exactly the thing guys, giving your best. We all have it in us guys that fire to give it our best. But it only comes out when we do the thing we wanna do, things we feel good when we do it, the things we love doing. But the sad part it we are led to believe from an early age that it is unrealistic, impractical. Well, this is me breaking free, this is me doing what I love although with plenty of mistakes, this is me giving it my best shot.
#MoreToCome