Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "ambitious"

Come hell or high water,
Never let caution cripple your feet.
Better to fall hard and learn a lesson,
Than speculate forever with couched feet.

Everything I’ve achieved is by trial and error,
There was no handbook to aid my mission.
Maps to known paths are available plenty,
But there is no map to uncharted destination.

You are the handbook to your ambition,
Not your background or family treasures.
If you persist long enough, at some point,
Your persistence will outrun your failures.

Better fail than frozen – failure is the foundation.
Failure is the first sign of ambition in motion.

6. What is perfection?
Perfection is imperfections we’ve made peace with.
…
13. What is nature?
Nature is order within chaos.
14. What is order?
Order is but friendship with chaos.
15. What is chaos?
Chaos is order we are yet to understand.
…
21. What is knowledge?
Knowledge is ignorance we’ve chosen to correct.
22. What is choice?
Choice is the fulcrum of freedom.
23. What is freedom?
Freedom is the fulcrum of responsibility.
24. What is responsibility?
Responsibility is the act of backbone.
25. What is backbone?
Backbone is more than a stick to hang your head.
26. What is the head?
Head is the mightiest carrier of progress.
27. What is progress?
Progress is much more than mere functioning of nuts
and bolts.
28. What are nuts and bolts?
Nuts and bolts are our greatest defense against
unforeseen terrors of nature, on earth and beyond.
…
53. What is heritage?
Heritage, in moderation, is an aid to growth,
unmoderated, poison.
…
57. What is death?
Death is but the fear of life.
58. What is fear?
Fear is but memory of our animal past.
59. What is memory?
Memory is the fabric of time.
60. What is time?
Time is the meaning behind moments.
…
78. What is curiosity?
Curiosity is a challenge to superstition.
79. What is superstition?
Superstition is nature’s antidote to the insecurity of
the unknown.
80. What is insecurity?
Insecurity is wisdom of the jungle against possible
predatory attack.
81. What is wisdom?
Wisdom is the result of travel in mind, not in time or
space.

I just want to write –
that’s all I ever want –
to write, write and write!
The day the words stop coming,
will be my last corporeal night.

Either I shall die by an assassin’s bullet,
or I shall die on my keyboard,
but I refuse to die of old-age and disease.
Death scares those who are scared of life,
I have already lived my life in service.

I live on keyboard, I’ll die on keyboard,
Keyboard is my instrument of illumination.
Nothing short could satisfy my palate –
Give me a keyboard, I’ll give you revolution.

With my keyboard I’ve defended the meek,
With my keyboard I’ve castrated the pricks.
With my keyboard I’ve brought down dictators,
With my keyboard I’ve schooled bigoted pigs.

With my keyboard I’ve raised Gods by hundreds,
With my keyboard I’ve delivered world-builders.
With my keyboard I’ve produced hatebusters,
With my keyboard I’ve raised bulldozers.

Death is but a myth – body dies, not bulldozer;
Body is merely a vessel for the mission.
If you want your ideas to live forever,
You gotta sacrifice your life for a vision.

I never lived as body, but only as a dream –
My life is testament to the dream of united earth.
I don’t have a message, for I am the message –
Sacrifice is beacon, that illuminates the universe.

Naskar is made by Naskar alone, not an industry or benefactor – or more importantly, by family wealth. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, and clothes on my back – that was more than enough.

I started writing with literally zero dollar in my pocket. Let me tell you how it began, because for some reason, I completely forgot a crucial event of my life when I wrote my memoir Love, God & Neurons.

I once met an American tourist at a local train in Calcutta. The first thing he asked me was, had I lived in the States? I said, no. Then how come you have an American accent – he asked. Watching movies – I said. We got chatting and he told me about a book he had recently published, a memoir. I believe, this was the cosmic event that planted the thought of writing my own books in my head – I had already started my self-education in Neurology and Psychology, and I was all determined to publish research papers on my ideas, but not books. Meeting the person somehow subconsciously shifted my focus from research papers to books.

So the journey began. And for the first few years, I made no real money from my books. Occasionally some of my books would climb the bestsellers list on amazon, like my very first book did, and that would keep the bills paid for several months. Then the invitations for talks started coming, but they too were not paid in the beginning. The organizers made all the travel arrangements, and I gave the talks for free. It’s ironic and super confusing really – I remember flying business class, but I didn’t have enough money to even afford a one way flight ticket, because I had already used up my royalties on other expenses.

Today I can pick and choose which speaking invitations to accept, but back then I didn’t have that luxury – I was grateful for any speaking gig and interview request I received, paid or not. One time, I gave an interview to this moderately popular journalist for her personal youtube channel, only to find out, she never released the video publicly – she posted an interview with a dog owner instead – whose dog videos had gained quite a following on social media. You could say, this was the first time I realized first hand, what white privilege was.

Anyway, the point is this.

Did I doubt myself? Often. Did I consider quitting? Occasionally. But did I actually quit? Never. And because I didn’t quit, the world received a vast never-before seen multicultural humanitarian legacy, that you know me for today.

There is no such thing as overnight success. If you have a dream, you gotta work at it day in, day out – night after night – spoiling sleep, ruining rest, forgetting fun. Persist, persist, and persist, that’s the only secret – there is no other. Remember this – the size of your pocket does not determine your destiny, the size of your dedication does.

The first few minutes of my first
stage talk were absolute disaster.
First few books were mere intellectual
commentary, lacking in original Naskar.

Don’t beat yourself up for the
follies of your early years.
Doesn’t matter, you made mistakes,
what counts is, you outgrew your errors.

If a life claims a flawless history,
rest assured, it’s a concoction of lies.
Flawlessness is mark of lifelessness,
to be alive means to be battered by cries.

Mistakes are the cornerstones of clarity,
they wire your unique perception in place.
Absence of error is the end of living sanity,
to fabricate your past is to obliterate yourself.

I grew up in a 20ft/20ft one-room house,
used to walk an hour to get to school –
and although I never knew what luxury was,
I’m just grateful, I never had to starve –

I never had to wear torn clothes,
never had to experience a leaky roof,
unlike my parents, who grew up poor,
as neither of my grandfathers were good providers.

Like my father, his father was a factory worker,
but unlike my father, he could barely feed his family,
and my other grandfather was a poor priest,
who too could barely provide for his family, with
the little money he earned from religious ceremonies.

My parents grew up in abject poverty, I grew up in
modest security, and all of it has kept me grounded.
Little obscurity is essential for building character –
luxury stunts growth, obscurity establish greatness.