Ravi Nirmal Sharma's Blog, page 3

5 Bread Slices and Aloo Gobhi

He was a newbie to our office.

He brought 5 slices of brown bread and Aloo Gobhi to office everyday. He would heat it in the microwave and gulp them down with two cups of coffee.

We all shared food amongst each other and found his eccentric behaviour funny. In every other matter he was normal.

He ate alone and didnt eat with us. Besides who would want to share the kind of meal he brought to office everyday. We would have been the losers, not him.

He was 'normal' in every other way.

Office is office and there will be gossip behind people's back. Everyone used to comment at his back. Laugh at him or speak in an unkind way.

This continued for two years. Then he resigned one day.

It was his last day at the office. This time when he opned his tiffin box there were no bread slices. But biryani, kadai paneer and curd. This was completely unlike him.

It was this day or never. If we didnt ask him the question that was uppermost in our mind we would all die with the mystery unsolved.

'Sir, if you dont mind, can I ask you a question?" We formed a semi-circle around him, with him at the centre.

"Yes?" He was not the least intimidated.

"Why did you just eat those 5 slices of bread and aloo gobhi everyday? For 2 years?"

He laughed. "You took a long time to ask the question. Well, every day we take the same route to office. Everyday we sleep at exactly the same time. Every day of our life is no different from the previous. We do nothing with our lives. When every aspect of our lives is the same, why should the food be different. I vowed I would eat the same stuff as long as I would do the same thing day after day…"

"And this change today ? What's the reason?"

"For 7 years I was trying to complete a novel I was writing. Every other distraction was welcome, because it was damn tough to work in discipline. So I took the vow. That I had to publish my book before I would get rid of those 5 slices and aloo gobhi. Yesterday the novel got accepted. I had broken my routine. Did something with my life after all."

He shared his meal with us that day. It was the tastiest lunch I ever had.

"Please do show us the copy of the novel when it appears in print," we told him as we saw him off.

It was amazing, we had a writer amidst us and we never knew anything about him.

While driving back home, I saw his point of view.

The same boring road. The same routine.

Life was precious and ticking by.

I too began to think of my passion. Photography.

I would have to do something about it.

Next day, I too brought 5 slices of bread and aloo gobhi.

I was not alone. Three more colleagues had the same menu.

We didnt laugh when we saw the coincidence.

Warning: Don’t let yourself be Hijacked

We are constantly being hijacked from that space we need exclusively to ourselves. Where we connect with our inner being. Have a conversation with our self. Get to know where we were supposed to be and where we are. Introspect. Connect. Course correct.

But somehow we have come to dread this coming face to face with our self. There is a reason. We do not wish to face the discomfort that entails: We are happy doing whatever we are doing. Inconsequential things because they are easy.

Facebook. Ipods. TV. Time at the pub. Ticking off lists whenever free. Looking for more work. Chatting. Calling a friend. Surfing the net for no reason. Checking mails, ten times a day.

These activities and platform are not bad in themselves, but the excess is what takes us away from the inner silence we must have.

Why do we avoid this?

It is because inside we know we have a lot of potential in us. But it would need application. Some tough times. Difficult days, maybe years. Compared to it, the present with all the distraction is so comfortable. And what does one need anyway? We argue? Bread, butter and money enough for EMIs to pay? Why chase impossible dreams?

Chodo yaar. Jane bhi do. Chalta hai. Enjoy this moment.

Fine. It’s an attitude. No harm in just wishing to survive one day from the next.

But then why are we unhappy deep within? At the party we paste plastic smiles, seem to crack jokes that make others laugh, steal the show with our dresses and hair style. But when we reach home, try to sleep, why is there this restlessness. This lack of joy?

It is because the shell in which we have chosen to live, the complete environment that we have build around us is not our real self. We have drowned it in the cacophony of excesses. We don’t wish to face it.

Remember the ambitions you had at 18? The passion to do something different? Where has it gone? And dint people swear by your talents? That mellifluous voice? The uncanny play of fingers on the strings of guitar. The jugglery with logarithms to create some amazing programming. The ability to fix any faulty electronic goods. The ability to pen a thought. The ability to run faster than the rest. The ability to make any doodle look like awesome art.

Where have all those abilities gone? Those amazing things cannot be forgotten. They were pushed under the carpet because they made you uncomfortable. Needed lot of hardwork to nurture and give shape to. Compared to getting any job, earning a decent wage.

Isnt it so remarkably easy to comply than try to stand out. And that’s what we did to ourselves.

At the end of it?

Life passes us by. Hira janam anmol tha, maati bhaav gawai…..

We sigh. Regret. Of what we could have been and what we turned out to be. We look at other people’s efforts with a tinge of jealousy. Some of these were not as capable as we were. They were mediocre but they turned out to be better than us. Did they get godfathers to achieve success? We wonder.

Right and wrong. When you want something, the universe conspires to give you that very thing. You wish comfort? You will get your BMWs, your Bunglows, your favourite beverage.

You want evolution? Nurturing that exceptional talent? You meet mentors on your journey, Godfathers. Unexpected breaks.

It is you decide what you wish the Universe to do for you.

You can perform miracles with your life but you need to connect with your self. You need to be silent on a daily basis. You need to be unplugged from all those gadgets that surround you. Only then you can be what you were meant to be. An exceptional person.

And not a rat in the rat race.

Happy evolution.

Warning: Don't let yourself be Hijacked

We are constantly being hijacked from that space we need exclusively to ourselves. Where we connect with our inner being. Have a conversation with our self. Get to know where we were supposed to be and where we are. Introspect. Connect. Course correct.

But somehow we have come to dread this coming face to face with our self. There is a reason. We do not wish to face the discomfort that entails: We are happy doing whatever we are doing. Inconsequential things because they are easy.

Facebook. Ipods. TV. Time at the pub. Ticking off lists whenever free. Looking for more work. Chatting. Calling a friend. Surfing the net for no reason. Checking mails, ten times a day.

These activities and platform are not bad in themselves, but the excess is what takes us away from the inner silence we must have.

Why do we avoid this?

It is because inside we know we have a lot of potential in us. But it would need application. Some tough times. Difficult days, maybe years. Compared to it, the present with all the distraction is so comfortable. And what does one need anyway? We argue? Bread, butter and money enough for EMIs to pay? Why chase impossible dreams?

Chodo yaar. Jane bhi do. Chalta hai. Enjoy this moment.

Fine. It's an attitude. No harm in just wishing to survive one day from the next.

But then why are we unhappy deep within? At the party we paste plastic smiles, seem to crack jokes that make others laugh, steal the show with our dresses and hair style. But when we reach home, try to sleep, why is there this restlessness. This lack of joy?

It is because the shell in which we have chosen to live, the complete environment that we have build around us is not our real self. We have drowned it in the cacophony of excesses. We don't wish to face it.

Remember the ambitions you had at 18? The passion to do something different? Where has it gone? And dint people swear by your talents? That mellifluous voice? The uncanny play of fingers on the strings of guitar. The jugglery with logarithms to create some amazing programming. The ability to fix any faulty electronic goods. The ability to pen a thought. The ability to run faster than the rest. The ability to make any doodle look like awesome art.

Where have all those abilities gone? Those amazing things cannot be forgotten. They were pushed under the carpet because they made you uncomfortable. Needed lot of hardwork to nurture and give shape to. Compared to getting any job, earning a decent wage.

Isnt it so remarkably easy to comply than try to stand out. And that's what we did to ourselves.

At the end of it?

Life passes us by. Hira janam anmol tha, maati bhaav gawai…..

We sigh. Regret. Of what we could have been and what we turned out to be. We look at other people's efforts with a tinge of jealousy. Some of these were not as capable as we were. They were mediocre but they turned out to be better than us. Did they get godfathers to achieve success? We wonder.

Right and wrong. When you want something, the universe conspires to give you that very thing. You wish comfort? You will get your BMWs, your Bunglows, your favourite beverage.

You want evolution? Nurturing that exceptional talent? You meet mentors on your journey, Godfathers. Unexpected breaks.

It is you decide what you wish the Universe to do for you.

You can perform miracles with your life but you need to connect with your self. You need to be silent on a daily basis. You need to be unplugged from all those gadgets that surround you. Only then you can be what you were meant to be. An exceptional person.

And not a rat in the rat race.

Happy evolution.

Of Heart and Mind

Tired and fatigued by all the ramblings of his sundry heart, no one to share them with and feeling after a very long the inadequacy of his mind, Kasper decided to pen his thoughts into the pensieve that this blog seems to have become.

Men are organizations. And like each organization, each Man has many departments for different purposes. This is a story about two of the most critical departments in Men. The department of Heart, which is also sometimes called Instinct or Subconscious depending which school of thought did the Man in question attend. This department is the first point of interpretation of external events and how they affect the Man. Another important department is the department of execution – Mind.

This is story of a particular Man who was known among other Men as Neo.

Heart is a keeper of so many feeling and emotions. There are processes at work there that even the smartest in Mind are unable to decipher. So it is the prerogative of the employees at the Heart to articulate some of the emotional jargon into a language that the employees at the Mind can understand. The honest and sometimes gullible employees at Heart, who know no deceit nor treachery tell the Mind people these secrets with a faith that they (the Mind people) can process them further. Oh, so naive can the Heart employees be sometimes.

Men at the Mind, though lagging the men at the Heart in terms of understanding and processing have a need to establish superiority in all matters. Even those that are under the purview of the heart. A Man finds it impossible to ‘move a muscle’ until the men at Mind allow. And this control over the physical manifestation of Man has deluded the Mind people to a degree that they are convinced of their superiority in the system.

The heart people are a frustrated lot at times. Though smarter and more capable than their peers at the department of Mind, their strengths are rendered useless because the processes at the Man require them to run all their observations through the mind. And the low processing ability and inefficiency of the men at Mind, causes a lot of data loss and huge lag in their understanding, interpreting the situation, planning the course of action and execution.

This domination of the department of Men has continued for ages and has become the norm. Until one organization decided to challenge this way of running things.

A Promise, To Die For

A story of death rests in my drawer in the office. Another story, of death, goes on the blog. Some call me morbid. Not too wrong, are they?

3 AM:

He had the gun pointed to his head. Not in the way they show it in the movies. You know, with the barrel pointed at the temple. He was staring down the barrel. Waiting for death to lunge out from in there any moment. His brain was in a serious discussion with his index finger which, for now, was ambling around the trigger, carelessly, waiting for inspiration. As he had. For most of his life.

This part of his life, not surprisingly, is called ‘The Inspiration’.

He wanted to end the grind. The relentless pain and misery. Or maybe he just got bored? Na. He had a good life, which flashed before his eyes. Not like they say in the movies. He was trying his best to make some sense out of it.

He looked around his apartment at the pictures of all the people he loved. And those who had loved him. He was supposed to feel an obligation towards them that he did not feel. No matter how hard he tried.

“Why?” he wondered. “Why is it so easy to be selfish?”

“It’s not. You are doing all of them a favor. Trust me.” There was another voice inside him. He hadn’t listened to it so far, and now it was bursting out of him. His mind, had suppressed it up until now. No more. No more.

“What do you worry about? The pain you’ll cause them? Let me give you some perspective – there is no such thing as a lasting sense of loss. You have lost loved ones, haven’t you? How much do you think about them now? It seemed like you’ll never get over the grief at the time. Look at you now. Life goes on, buddy.”

He listened intently to the voice and was trying to find arguments, but he found his finger moving on to the trigger now. He found his hand firming its grip around the revolver.

“There is salvation waiting at the end of that tunnel. Its coming for you. Freedom – of heart and mind. You are your own God at this time.”

The thought, now lodged in his mind gave him a sense of power. His arrogance, now assuaged, accepted the fact rather easily. It was so easily to fool him. Well, who has been served well by arrogance, ever!

“Allow yourself the gift. You deserve it. You have been a good son, husband and father.”

“I have been. Haven’t I? I have worked so hard for 25 years of my life to provide for my family and my loved ones. They can do without me. They need me out of their lives now.”

He had worked his way into the best engineering schools in the country and then to the best business schools. He had slogged the best years of his life in a top-notch job that he loved so much. And he had provided well for them. Assuming that they needed him to provide for them. Assumption. He believed the arrogance was an ‘occupational perk’. He could easily afford it.

“That is the only way they’ll be free. This is the only way to unlock the true happiness for them.”

“What have I become?” he asked.

“It is your duty to set your spirit free. You have suppressed it long enough. Fulfill your duty to your spirit.”

There was a smile on his face. The fingers, which were not paying any heed to his mind until now, suddenly seemed to looked at him questioningly. He nodded, slowly.

FLASH!

He woke up the next morning, a new man. A part of him that had outlived its importance, and needed to go had died. He had promised himself that he will pursue his dreams. He wanted to read, write, travel and experience things.

Guess what. He did exactly that.

Yet another, true story.

Why do Authors need a Website & the Making of Ours

For years I have debated this question. I did have the money to create my website four years ago but didn't have the conviction. Even when my book was published, I wondered: Do I need a website?

What does one do when faced with a dilemma?

Google. And Google I did.

The advice from various authors proved that while many of the reasons why I felt I didn't need a website were right, there were compelling reasons to have one. I have given an analytical pro and con for a website.

What a website does not do:

A website doesn't  push your sales for sure. A few copies that it might manage to sell will be offset by the costs and time involvedA website doesn't make you famous or read. It actually works backwards. You have written something good and people wish to know more about you. To achieve this you have to slog, get published to be on the road to be taken seriously. Just parking your website in the worldwide web and sharing the links with everyone you know doesn't make you a celebrityA website is definitely not a place to showcase the work you want to be published. World over, stuff that has appeared in an e-format before is not taken too eagerly by publishers. It doesn't have the freshness with it, if and when it is published. Free content is just that -'Free': very few take it seriously.A website doesn't necessarily make your presence felt in the web. It takes time, and a network of friends and appreciative readers to make that happen.

What a website can do for you:

Make you feel committed to your hobby or profession. Having an identity is the first step to creating layers around it. Even before we were conscious of it, we got a name. And with the passage of time, we wanted to attach value to our name, do something unique. Similarly, a website makes us conscious of the journey as a writer we have to makeYou published a fantastic story which was read by a film director on a flight. Now it gets him/her worked up and he/she wants to make a film. How do they contact you? Ten to one he/she will Google your name along with your story and if you are there, they will find you. Otherwise the obstacles to your discovery (read copyright agreements) become huge and the enthusiasm of this director might fade with time as he has many other challenges on his or her plateIt helps people to contact you for commercial reasons: films, book contracts or projects if they like your work and styleIt helps people in the event industry to locate you for possible interactive sessions if your work happens to be of a specialist nature: Green Planet, Human relationships, Psychology, Technology, Science Fiction etc. You can be a contracted speaker at prestigious events.Create a buzz about your work, however small by leveraging the internet: You can upload excerpts of your work and make people interested enough to read your workAct as an archive of your published work (never future work)Build you as a brand (only after you have built a body of work)

The making of our Website

We contacted Dreams Media because they enjoy a good reputation in the market with regards to making customized word press websites. Authors need websites where they can add, delete or edit the content they write without being dependent on website managers or administrators. They should be able to post stories, articles and blogs etc with ease and on their own. A normal website doesn't allow you that but websites modeled on WordPress blogs allow you that ease.

Harish helped us create a website that was quick to load, is friendly on all browsers and gives us complete ease and a lot of flexibility in content management. We had many exotic ideas which he shot down because of his experience: most of them were impractical, would have slowed the website or would have been against our interests.

The present website we feel is creative and affordable: we got a website that does full justice to the spirit of the book.

Based on our experiences while making the website we arrived at the following conclusions:

More than being creative it is necessary for the website to load quickly. But if the website is fast and creative then it is a great combinationThe website should be compatible with all browsers and their older versions tooIt should have back up options at two locations to take into account failure at one placeIt should be readable in mobiles: in future this trend will be more commonYoutube promotions if they exist should never be housed on the website, instead a link to the upload at Vimeo is a better idea. Vimeo for some reasons is better than Youtube video. We did as we were advised.

Conclusion: If you can afford it, have a website

If money is not a constraint, all authors should have a website. It is like having an identity. The earlier you do it, you are likely to get the domain name of your choice. If you are short of budgets, then it is better to wait for the right time: No need to jump the gun. Websites are better than blogs because they are more professional, speak of your seriousness to your business and have many features which blogs don't provide. They help you rise from the clutter.

Wish you all the best in your quest for success.

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