Random Musings Week 38/100 : Happy 27, my friend!

Once a upon a time there lived a guy who, with his camouflaged Yamaha FZ, and fancy trousers, roaming around the streets of Chennai non-stop, catching the hearts of young women left and right.
“Uyir ungaloyodayadhu devi” was his pickup line.  
Just kidding.
My friend Sab is turning 27 today and I decided to make this writeup for wishing him, like an extended whatsapp status 😛

As one of my best buddies from school, with our friendship spanning a decent 14 years, he has come a long way. We have been through plenty of happy times and many rough patches, but currently one thing that surprises me is his current array of thoughts. For someone who used to grew up talking about Power Rangers or getting scolded by maths teacher for laughing loudly in class, or spitting water when our gang makes stupid jokes, his current conversations range from metaverse, crypto, life goals, mindset, goal setting, anti-fragility, personal finance, finding motivation, creating habits, mental health, investments, work life balance, etc.

I used to go to his place for printouts (as only he was the owner with colour printer in our area), doing bike ride convos about fellow friends, higher studies and roadside shop convos about movie heroines, the current maturity level of conversations is surreal.
For me particularly, I was lucky to be involved in all his pivotal points in his life (except the moment he broke the news he had a girlfriend, which shook our entire friends circle :P)
Every time he overcame his share of missteps, traumas, and health troubles and learnt to break the fear of judgement by societal people around him. Yeah, we grew up fast. But doesn’t it feel surprising when your childhood buddies speak the so called ‘Adulting’ stuffs.

This can be summed up by a small writeup he put up today, and I never felt more proud of this guy from where he was- “A year ago, if someone told me that I would have travelled to 7 different countries, lost 30 kilos, learned to play a musical instrument, became good at a foreign language, read 20+ books, gained intrinsic motivation, became healthy, developed razor sharp focus, created a system of good habits, wrote consistently every week for a year, and paid student loans in full, they would call me crazy, yet here I am.”
Way to go my friend. Happy 27!
https://medium.com/@sabarishsridhar

Magizhchi.

Random Musings: Week 37- Of speaking up!

Year 2008.

As every other kid who loves following sports, I go to local newspaper anna on a Thursday and bought Sportstar. I open to see that week’s centre page poster and immediately my eyes widen to see a smiling face with white headband with a tennis racquet and a trophy. The shirt read RF. I quietly tore the poster and kept it with me.

To go a bit further back, my fascination for tennis started in 6^th grade when my geography teacher Mrs. Saraswathi, who loves conducting on-the-spot quizzes on current affairs, asked a question to name the four major grand slams in tennis. I ended up answering it, as I read somewhere in the newspaper, even though I had no clue about the sport in general. The new found praise made me slowly start following more tennis related news, articles, matches and I became a huge fan of this enigma called Roger Federer. As with all great sportspersons, he too called it quits recently. Just pure respect for the G.O.A.T.
Anyways, enough of fanboying , I will probably dedicate a whole writeup to him soon.

Now coming to today’s topic, there had been times when I wanted to communicate with the person on a particular conversation, but ended up not able to do so. I have heard the same in many of my friends stories. The lack of confidence to speak up either for/against that individual’s thoughts or ideas makes a huge impact in one’s lives. For example, you pitch a great startup idea, but your friends/relatives just brush off, but in a few months time, you see the same idea coming into the market.
Or, you refrain to tell your love to your crush and they end up marrying some other person the next week.

Though nowadays technology had made us simple to communicate, via whatsapp or numerous other messaging apps, video calls, etc. which is making even long distant relationships bearable. On the other hand, being left on blueticks/seen-zoned resulting in fights or seen as lack of interest in conversations is making people go berserk in others, inspite of instant communication.

I wondered how people managed to stay sane and converse their thoughts to others before the telephone era. As we have seen in numerous movies-most recently in Sita Ramam, letters were the most popular means of communication. Even landline telephones was limited to very few privileged households. I guess it just gave a lot of time to think about the particular situation, await for response, rethink twice/thrice about the decision and the result ended up being more or less mostly successful. On the flip side, the pressure to deliver the news on a piece of paper became too slow in a fast paced world.

Also, memes as a tool of communication is the most popular trend nowadays. Just letting the people know that they are still in their contact list, but without any emotional/physical connection/honest conversations. Maybe it evokes a wry smile for that instant, but after that its again back to not speaking up. Friendships become distant and over the period, may become even lost. In one of the recent podcasts, Dhruv Sehgal & Sumukhi Suresh beautifully articulated on this subject, especially its impact post covid.
So yeah, a conscious effort needs to be taken to speak up and more conversations need to be made. Not necessarily it needs to be meaningful. Sometimes, a simple ‘Hi’ with your usual tone is enough to make someone’s day 🙂 !

Magizhchi.

Random Musings Week 36- Was it a mistake?

How many times have you made a decision and regretted it afterwards..

Once? Twice? Pretty sure it’s more than that- If you are a normal human.
We, as humans, tend to make decisions which often end up as mistakes. However, the tricky part is, when do we realize it? Sometimes we realize the next moment. Sometimes it takes months, or maybe even years. And then the question arises. Was I too late to admit it?

When do we actually know we have to make a decision? During our childhood, most of the decisions are made by our parents. Be it good or bad, it was not under our control and we had to face the consequences. Again, afterall, they are also humans right?
Looking back, the earliest decision that I had to make was between taking the computer science group or biology group after my 10th grade. I was aspiring to be an orthopedist those days. LOL. It took a while to realize that even a 199+ cutoff is not gonna land me an admission into any decent MBBS college.

Post that, the decisions tend to be again a convergence of various factors, with having our parents/relatives/friends a direct or an indirect influence into it. We can still be naive to not know it was a good or a bad decision.
This is the phase where we had to endure multiple decisions in a short span which further influenced our whole adult life. Whether to bunk classes or attend it, or ordering gobi manchurian or chicken fried rice at college canteen, whether or not to propose that girl/boy, higher studies or campus placement,  live-in or having family, buying Royal Enfield or KTM, should I attend friend’s party or cousin’s function, break-up or marriage, go to a temple or restobar, Ajith fan or Vijay fan, to drink or not to, Goa or Pondicherry, etc, etc. 

Whatever the decisions we made during that period were critical or can I say turned out to be critical for our future self. Looking back, there are always things that we would like to change. What one tends to ignore is that, even though the mistakes have been made, there is always one main reason for our actions- Time. Actually, Time is both the culprit and saviour for all the decisions that have been made. The circumstances may have led you to make those mistakes, but time is the only factor which makes us realize whether it was a good one or not.
Phew, too much serious content.
So, how many times have you wished for a time travel machine to go back and correct those mistakes? Do we start a petition asking Elon Musk to build one ?

Magizhchi. 

Random Musings Week 35- Of time vs priorities..

As you know, India celebrated its 75^th Independence day last week. From changing DPs to hoisting flags outside houses, social media was abuzz with patriotism. At the same time, news debates for Ranveer’s rather normal photoshoot was up for hot discussion. “We come from 2 Indias”, as Vir das pointed out in his famous standup.
Err, nope, not going to speak about politics here. I am more interested in watching ‘Katcha badam’ reels , Irfan’s food vlogs and vibing to snippets from AR Rahman concerts.

Speaking of concerts, recently, my friend and I accidentally landed up at a grand Dutch orchestral concert in the middle of Amsterdam. What started off as lets watch for a few minutes and leave, we ended up staying till late night at the end of the concert, taking selfies with random Dutch families, singing their local anthem and soaked into real Amsterdam vibes.

Inbetween, we had this interesting discussion about how she complained about lack of time to do her activities she preferred. I argued time was not the problem, but it’s about priorities. But over the convo, I realized both of these factors literally shape our everyday lives. For example, if I thought sitting at some random concert is going to waste my ‘time’, I would not enjoy the experience. On the other hand, It was not my ‘priority’ to stay till the end, but I was very happy that I did. 

Similarly, one of my close friends has a proper timetable to do each and every activity only at that particular period of time. He rarely goes off it, making sure to follow 95% of it regularly.
All for making sure to be sane in this NRI life. Inspite of this, he said he often feels it is too much for living a happy simple life. “Sometimes, chaos is needed in our lives”, were his words. Whom do we blame then, time or priority?

In another conversation, my friend complained he felt not going outside his hometown made him feel down regularly. He felt he was not experiencing enough life as other people in different cities. I would blame social media for this- the fomo of peers enjoying and posting contents, but what people don’t realise is that what people post on social media are mostly only the positive stuff. People living in other cities have their own set of other problems which are known only to them. As we see people doing hiking trips in Europe or a Maldives/Thailand vacation, our minds are programmed to feel left out, inspite knowing to feel good for them.
But hey, does money solve this problem? Lets prioritize your time to figure this out.

Magizhchi.

Random Musings Week 34: Of internet & things..

After seeing way too much shit content on the internet for the past two weeks, I finally realized one thing. It never stops. My friend has his Linkedin, Facebook, twitter and Instagram feeds blocked with ‘life quotes’ using some app- trying to be productive in his life, while I browse non-stop whenever I have free time in between my everyday works.
Though this is an age-old debate which has been going on since Gobinath started off as a moderator, even after multiple films, series and documentaries, the topic never dies out.

The Internet and its effect on humans has been fascinating for plenty of people all around the globe. No, I am not gonna bring up the “Internet vs Humans” debate here. This is not a New York Times article. Nor am I going to preach, “Stop browsing up social media! Be productive!”. Absolutely not. The moment we all ended up writing essays about one of the most cliché topics in school, “Internet: Boon or bane?”, our lives have already changed. 

^{<took a brief pause: was too immersed in Lokiverse theme from Vikram. Do listen>}
As we all know, only after the Jio revolution, the internet phenomenon picked up rapidly in India. Smartphone markets flourished like crazy. Social media advents skyrocketed and parallelly digital media became more popular than traditional ones. Again, am I debating whether this was good or bad, can’t say. Stats say the average time one spends on their phone is 5-6 hours. Currently there is this need for updating ourselves with constant feeds about the latest trends around the world from various social sites such as Tiktok, Insta reels and memes. There is also this peer pressure of now being termed as a ‘Boomer’, if one doesn’t get a pop culture reference.

Oof, too much serious content. Though the last couple of weeks has been a very testing phase in both personal and professional fronts, I was able to finish plenty of unfinished tasks which I had in my mind for months. Yes. I watched Money heist, Better call Saul, Peaky Blinders, and a lot more movies & documentaries. 😛

Just kidding. Or maybe not. 

Anyways, coming back to the topic (was it there any?), the feeds in the social media depends on that one single post or reel that you spend watching. I would suggest watching more positive content to avoid getting “Did you know, Apple is bad for your health!” kinda posts.

The Internet as we know it is not going to leave us, no matter how much we try to avoid it. I am just suggesting, if you realize it is affecting your daily productivity, just try to limit yourself. We are in this phase where there are plenty of alternatives. For example, a few hours of not using the internet while travelling is not going to harm you. We are not trying to save the world here. Again, the urge to take a pic and upload is tempting. But it is what it is.
Going back to binge watching shit content again. Ciao. 

Magizhchi.

Random Musings Week 33- Of history lessons..

Well, Ponniyin Selvan: I teaser dropped and I realized there was no better time to talk about our most neglected topic in schools and colleges. History.

History lessons have always been regarded as boring, dry, lengthy, sleep worthy, and questioned as, why should I study about something when I was not not even born, etc. Why is there a taboo associated with history and not given its due importance with regards to other subjects?

Even after a decade, I still remember my history teacher Mrs. Gomathy, because of the huge impact she had in my life. History was first taught starting from 6th grade I guess. She taught us for 3 years, if I remember correctly. Class 6 history was about ancient civilizations, class 7 about subsequent rulers around the world, and class 8 history was about trades, economy and much recent history after the 1800s. Her teaching methods were always interesting. For example, she asks us to come up with a different topic in a chapter and enact it to our fellow classmates, or asks us to prepare trivia questions, presentations, etc. Somehow, her history classes were never boring. I even remember the whole class weeping when she left our school, and many  of our fellow classmates went to her home to bid farewell 🙂

Anyways, coming back to the topic, most of us have neglected history as a topic to study further because we assumed it added no academic value in our future. But irrespective of the streams we chose to pursue further, history has played a major role. All the intro chapters start with their respective origin stories. Even the games we play, the movies we watch, the books we read, the stories of people we admire, your crush, your boyfriend/girlfriend, etc., all have a history 😛

But somehow over the course of time, we lost interest in exploring histories. One of the main factors is, it’s too vast. The verses on the scrolls, sculptures, monuments and statues, etc. have enough evidence that one needs to understand the historical facts to emotionally connect and experience the present. Sadly, not many of them are maintained properly and are given very little importance. And sometimes they are non-reliable too. Historical facts date back to centuries and we just don’t know whether the facts are accurate or someone just made these up. People then start digging up places, or settle in old libraries/museums to claim accurate facts. The Babri Masjid, Ram-Sethu and Taj Mahal issues being few issues in recent past being always debatable for facts.

Terms like Archeology and artifacts became too ‘archaic’ for us to comprehend. Also, it was left to our creative liberty to think of how humans/dinosaurs lived in those eras over generations which constantly evolved over a period of time.
So yeah, it’s high time we realize the potential of history in our daily lives, learn and connect its significance to our modern environment. For a start, just looking into the message board of a statue nearby your street can trigger interest in history. Finally yeah, I can’t wait to see the story of our mighty Cholas on screen. Also it’s never too late to read/re-read the epic series. Too excited 😀

Magizhchi. 

 
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Random Musings Week 32- Wasted..?

Everyday, every single day, I hope.
I hope everything comes back to normal. I hope things get better. I hope I can get to be myself.
But with each forward step, there becomes two steps backwards. The question is not why. The question is how.. how did it come to this ??

Oops, hey peeps!
Its been again quite few hard weeks, so couldn’t put words to keys. Though this may not add any value to you, I was just penning few personal thoughts here.
Another year to my timeline is going to get added this week and frankly I totally forgot until my friend reminded me. Is it going to be something special. Well nope. With each passing year, they say we become more wiser. Lol. If I want to reflect how the past year has been- there has been quite a few lessons learnt, some new revelations, plenty of disappointments, a new glimmer of hope arose, some good new friendship bonds formed, some unpleasant fights, few professional skills learnt, some bad memories to forget, bad health with deficiencies,  procrastination creeped in, loss of motivation, a couple of rare awesome time spent with people, a few precious moments created, etc..

But whatever happened, it has happened way too fast. I used to laugh at the above 60s elders when they said, you can buy happiness, but not time. I took ‘time’ so much of it granted that it seems its going at a supersonic speed. Does it mean I ‘wasted’ time?
On a hindsight yes, but each unless I reflect back those events on what I can learn from those experiences, it is considered wasted. Ofcourse, there has been instances of luck factor, but as the saying goes, luck favours only the brave. No amount of motivational TEDx speeches, self-help books or therapy is going to help you if you don’t consider the importance of time factor, feeling the change from within. Also no amount of alcohol/ smoking up joints will help in this case. Its just a means to run away from the solution without facing it, adhering to the fact that the task is incomplete but still gain that instant gratification.

As my friend always says, ‘intrinsic motivation’ is required to do a certain work. Even for getting up from bed in the morning. Last week I had an interesting conversation with one of my buddies and she asked “if anxiety sets in, wont you gain motivation and stop procrastinating, thereby finishing up the task and be productive?” I replied that my mind doesn’t work that way. It becomes anxious, but after it reaches a certain point of saturation, it just gives up. If it is going to be one or two missed deadlines, its fine. The idea of “It is how it’s meant to be” creeps in, resulting in stagnation of mind.

Now to get out of this wormhole, one has to be consistent in following systems or same set of activities which he/she did before during the earlier better days. This has been already wired into our system, so just need to pull that trigger. I pulled mine. When are you going to do yours.. 🙂

Magizhchi.

Random Musings Week 31- Of Underdog stories..

“Never lose faith in yourself. You can do anything in the universe. Awake-Arise-Achieve.” -Swami Vivekananda

Never thought this little sentence which I saw whenever I went to my uncle’s home when I was still in my teens would make sense now.
Never thought I would miss 3 consecutive weeks of writing in this series.
Never thought Netherlands weather could be actually sunny during summer season.
Never thought adulting could be this tough. Either our parents were born to do this or only I suck.
Never thought I could watch Beast, Radhe Shyam and RRR in the same weekend and still survive.

Anyways, enough of rants. Lets get to the topic. As you would have guessed, after being awol due to multiple low phases for few weeks, I went into google-something-random-watch-something-random-read-something-random phase to beat the D phase.
Underdog stories always fascinated me since time immemorial. From Rocky Balboa till Rocky from KGF, 1983 world cup under Kapil Dev, life of Superstar Rajinikanth, etc. the rags to riches journey is astonishing.

A couple of weeks back, as I was meeting a couple of new people from my city, I got a chance to listen to journey of this person. Lets call him Hero. It goes like this. In a typical lower middle class family in the heart of Chennai (eg. Polladhavan movie housing boards), the hero finished commerce in a local college and worked in an MNC. While working, he fell in love with a colleague. After few years of dating, they got married and had kids. After multiple job switches, he is finally shifting his family here. Though it may sound ordinary here on paper, the way in which he explained his emotional journey-from the streets of old Chennai to Amsterdam, with plenty of odds against his favor was literally heart touching. When the whole world is pitting you will not succeed as you were born in this neighborhood, the sheer commitment to rise against the odds and come up to a respectable stature was too great a story for me personally.

To quote some of the famous celebrity underdog stories, I personally like JK Rowling’s one.
She lost her mother, went from marriage to miscarriage and then divorce. Jobless and depressed after being rejected by 12 publishers, it just took one book for her to come to limelight. And the rest is history. Similarly of Walt Disney. His first studio went bankrupt, all his animations were harshly criticized by his own staffs. But he believed his craft and never lost courage to present his work confidently to people.

Perhaps the world of sports is optimized to give out underdog stories exponentially.
My favourite one (apart from ‘83 cricket world cup) is Leicester City winning the Premier League in 2015-16 season. Just 6 years back they were in third tier of English football and managed all the way  for the win with a 5000-1 odds by the bookmakers.

There’s something intrinsically human about the tale of an underdog, and it taps into our capacity to hope for the future and dream big. It also teaches us about disrupting common beliefs and overcoming and confronting society’s stigmas. And yes, one more underdog story is in the making as of now and the screenplay is still in progress…

P.S: Just after I wrote about sunny weather in Netherlands, it started raining crazy. Things are normal 🙂

Magizhchi.

Random Musings Week 30- Cherry Blossom

Jeez, it’s been a while since I had this motivation to write something. Just when I thought I could continue writing random stuffs in my mind every week without a break, after escaping for 2.5yrs, I fell victim to this phenomenon which started coz someone ate a bat. Though it was a bad few days, I was quickly able to bounce back with some binge watching and supportive people around me. Of course I had this cliche idea of journaling my quarantine days but quickly dismissed it coz it was again- too cliche. 

Meanwhile looking outside, I could see the trees suddenly burst out to life. Green leaves were visible for the 1st time in five months since last autumn. Rosy white cherry blossoms started blooming in some trees in the streets creating a wonderful atmosphere for a Mani Ratnam song shoot. And mainly, I could see the sun shining bright for a period longer than my mood swings and actually felt the heat. 

Yes. It is the season of Spring. Unlike Chennai, where the 4 seasons are- summer, burning summer, mild summer and hot summer, here there is a distinct change of seasons. Only after coming here, the geography lessons about various seasons made sense 😛

Spring is officially the season of Tulips here in the Netherlands. These bright red, lemon yellow, etc. colored tulip fields present a beautiful picture all over the country when viewed from flights. Also few movies had picturised this once a year phenomenon which is very special. Spring is also the time I get to wear single layered clothing while going out after almost half a year 😉 The sheer joy of ditching the 2kg bulky woollen jackets for atleast next few months is unparalleled. Also, due to daylight savings time, the days are longer. Following the spring equinox, when the Earth’s horizon is perfectly aligned with the Sun, the days begin lasting longer and the nights get shorter. That means you have more time in the day to get things done.

If you are out in the streets, this is the time where you could see quite a lot of people exchanging smiles and having a jolly mood. It may sound a little creepy, but I generally observe people to be more beautiful and smart looking during this season compared to any other. Also, the traditional holiday festivities like the Easter break follows which is the start of vacation period. Favourite holiday destinations, especially near the beaches become hotspots for tourists. I will tell about my European holiday stories for the future blogs 😛

Anyways, any season change is an opportunity for us to change as well, and I wish more goodness is to happen over this period to everyone!

Magizhchi.