The sun shines on everyone

Every day we wake up, is a little milestone we achieve. With the first touch of the rays of the sun, the story of our lives move on, we move on.

When we look around us, a few happy faces smiling back , some grumpy faces and a sad face, we know it is the small world we live in. As human beings the emotions are limited but the depths of each are endless and that is the true nature of our existence; the depths we reach in every breath we take.

But, if that was all , life would be just the count of the breaths we take till we are no more breathing. I know, its much more than that.We all know its much more than that. It is also about those around you.

Each of us are affected by the people around you and conversely all around us are influenced by us. It is like this huge motorway where each one of us knowingly or unknowingly come into each others paths or share the paths in our journey. Some might be pleasant and some are not.

Let me ask you a question, when we are driving on a motorway, more often than not we make it to our destination, don't we? We have an occasional skirmish, or unpleasant incident but we make it. And if we do have that one unpleasant incident, our journey is remembered for that one unpleasant incident or the smiles we have when we reach our destination?

Its the same way with life, we remember that one person that made us sad, that one person who mattered but didn't live up; but shouldn't we be glad that one person was there?

Shouldn't it remind us that , that one person is exactly the reason why we are humans, why we take breaths of varying depths? Isn't that one person the reason for the smiles on some faces? on your face?

I am not saying anything new, just saying that there is good in this world and only good. There is no bad, just like oxygen, we thrive on good and the non-existence of good makes us feel 'bad'. But that's not true, all it takes is a little 'good' to bring everything back to normal and it isn't difficult.

I have been blessed with a little good at all times and that has been largely due to all the blessed people around me who knowingly or unknowingly have given that little good to me, never letting the good vanish from my life.And that is what I( you, all of us) are about.

So, do not worry, do not frown, the sun shines on everyone

Chain mail et al

I get all kind of emails, some talking about the atrocities of some unknown government in an unknown land, a girl saying that we are compatible (how shaadi.com...how?) and should meet up, other ladies simply flaunting the assets they paid for and well some are downright...ummm stupid? And no! The stupid kinds are not my phone/ credit card / yada yada yada bills ( they are important..well maybe)

The stupid kinds, OK I will find a new word for it before the end of this post, are those which say that be careful before you read. Curiosity kills the cat and I open the email. It contains a picture. And then I regret opening the email. It has the power to change my world for good or worse.

The picture is of some god, saint or god knows what. It is supposed to get me good luck, if I share it with say 10 people. But hey, if you want more luck you can share it with 20 people, 30 people if you want even more luck and guess if I share it with a 10000000 I will be Bill Gates! The world is a good place again.

And I know a lot of us get these emails and we know there is a catch. If you do not send it then the whatever in the picture gets angry (oh you don’t want these things angry do you?) The wheels turn anti clockwise and you end up getting bad luck (cue...Goosebumps!). Some of the emails even give examples of people who pissed them off, trust me; some of the victims get so unlucky that they aren't even unlucky anymore.

So here we stand at a crossroad wondering which road we want to take and then I see a light bulb slowly flickering to life. What if, I start one of these? With a picture of my ahem ahem...and send it around? You never know who might end up getting lucky you know (I hope it’s me!)

But then wouldn't forwarding the email I get just do? Why take all the efforts? That’s it then! let’s just forward these emails and hope you get luckier, richer than the richest and hope these emails don’t reach the already rich and they get richer than what we end up at.

Have a nice weekend guys and gals!

PS: Yes I couldn't find a word for the stupid emails, any suggestions

A new country- Thoughts at midnight

In the modern times, its not very rare for us to be moving around countries. It is a luxury which was um imaginable a decade or so earlier in our part of the world. Well I have enjoyed the benefit of our time. I have moved to Singapura.

A lovely country with discipline deeply engraved in the ethos of every person here, is a welcome change to the largely chaotic and charming country of mine, India. The weather is predictably unpredictable out here, with rains visiting this island city at its whims and fancies. But what all of us would appreciate about this country is that, the country hasn't been taken aback by all the issues it has. The country has simply accepted what it can't change and moved on to do what it can do best. It is not a surprise that the country is doing so well with its residents going places.

Again, I am not sure how many people will be reading this, and if you have read this, you would accept that this isn't a planned post. I just happen to wake up and wanting to write something desperately, let the thoughts flow.

I hope I get to meet some of the bloggers here. Do drop me a word if any one of you guys are here

Cheers!

A child's mind

My posts have taken a long time coming, I promised myself this New Year I would do more regularly what I like doing and that is to write. I still am 24 days late but I guess never late than never.

So what sparked this post? A beautiful advert by Microsoft!

Microsoft really needs a new ad agency because some of their recent adverts plain and simply suck, but this one they have got it right. 

Watch the video below:

 Now assuming that you guys have watched the video, let me ramble along.

So what did we learn? Windows 8 is good/easy?

I don't know and honestly don't care much ( Sorry Steve Ballmer, I know you have paid millions to the ad agency who created this agency, the same ad agency you should have fired long time back!).

What I really liked about this advert is that knowingly or unknowingly they have brought forward the real picture of how people look at new technology. To think of it, the kid wouldn't have seen much of the previous OS's of Windows (for the Techno Geeks - Linux and others), his mind was fresh and ready to learn.

Compare that to how a lot of your friends would have said about Windows 8, 

"It takes time to understand"

"I have no idea how to figure out Windows 8"

There are obviously a few techno dead people around who just cannot grasp a technology and that's fine, but the others saying this is the point I want to make.

Over a period of time, we have filled our minds with preconceived notions and ideas. Our minds have been industrialized to react to situations we are more likely to encounter. What this has done to us is, left us unwilling to accept different. I am not blaming anyone for anything because this is something which is common to most of us, had this not been the case technology would have taken us to unimaginable heights. Let me give a few examples, the touch phones/ Smartphone’s/tablets have all been around even before the iPhone era. Microsoft launched a tablet way back in 2002!

The thing is that today most technology companies have accepted that Mankind in general is slow to react to change and they cannot simply bombard new technologies all together on us, instead, we are given a glimpse into the future which is nothing but getting us used to the idea of doing something differently.

See the innovative technologies we see today is not very different from the imagination of a child’s mind. I remember when I was a kid (I guess this is part of getting older, isn't it?) I saw this magic slate on which we would write and it wouldn't appear unless we lifted its small lid. I never owned it but it was the first thing I would look at when we went shopping. The kids today would simply pull out their touch screen smart phones and say what the magic in that? This is one of the reasons I am hooked on to these smart phones. It is like a dream which I saw when I was younger, to use something like this. This is my Cinderella moment!

I guess the picture I am trying to draw is that we all dream of achieving our childhood dreams and imaginations. But we sometimes don’t appreciate the path en-route. Open up your minds like a kid, believe that every path will lead you to a magical world we always dream of, and you never know. Maybe there is another guy working as hard as ever out there to achieve what he thinks are his dreams but at the same time so many other dreams too! All he needs is your acceptance and a fresher perspective, we can give him that.

Three worlds- – my entry to the GetPublished contest

The Idea:

The story is an amalgamation of three stories.The central character/ narrator is the first one to board a train, wanting to get done with the journey. Through his eyes he sees the other two stories, one of which is about a group of blind students travelling and the other of a couple sitting right across him in the train. As the narrator observes the love brewing between two students from the blind school, he compares his own troubled love life which is suffering from insecurity. At the same time he also observes the love or the lack of it, between the couple sitting across him. The story grows as the journey comes close to its end. The narrator throu


This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal andHarperCollins India.