2013: The year that was

While most of us could be busy thinking about New Year resolutions, I would rather look back at the year that was. 

Listing out the opinions and quotes by friends, acquaintances, colleagues & people that I found profound, interesting, nice or worth a thought... These are strictly from people I have had conversations with, not from social media sites, books, or internet. Oh yes, I have a sharp memory & I will always remember you by your words. 

Sometimes, happiness is just a phone call away.

Discipline of the mind is first step towards tranquility and peace.

Sometimes when you let people do whatever they want to, they give in. The more you try to reason, guide or mold, the more rebellious they feel.

Relationships are supposed to be genuinely nice and free of power play. But people may not operate that way.

Being straight forward makes it easier for everyone, but people will take their time & be diplomatic.

I don't care about one's past, but I surely want to know how much fun that person can be.

Trust the process and it's people. Keep calm.

Equality is a myth in real life. We only derive notional happiness aspiring for it.

People are sometimes kinder than what they portray. The boundaries they build are to test the waters.

The only way to make a bad situation worse is to get angry. It's a useless emotion & doesn't help solve anything.

Silence is understood as acceptance of others' views and that you have nothing to counter it.

Don't take shit from anyone. Ever.

Keep your email messages uncluttered, clean & neat. Avoid fluff.

To be the best, consistently compare yourself with the best.

Always keep your options open, else you will stagnate and time will move on.

It's not about what the role is, it is what you make out of that role. There are innumerable possibilities.

How can any person who is serious about career be partying every weekend? There must be some worthwhile venture apart from the job to keep one's mind sharp. Otherwise time is spent on endless consumption and enjoyment these days. Stop consuming & start creating.

Don't be the 99 percent. Strive to be in the 1 percent. Crossroads be damned.

Have a spectacular new year!

Books & people

Seeing someone reading a book you love is seeing a book recommending a person.

Source: Tumblr

Thoughts for the week

Life isn't about knee jerk reactions or immediate results. No time to stand and stare would have been appropriately penned today as no time to pause and think. With so many distractions, it's easy to forget to pause and take stock. We all need to have the right balance between action and reflection. Self reflection always offers a chance to learn from our experiences. There is strength in acknowledging the past and especially in acknowledging the things learned from the past. There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere as we are all apt at expecting a lot. Quite often life is unfair and if one scheme doesn't work it's human nature to calculate again. You have to fight through the bad days to earn the best days of your life. Courage is not always about the roaring, sometimes it's modest perseverance that strives to try again next day. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition. And a cheerful disposition in every circumstance, especially during the grueling ones, lets one walk away with grace. 

Don't give up the search for happiness because you are afraid of getting hurt. Today is the tomorrow you were worrying about yesterday. The future depends on what you do today. The most common regrets are not about what you did, they are about what you didn't do when you had the chance. Take the chance to make a choice to change. As long as people can change, the world can change.

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan post from brainpickings

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Cold

Intense cold makes you aware of your limitations

Time

Time takes away a lot more than one can imagine.

Control

Have mastered the art of not letting storm of one world affect the calmness of the other world.
5th Nov 2013

Holi

Holi reminds me more of those who dislike it & shun the festival, than of those who love the riot of colours. Though the holy fire is lit on previous night for triumph of good over evil, the colour ritual brings out more evil than good the next morning. Those who love it would surely disagree. Personally, I prefer to stay clean, relax, eat Holi delicacies like puranpoli, aam-ras, read a book & admire nature from my window.

Coloured powder need not be smeared on faces to relish a colourful sight. Enjoy the spring colours in nature - bright green leaves of most of the trees' names that I do not know, the pinkish green shades of Peepal tree's tiny new leaves, Lincoln green, dark green - name the shade from your crayon box & you see it the summer Sun in India. Sparrows are rarely to be seen, but there are still the colourful birds chirping around - the bulbul, the parrots, the yellow bird & the little brown bird. Afternoons are usually dominated by the cuckoos, pigeons and the distant woodpecker working away. Evening has its own delight - array of orange or pink & purple strewn across the skies and tree tops glisten merrily like tiny crowns in the sunset glow. 

Sit back, sip a cool drink & watch nature's Holi as often as you can. :-)

#TSBC

The Sunday Book Club has captured my attention since the last few months. For all those who think Facebook/Twitter is a waste of time, here's #TSBC for you every Sunday at 3pm IST on Twitter

You don't have to be among any elite or finest book readers or have quizzing skills, you can simply join the chat on Twitter. Wide variety of topics makes one want to simply participate even if one hasn't read a lot about that particular genre - book collections, comics, crime fiction, travel books, Sherlock Holmes, Indian writing, mythological fiction, self-help, politics & books. The pitter patter of perspectives tweeted in just 140 characters in an hour is one of the most thoughtful weekly interactions that one can witness on Twitter. Warm, friendly founders & participants make you wait eagerly for Sunday afternoon chat on books!

A riot of books, a playroom of topics, TSBC - a book lover's must try fun!