Friday 11 November 2011

The overflowing bucket list !

Successive posts in a very short span of time - looks like I have a lot of time to spare. This time I'm back again with another post, with a never ending list of things I'd want to do before I die. So here goes my bucket list, scribbled in no particular order, except the first one ;)

  • Marry. Obviously a girl, who is more beautiful on the inside than on the outside.
  • Become a successful designer.
  • Build and establish my own online empire.
  • Write my own autobiography (idhu too much, it won't hurt when I turn 60)
  • Become a successful entrepreneur by establishing a chain of coffee-shops and restaurants in collaboration with my cousins Ganesh and Vandhana.
  • Buy back my Grandfather's old house, which I'm told that it was sold due to a financial crunch in the seventies.
  •  Look around in my neighborhood and bring at least 10 businesses online, that currently work and depend on their offline income/strategies.
  • Educate at least 10 underprivileged Indians about computers, internet and stuff.
  • Provide job opportunities to unfortunate friends and relatives who aren't financially sound.
  • Go abroad for a holiday, probably for honeymoon ! 
  • Convince my mom to get herself a Facebook account !
  • Act as a responsible social citizen and play my part in making India a better place to live.
  • Write my own fiction novel(s).
  • Open up a small playschool, for which my wife-to-be would make the cutest school principal.
  • Revive the tradition of the joint family system and bring all my relatives together to live at one place.
  • Visit Delhi and meet all my childhood friends.
  • Visit all the schools that I've studied in and go to each of the classrooms in the respective schools and sit on the benches where I usually used to sit.
  • Help at least 10 differently abled come up in life.
  • Own a Royal Enfield and ride it all the way from Chennai to my University. 

It isn't easy to do all of this, but I'm pretty sure I can get most of this done. Furthermore, I'm already on my way to some of them (definitely not for the first one). Like, I have already developed/designed some web portals which have contributed towards my portfolio. As a responsible citizen, I make sure that I don't litter at public places and adhere to traffic rules, which I am really serious about. I turn off the ignition while waiting at traffic signals and at times, make a friendly gesture to anyone standing beside to turn off theirs too. 

Last, but not the least, add one more to the list, which sees quite impossible: 
  • Find Jaisy K. (If you don't get who this person is, you probably need to read one of my previous posts)!
Will update this list very frequently, given the uber-crazy nature of my mind. And yes, I'll be back to trouble you to read it again once I update.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

The hiatus between happiness and success

In the past, there's always been some event that has kindled the spirit in me to write my next blog post. As it turns out to be, there is one behind this one  too. The topic in question here is something that I've long debated in my mind - Happiness vs Success. Before diving into it, let me tell you what made me write this post - it was an incident that happened yesterday while I was travelling in a bus.

After spending some overjoyed moments at hostel as I had got the output verified in my Computer Networks lab examination, I set out for home for the 'study' holidays, a week's vacation that the University generously gives all the students to have fun before exam (I'd call it for koothu adichifying). I boarded the bus to Trichy from my college with Anurag Mathur, a friend of mine. Aboard and almost immediately, I heard a bunch of people were singing something in chorus. I could barely understand the lyrics of what they were singing, but I could definitely figure out that it was a Telugu song, a folk song to be precise. As I made my way through the crowd in the bus, struggling with my backpack and the stroller bag in my hand, I handed out the money to Mathur and made a gesture to get the tickets for both of us as I was extremely curious to see those people who were singing. Mathur got a place to sit, while I stood for almost the whole journey. They were a bunch of daily wage earners who were speaking Telugu, probably migrated to Thanjavur to earn a livelihood. They had occupied three continuous rows in the bus, around six of them, mostly women. There were three kids, a boy and two girls respectively, and all seemed to be around 7-10 years of age. The kids played the songs on a mobile phone and switched between songs, and all of them, including the adults were singing along. Some time later along the hour and a half journey, they switched over to Tamil film songs and the kids were still singing, while their parents had no clue about those songs. I took keen interest in noticing a girl among the kids who was translating each and every line of the lyrics of the song into Telugu and explained to her mother, who probably did not understand Tamil. I realized that the laborers might have come down to Tamil Nadu and maybe the kids were born here, that made the kids understand and speak Tamil fluently. Almost everyone in the bus was watching them sing, and all those laborers, along with their kids, neither felt embarrassed  no cared to notice that everyone was looking at them. Rather, they just gave vent to their feelings from their heart.

Just another scene while travelling in a bus, you might think. To me, this incident made an everlasting impact in my mind. It makes me think, if rich and successful people who possess luxurious cars and lavishly furnished houses, living abroad are actually happier than these daily wage earners. Parents put their kids in coaching classes right from their 6th grade so that their kids can make their way into IITs and get a good job and get settled in their life. When their kids are grow up and actually get 'settled' in their lives, and when they've lost all their childhood and youth in preparing for competitive exams and scoring high grades, do these 'kids' look back at all those days and repent for it ? What do such people feel when they witness an incident like I did ? Does it hit them that they live their life only once and such a life is meant to be happier than just being successful ? If so, how does one define success and happiness ? I mean, is being successful in life happier or is being happy in life more successful ? Or, is there any optimal solution to balance them ? Money cannot buy happiness, but in today's world, there is no happiness without money. So how does one have to evaluate his/her choices ? I can spawn thousands of questions like this, which haunt me when I try to sleep in the night, and I don't think it's a good idea to bother you with them. You will have a hard time pondering over these.

"Those kids are irritating", Mathur said, as he turned back to see me.
"No, they aren't", I replied while I was still looking at them in amazement.
"Why do you say so ?", Mathur demanded. He was curious to know why I hadn't agreed with him.
"Buddy, because they are happier than we are" I replied.

As we reached Trichy, Anurag, I and all the other passengers got down. We parted with those laborers, and blended with the crowd, to never see them again.