Discussing ghosts and restrooms at 3 am :)

Disclaimer: This post is not going to raise your intellectual awareness or give you any new insights into life. Read it if you have really nothing better to do and if you think ghosts in your workplace restrooms is an interesting topic to discuss in the middle of the night.
Yesterday night was strange. I just finished a long discussion about my company and future competition in market etc etc in general with C until late in the night. (Well this is what happens when you live with someone who works at the same company you do :), you never really come home!)
So well I could have carried on my musings about that the whole night, but deciding not to try C any more, decided to wish him night and retire to my room. But well was not feeling sleepy so was just randomly surfing. And all of a sudden an office colleague Kaci logs onto messenger. Now I have known Kaci to be someone who is in office well before 9 and that too after nearly a 40 min commute. So I was visibly surprised to see her online at like nearly 2 am!
So I ping her questioning her motives to be online at such an unearthly hour and all that. It turns out that the culprit was the seemingly high amount of caffeine she had pumped in herself during the day. (For some reason, no amount of caffeine ever seems to affect my sleep, I wonder why?)
Anyways so there she was complaining about how she should have decaf next time onwards and the like. At some point she threatened me with retaliation for a practical joke I suggested I could happily play on her and to protect myself I said I would take refuge in a place she would never catch me in. So ya, you guessed it right the conversation moved to restrooms in office, and how unfair it would be of me to hide in such a place from her. It so happened that recently she was by herself in the restroom. And then when she confessed that she had heard someone singing in their, I tried hard to convince her that it was our company's homegrown version of Moaning Myrtle. For some reason she really liked the idea, so I went on and advised her to be careful of open pipes out there, who knows what might be in there. Anyways for a long time, the convo seemed to be really fun and entertaining for one at 3 am at night. (Talk about the time affecting your moods!) I wonder how it would feel though to really have a Moaning Myrtle in the restroom, and have some real magic in the world :)

Friendship and Love

Lets look at a particular synergy between these two relationships, the fuzzy area where they overlap. Something in the screenplay of the recent movie Kabhi Alvida... seeded this thought in my mind. There is this one scene, just before Rani's marriage to Abhishek where she and Shahrukh are sitting on a bench (please ignore the fact that its her marriage and all her family doesn't care leaving her alone :)) talk about love and friendship. In a nutshell the question was do you need love in a relationship or is friendship enough? Is friendship a form of love as well? For Rani, the reason for not loving Abhishek was the fact that the relationship was so full of friendship that there was no place for any love at all. Obviously this was just a crutch to support her handicapped view of her self-imposed marriage.
But this brings the more important question into light - can friendship make up for the lack of love? Can you be best friends with someone and not love them? And still be ready to spend your life with them? Or is friendship transitioning to love, a more natural path? And if that is the natural path, does love replace the camarderie that friendship had brought in?
A lot of questions, I do not claim to have answers in black and white to all or even some of them, in fact I know for sure that even my answers will be different at different times, in different moods, in different situations. Even the order in which you talk about these two things can imply a lot; when I started writing I had the title as Love and Friendship but then changed it to the current one, and if you ponder awhile you will notice how big a difference even that makes!

Truth and courage

Watched the old Rajesh Khanna movie - Bawarchi. One line to take away from it - "It is simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple." Pithy words.
Was in a pensive mood for the last one hour after that. And as the thoughts of those one hour crystallized, two things stood out looking at simplicity in life. One - it is very important to be truthful. I feel just having the truth out at every point in life will be the single most important thing to have a simple life. No lies, no cover ups, no hesitation, no complications at all.
Wouldn't it be so wonderful if you could take everyone's words at face value, without having to worry about how much is true? Thinking over the past few days turn of events I can very well vouch for the simplicity that would have come in my life :)
Second is the courage to be truthful. This goes hand in hand with being true. You cannot be truthful if one does not have the courage to say the truth. Not saying anything is not being truthful. It is a very admirable quality to be able to say the truth, what one has deep down in his/her heart without any reservations. In fact so many times, we do not even realize that deep down we are thinking something completely different, we stop identifying the existence of a truth deep down. So conditioned are we to say the 'right' thing, even though it may not be true.
You have been famished and on your way from work have to go an drop something at a relative's place, someone asks you - "Would you like to eat something?" and reflexively the answer is "No I am full thanks!". You may be cursing yourself later on about having said yes then! but thats how it happens always doesn't it?
The courage to be truthful, first to yourself and then to the world, attain that and life will be simple :)

What single minded effort can achieve

It is so funny that some things can happen. Things which you would not have thought possible. Last weekend I was at the Milpitas temple for a couple of hours helping out with preparations for a function the next day. Starting with an empty auditorium at 9.30 pm everyone had managed to put up an impressive display within 3 hours.
In one of those being-by-my-self-in-the-crowd moments I realized how amazing a job everyone inspite of being amateurs had done. In a matter of just one night, we had assembled all the 9 points ("toonks") of the fagun shud 13 jatra. And that involved actually building a mini-mountain for each of them and a lot of beautiful decoration. I was truly awed then. Single minded pursuit of a goal can literally move mountains.

Ma! look no hands!

Well the title doesn't say it all. In fact it does not say anything at all. It was just a means to get the attention of my mom. Well why? Well coz she happened to know about one of my past posts about perfection. And well she did not think it was perfect.
So this is for you mom, do not worry about me, that post had nothing to do about me, it was just one of my many ramblings that I have started trying my hands at, no doubts the post was inspired by some incidents but well they have nothing to do with me and have not affected me in any way except making me wiser. Believe me! And I promise not to be a bad boy and always keep my hands on the cycle handle :))

What can I give you thee?

Today morning I woke up with memories of an amazing dream. Well, since I let a few minutes pass after I woke up, I am not very clear about some parts. But nevertheless here it is, some thoughts collected from those wisps of groggy morning thinking -
It was my parents birthday and there was this birthday card for them that my brother or sister had selected. The card had a part that read like this(from parent to the child) -

"What can I give you thee?
When I die, where will you bury me?
Take me the field and bury me where the farmer ploughs.
so that I can continue to nourish you oh my child."

The thought was so strong that I woke up with a start and immediately called home. I do not remember having read this beautiful thought anywhere before, so how did it come to me in my dream? But it really touched me and made me think about a parents perspective.

Life is not perfect

A couple of days back I had this realization. And it was a surprising revelation, things which you have taken to be perfect - suddenly their perfection is shattered before you. You see the faults so clearly, and it lets you down.
Can there be anything, anyperson that is perfect? In any sense of the word? I would have agreed until a few days ago, not now.
Let me just consider people right now. Have you ever looked up to someone as really perfect? And then come to realize that it was just an illusion of perfection? It left me stranded and confused. And now that I think of it, I have had two occurances of this happening in the last few years. How do you react to such a situation? Do you become cynical and stop thinking of people as role models or people you look up to? Or do you live with the fact and be wiser the next time?
I guess whichever option you decide to go for, there is going to be hurt that you will have to withstand.

Rang De Basanti

Saw Rang de Basanti last friday. Amazing movie, completely worth the effort I put into getting to see it on the first day itself. Some people really have a creative genius in them. The makers of Rang de Basanti all belong up there. People who get in me the strong urge to do something creative, constructive, satisfying, worthwhile.
This was one heck of a movie, a movie which gave me so much to laugh at ponder over, feel about, identify with. Very raely does a movie touch the innermost cords of your heart. This was one. A world of happiness. A world of colors. A world where everyone plays without pretense, cries without fear. DJ, Karan, Aslam and Sukhi lived in such a world. People you would want to be with, be friends with.
It is said that circumstances bring out the best in a person. And so I believe strongly. It could have been just another movie where a friend dies unfairly and his dear ones try to get justice. But then there is something different about Rang de that takes it in a different plane. Is it because you really start liking the character and thinking of them as real people? Or is it the lilting music? I saw an interview of Rakeysh Mehra where he praises the film's music saying that even without any dialogues, the films music simply applied to the scenes would convey the message of the true. Very true. For me both the music and the lovable characters did the trick. When they were dancing in joy, I felt ecstatic, when I saw them hurt, I felt something melt deep inside me. The song Khoon chala and the accompanying scenes, really can make you cry out.
I am not an emotional kind of a guy when it comes to movies. Hence this wasn't a normal reaction. Nevertheless there was something real in there for me which was time and again making me forget that I was watching a movie.
So different were the two halves of the movie. The first half so happy, so carefree, so colorful. The 3nd one, so emotional, so serious that it really forces your mind to cease all activity and be with them in their battle. Yet surprisingly it all seemed to progress all so naturally, blended so well. There I was - a bystander watching DJ down his beers while perched up there precariously, the daredevil bike racing, bantering away to glory in college and around that beautiful fort and then gradually as they warm up to Sue's mission.
What the four of them go through after that was both heart wrenching and joyful at the same time. Heart-wrenching to see the cynical injustice of life and joyful in the face of their full-hearted and cheerful response to the same.
Four ordinary men, in and extra-ordinary situation rise to right the wrongs. Haven't we seen this innumerable times? Even their approach may be considered questionable by some of us, but their conscience was clear, they did what they had to. Their point proven, they are at peace.

A lot of movies

This was a movies week. Saw four movies this week! They included Apaharan, Hanuman, Ek Ajnabee and Zinda. The common thread among all of them was that all of them were different from the typical run of the mill movies, each having a unique story to talk about. Infact none of them had the routine song-n-dance sequences or even a love story for that matter. A refreshing change indeed for movies nowadays.
Did not get a chance to catch up on reading though, plan to do it this upcoming week. Have started Richard Bach's One now. Kind of sequel to bridge across forever. Lets see how it is, but i have a feeling that i will like the bridge more than the one.

Some more reading

Am feeling happy that I am able to spend more time now reading, now that life is not so busy. No India trip to prepare for! What did I read last week? Hmm I read Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery. That was a very interesting book. It said that it is based on fact. Well after reading the book I was really curious about whether such a robbery took place. Searching led me to this website. So it turns out that it was true after all, though many aspects of the robbery have been changed and made much more fantastic. But all in all I would say a surprisingly smart robbery for the time.
Another book that I read was Agatha Christies Appointment with Death. A typical Christie mystery where the suspicions fall on every possible person, with conflicting clues. Though this one was a little bit predictable towards the end, an interesting read overall.
This weekend I spent in San Diego, nice city. This was my 3rd visit and I liked it more every time I went there. Will be uploading pictures soon. The best part is that the ocean is so easily accessible, and there are some really good beaches.

What are the odds?

Yesterday I had dinner at a friends place - Vivek. Now consider this. Out of 5 of us having dinner, what do you think are the odds that one of them shares the same first name, middle name and last name as me? Yes thats true there exists another Neerav Bipinchandra Mehta in this world, same age as me! Thankfully we spell our first names differently. And this isn't all, there was also another person who has the same day, month and year of birth as me! That is Vivek also born on July 12, 1981! As if this wasn't enough to freak anyone out, there was another guy Luv who had the exact same shoes as me! And people talk of coincidences! Can anyone beat this?