Lead you

Apple Computers' CEO Steve Jobs once said in a college graduation ceremony and I quote "Don't let your inner voice get lost by the opinions of others.....Follow your heart". It's sometimes saddening as so many times, we let our own voice get lost amidst the loud notions of others. Yes, I agree, some time, our heart or our reasoning may fail to find a legitimate and right path and then it is perfectly alright to take help and opinions from those whom we trust. But in other times, when we are perfectly sure what we want and how we want it, when we know what my heart is telling us to do and we strongly believe this is the right thing to do, we should just do it. Do not let others control the way you lead your life. When I say others here, it also includes our surroundings, our background, and our status.
Life is not a perfectly defined process that you can just pick-up a fixed notion or mindset like 'Follow your heart' and lead it with it. But won't it be a nice experiment to give your heart a chance to take control? Anyways, we do experiments everyday. May be this experiment will give you a complete new outlook, new beauty to life, or may be this will make your life more complex, more miserable !!! Nevertheless, let us sit down and ask our hearts what is that we really need, long for. If we get the answer without really framing one, nice..let's follow it. If we don't, let's let the life go on and ask the same question again the next day. I am sure one day you will get the answer.

Note: BTW, I haven't got the answer yet, I am looking for it.

The love of the game and one legend

During the ongoing India-Australia series, one placard at the SCG read "Commit all your crimes when Sachin is batting. They will go unnoticed because even the Lord is watching." Arguably, the greatest passion in India must be Cricket. An old saying, which has almost become a cliche in India, goes "Cricket is religion, Sachin is god". Cricket is the talk of the street, it is the center of gossip for Indian youth. The whole country turns into a bunch of cricket experts during any cricket series featuring the home team. News channels can create hour-long programmes even on the hair-cut of cricketers. The fans swing between two extremes; one day - if you are national cricketer and you failed miserably in a series - your effigies could be burnt, your house could be stoned; on the very next sunny day - if you score some runs or take some wickets; all forgotten, all excused - well, you could be the national hero too. Cricket is not just a sport in India, much beyond that. One may argue Cricket is a media-created hype that has grasped the youth, one may argue cricket has made other sports insipid in the country. But if you are cricket lover, and it's a cricket season - who cares - it's excitement time, it's time for celebration in win, it's time for desperation in loss. Cricket runs in the blood of India today.
And one man; no ordinary man, one great, one legend, one true human - who has made Cricket so popular, so exciting for every Indian is Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. The name itself is enough to get incitement running through your spine. Oh !! what a player, and most importantly what a human being !! Untiring contribution to Indian national team - stylish, elegant, fearless yet humble, soft-spoken, dignified. He has been nightmare for every bowler in every cricket playing nation, yet every cricketer - doesn't matter where he hails from - has a respect for this little fella. People get tied to their seats to see this genius architect building yet another splendid cricket innings. He competes with himself, he tries to excel himself. We leap everytime he sent a dancing ball out of the fence, we weep everytime he has to walk back to the pavilion. He controls the emotions of billions watching him. Yes dear, Lord must be watching him play ... and criminals too !!!

Colorful India

When I started this blog almost a year ago, I thought of making it a technical one with some high-funda copy-paste stuff. But after one year and only one post (!!), I decided "nah!!"; forget it. I deleted my sole stupid technical post and decided to better use this to scribble something on an exceedingly boring office day like this one where I am wondering about which page to browse and how to kill my time.
Getting painstakingly bored enough, I decided to have a chit-o-chat with somebody. Being a festival day today in India, most of my office buddies are on vacation and the place is unnaturally calm and empty today. I walked over to one of my Bengali* colleagues in next aisle and started a discussion. If it's festival, naturally the topic would be culture, celebration and tradition. And if you are an Indian, you can spend a whole day discussing about all the colorful festivals and all those amazing cultural traits seen across India. Isn't it amazing how people possessing completely different cultural values, traditions, attire and speaking completely different language can co-exist as a single nation? Everytime, I think of of it, I get spellbound, amazed and animated. The festival we are celebrating today (generally known as Sankranti) is celebrated almost across the whole country, but with completely different manners and rituals. And every Indian community has a unique name for the same festival too !!! If I can continue writing, in one of my future posts, I would definitely like to write how this is celebrated in our state or community. Controversy apart, but I would never in support of saying that my country is great and his is not OR my culture is superior than theirs. May be these are all excuses of not improving what we have today or not adopting an obviously better trend from others. But every culture has something unique, something lively, something astounding in it. And if you have a number of such different cultures and billions of people belonging to those cultures living in one single country, imagine the "joie de vivre" of India. Imagine "colors of India" !!!

*Note: Bengali is one of the many languages spoken in India.