Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man's world…

I was confused to hear a moving speech by a friend recently the subject of which was “I want to make money, loads of money. People are doing nothing and making money.”

And it confused me because I started to think why does this person want to make money?

Now don’t give me the ‘is she mad’ look. Of course everybody wants to make money isn’t that obvious? And I know the argument that money buys comforts and to be happy in a country like India you need comforts around you all the time. Do we hear Mukesh Ambani complain of the traffic or Mr. Mittal crib over the power cuts?

But what I was wondering was if this friend wants more money just because everybody else wants it or is there a clear plan as to when, what and how. I think he was doing what most of us do, which is, we have a tendency to follow the brood, without reason and devoid of logic. We think it's the brood and masses are not wrong, so simple isn't it, just follow it. So now I request you to give a minute and honestly think of all the situations that made you happy in the last 10 days.

Your time starts now…

Think, think, think…think hard. Yes, made you happy in the last 10 days.

Good. How many were situations where money made you happy?

As for me, I have definitely been happy on my birthday last week but my happiness didn’t have anything to do with (you guessed it right) anything material. I had many friends and family wishing me and I was truly overwhelmed. I had my facebook page flooded with wishes and all of it had nothing to do with money. I was so happy to interact with some really expressive children who, unfortunately, cannot communicate due to a physical limitation but they communicated with me beautifully. And guess what, no money for that as well. I went for TEDx and heard some really good speakers and that made me a happy person. At work, one of our campaigns got a really good response and I was happy for that (and yes I get my salary but even if the campaign would have been a failure, I’d still be paid).

So perhaps you could argue that buying something really expensive had made you happy, the feeling to be able to afford. Of course it does. But my problem with that and especially in these times is that things are changing so constantly. Just as we are reveling in the pleasure of our new possession there’s already a new edition to make us feel bad. There is no end there…

And my second question is “how much money do you want to make?” and if you are able to give me a number, excellent.  But once you get that number, assure me you won’t change it and ask for more. And also, you won’t ask for health, luck or protection. And you will tell me how did you get to that number and also your plan with that money and will you guarantee me that you will be happy forever after you make that money and not be chasing another brood?

As we grow, our mind gets cluttered. So perhaps it’s simple. I think we just need to unclutter, sit back and reconnect with some basic meanings of happy, health, want, need, desires and money (as individuals and not as a brood) and rethink about what we really want and in what proportions.

A place called home...

Words confuse me.

No, seriously.

Now take for example the word home. The dictionary throws meanings like shelter or, interestingly enough, the place in which one's domestic affections are centered or as they famously say, home is where the heart is. Even a tree can provide shelter but that's not home. And the plush room of an ultra-luxurious 5 star hotel will definitely be a place where my affection will be centered, domestic or undomestic I don't care, but that's not home either.

So in my quest to understand the meaning of home, I asked myself: At the end of a tiring day, where is it that I look forward to reach?

Obviously, the answer is home but why?

Do I have a spa waiting at home or a red velvety carpet that will lead to a king sized squashy bed and soft pillows that will devour me along with my fatigue? I wish there was but none of that is the reason I want to reach home.

So first of all, when I head back home, I look forward to see an affectionate and smiling face with whom I can discuss my tiny and honest details of the day. It’s the space where I can be with no formalities or rules. The place which is comfortable and soothing and not necessarily huge, plush or has the most expensive interiors which I can exhibit to my friends and foes. If that was the case, the best home would be the premium luxury deluxe hotel rooms. Remember after a long vacation, we still look forward to come home. It's a place where I find relief, the same kind of relief which I find after applying an ice pack on a burnt finger or after having received an unexpected bank interest when am almost broke.

I now understand that home is a place of peace, relief and comfort irrespective of the number of rooms or the exquisite and costly interiors. It's a place where we feel grounded and content. We create a home and cannot buy it. It is not a hotel and it needn't be a palace. If there is no peace, comfort or relief, even the most spacious and opulent homes will feel like a prison and we will just keep running away from it either for frequent and relaxing holidays or in search of better homes.   

The tragedy of an ignored king

So once lived this person called Content. Content was always told that he’s the king. Wherever he went, he was told that he is an important person and also a versatile person. Content dressed as words, video or audio and in any form was still the king. And Content appeared all over the place; newspapers, websites, television, documents and everywhere and helped strangers communicate without meeting or relay important messages and information over different mediums.  

But then people ignored him.

“What kind of a king am I?” thought Content, “always ignored and left alone. I’m always told that I am important but hardly feel important. People grapple for me when needed and then as easily forget about me when not needed. I am so powerful that I can change the fate of people, organizations and even countries. I get created in minutes and last beyond my creators and I travel as easily. I know no boundaries and take seconds to get from one medium to another. To be understood, I only need the help of a language but that too is my closest ally with the help of technology now.  I can affect the masses, change trends for the lasses (there, Content gets carried away) and ensure, over generations, history passes and still I am ignored.

People don’t know have the skill to create a wonderful me and still are creating me. They don’t realize that creating me is serious business. They create me without knowing the power I have so they copy me from here and there and put me together haphazardly. I can make such great impact if only people knew my value and handled me in a mature way. Managing me requires  logic, structure, understanding, articulation, creativity and thought. And most importantly, one has to build me for the intended audience and not for yourself. Create me intelligently and skillfully and then see what impact I have. I am all pervasive, so any field (no matter how critical) which fails to capture me skillfully, fails. I need skillful management and clarity. Treat me like a king and I can promise astounding results”     

Impatient, restless, aggressive or just expecting more?

It is quite amazing how impatient we now are. I am not here to discuss the hazards of technology on the human race but I can’t help but notice. And I notice this each day... 

I impatiently hit the ‘end key’ on my Blackberry the moment it starts to misbehave. Few seconds of its inactiveness is enough to get me impatient and restart it. And as soon as it restarts, I want it to be working perfectly or I could restart it again. I want calls to instantly connect. A few waiting tones are enough for me to assume that there has to be something wrong with the network or the telecom ministry.

Not that laptop is the favored one. The reason could be any hefty application but the laptop still bears the brunt as it is made to forcefully shut and come back to life as fast. And the rate at which the tapping of my fingers or feet tap increases is directly proportional to the time that the machine takes to restart. I want websites to open at the blink of an eye and if they don’t then I am quick enough to repair my internet connection or restart my router. I quickly disconnect and connect LAN cable and log calls with the IT team. And till the problem is resolved, I feel I shall miss something critical, work shall suffer, I will miss my deadline and my entire world will come shattering down.

I have lost the patience to see fancy flash websites. The F5 is the most exploited key as I ruthlessly vent my impatience out on it. I want google to throw intelligent results. I want banking transactions to happen with a click and wish that there weren’t as many passwords. I want quick music downloads and the favorites I have on my laptop should get transferred on my mobile as fast and what is on my mobile should effortlessly play in my car. I want to browse the net and check my mails while am on the move. And I want to click pictures and upload them right away (as if it were milk which could be stale the next day). I wish I could have an ipad for books, music and videos at my fingertips, anytime, anywhere.

I want all channels on my television. If I don’t have the 432^nd channel, then my digital TV operator is obviously crappy (even though that 432^nd channel is not expected to get more than 34 seconds of my divided attention).

Call it impatience or expecting more but what I am wondering is whether we control technology or is it the other way? 

Humans are Complicated

Humans are complicated, have always been.

So my name is Twitz and I am a splendid sparrow. I am free, free to breathe, free to fly wherever I want, whenever I want. I have my palatial palace nested on one of the sparse trees in an industrial locality of Gurgaon. The city is supposedly called millennium world class city but I fail to see why. All it has is tall towers, unmanageable cars and traffic, smoking generators, broken roads and frustrated people. Not that the humdrum of Delhi is any better. But in Delhi we share one tree between 5 bird families and here I have it all to myself.

And my nest overlooks one of the cabins of a swish office. The cabin, with all the modern day amenities, seems like the most comfortable place. If only it didn't seem so confining, perhaps I would have liked to stay in it. There's this middle aged man who's, on most of the days, quite well dressed already occupying the cabin. It must really be comfortable for he spends more time there than his nest. But I don't understand, if the cabin happens to be so homely then why is this man frowning all the time? Early morning, he walks in, with the most grievous expression and has it glued on his face all day. He screams at all the seemingly meek young people and is shouted at by some more grievous overpowering men and women. He screams on his telephones and even screams at the person serving him coffee. Why should he be so unhappy? What is so troubling in his life? Doesn't he have the power to change what makes him unhappy? I can't imagine waking up to so much bitterness each day and taking it back to my nest only to come back next day with it.

So on one of the fine evenings, it started to rain and with it nature exuded its fresh fragrances. I lay warm in my nest with my family drawing in the freshness, the innocence and sheer liveliness. And then I saw him but this time with a different expression. He was leaning by the window, and staring longingly at my nest. He was almost crying and had sadness in his eyes. Did he envy me? Was he wanting to feel the rain, freedom or just be happy? Why wouldn't he do something about it? Did he dislike the confines of his cabin or swish office? Did he not like the people around him? I wish I could ask and help him but I dare not. 

All I would say is that humans continue to remain truly complicated.        

Some manners....please!

I have nothing against Kavands. In fact I have nothing against any rituals/ rites/ beliefs, no matter how illogical they seem. Each one has a different belief system and each one also has the complete freedom to believe what they like. When people believe, no questions.

So for those who didn't see the devoted saffron dressed kavands, perhaps you were lucky to have evaded the traffic which was caused due to them. But then it is commendable that they travel bare footed to Haridwar to get holy waters and offer it in their local temples. That needs a lot of devotion.

But my question is very simple. Does religion give us the right to be rowdy, crude and insensitive? I have seen, not once or twice but every year, how the kavands gape at women and hoot. Some of them riding on bikes think it as their birth right to break traffic rules and the ones herded on lorries are driving anywhere and at any pace. The traffic police and people are very supportive of them so at every corner you find these generous camps serving food and water to the kavands (excellent but let's not even get to the mess that is left after the kavands are satiated and leave). And you can't miss these camps as they play loud music (the latest bollywood cheapies tranformed to bhajans). And some generous people get innovative, they line up at the corner of the road and wait for the arrival of Kavand lorry / bikes and as soon as they find one they start throwing food items while the kavand lorry slows down in the traffic (and thanks to these generous people only who cause the traffic in the first place). And so what if some food gets dropped on the road during their throw and catch game. And the kavands, after gorging on their catch, throw the waste where? Obviously on the roads. So an arduous religious journey gives them the right to treat the roads and highways as dustbins? Some even aim to throw it at a particularly big and swanky car and the entire kavand group gags on any such feat.

I respect you kavands and other beliefs but as far as I am concerned, no religion, no god or no ritual gives you the right to say or behave filthy or create filth. You can't be doing this in the name of religion.

Can we just learn some manners first and then get to the great religious assignments? 

Hi, have you met yourself?

We as a society and culture are still so alien to taking self-discovery breaks to do what we really want. I think we fear breaks. So what next is our deep concern the moment we hear someone is retiring. But how scary can a break be which gives you moments with yourself to discover your passions, your purpose and yourself. Our clan was and still is so insecure about everything (and here I am specifically referring to a self-discovery breaks and not a break to do nothing. I detest people who like to do nothing). We save, see our bank balance, crib, save and just get frustrated for not having been able to do our own thing. So the petrol prices will continue to rise and fall, the rupee will hopefully be not so volatile, the power tariffs will continue to eat large chunk of our pockets and economic crisis will come and go. But in all this and our struggle to cope up, where does self-discovery go? Can we just sit back and wear the NA tag and say it is for the westerners?   Shall we accept that nirvana for us is only by breaking the queue at the toll gate, hitting a rickshaw puller and getting guiltlessly away from it, having unnoticeably paid the vegetable vendor less than what we were to pay or having shopped stupendously at the Zara sale and announcing it on facebook?

I understand that we have to save for our old age and prepare for the not so certain future, I understand that we have to save for our children’s education and I also understand that we have to save for our and our parents’ ‘ever increasing’ medical expenses. Because none of the taxes we pay take care of any of this. I also understand that once we have done all of the above we aspire to accumulate wealth and grow it.

But then should that keep us away from self-discovery? Busy running around in circles, do we fear losing jobs and positions if we have to introspect?