Miss you....

You shall see the world through my eyes as I saw it through yours long ago….

There is no self made man, every single instance shapes him… you shaped 18 years of it.

You always knew more than I did but never were afraid to learn from me.

You never let me win the game of chess or play those spinning cricket balls just because I was a bad loser, but you taught me to win.

You never were happy when I came second but were the proudest man in the room when I stood eighth when I was eighteen.

You had less then than what you gave us but more happy when our faces lit up with smile.

You always knew where I hid but never found me at once.

I was scared of your temper but saw it only once and that changed my character forever. I saw when you hurt at my mistakes but was hurt more to never do it.

I learnt to dream, push harder, aim higher but never once forgot the right way so that I would lose sleep

You pushed me harder; to challenge myself but to trust my abilities… risk what is mine, to not fear the unknown. To dream higher but never from a weak foundation

My love for water, the outdoors, the stock market and books I know where I got from….

My love for family, my respect for elders but the courage to call a spade a spade, my empathy for those in need – values I learnt at home…

I was a friend before I realized I was a son and when I realized I was a son I lost a friend, this is to my father, who left us 10 years ago, to what I hope is a better place, since with even those small things missing, it was still heaven here…

In the land of the color challenged...

when we were small kids we used to play this game of colors.... one person was out of the group, and would name a color and people who had that color could walk over to the other side, more like a free passage, those who didn't would then try to reach the other side without getting caught, if you did then you are out..... I used to consistently get out....becoz... now i know, i didn't know what color was being referred to....

move forward by a few years, I get stumped when people call out colors and say things like ecru or beige or algae green.... I feel lost.... for some reason I am color challenged... not color blind mind you, just challenged and i suspect its more in being able to name them.... for me its the primary colors and maybe some standard other colors and then its light or dark..... i cant identify parrot green vs. algae green or brown vs. beige. ecru or milky white to curd white or elephant grey vs ash grey or jet black vs. clear black ( i don't even know they exist, so how can i recognise them?)....

I am not color blind mind you, I am what you can call color ignorant :)

So the next time you meet someone who talks about colours in two shades, light or dark, and
is slightly confused with any other color than blue.... you have met me or one of my kind.... please show some kindness and talk our language...

save me from the serial killers....

There has been an explosion of daily sitcoms in Indian television, family fights, saas-bahu serials, corporate wars but mainly woman characters, adultery - every possible theme running across years beams into households captivating the imagination of the women viewers and the men too (although the latter will not be caught dead discussing about it!!!) - but give me a break.... I come home tired wanting to watch something which can be fun, informative (yeah even after 10-12 hours of just business related thinking at work, I still watch CNBC and NDTV profit, so sue me!!) but the TV is taken over at 8:30 and till 10 PM , mostly the time I would have reached home or just before dinner am subject to this torture........

Don't mistake me, its not that I have anything against these, each has his/ her own poison, but this is literally my poison!!!! I cant see wailing women, overacting, conniving acting as though they will bring the world down and pseudo commentaries about what is happening in our society thru this nonsense.....

aarrrggghhh the family that dines together stays together they say...... if this nonsense doesn't end soon, either my dinner time will be very late in the night or the family doesn't dine together.....

Ektaaa kappooor (or whatever her the latest form of name her spelling has morphed into) and all your ilk , I curse you solitary confinement with 1500 days of continuous crap you are dishing out....

Some questions...

I kind of like the philosophy Hinduism propounds ( don't ask me what it is, there are just too many, so pick up something that suits you!!!) - not that I am religious - am more as someone once told me, karmic than dharmic - but I find it interesting that a single religion can allow thoughts where you can consider yourself one with God ( Advaitha - literally meaning 'not double'), dwaitha (literally meaning - two different ) and vishistadvaitha ( a form of advaitha - where thought goes that while in human form humans and God are different, once you reach God, you become same) - most religions I have basic knowledge of do not allow such wide spectrum of thoughts ( mind you : I am probably a novice in this region , so please feel free to correct me , will be really glad to learn more here). But then what gets my goat and given the fact that these thoughts have been with us for maybe 1500 years, why did we treat a section of our society so badly? I am a Brahmin, so while I can understand the power that might have resided in the caste due to knowledge, what I fail to understand is when we could be so tolerant to religious thoughts ( remember : belief based persecution is what is most prevalent in human history) , how is it that we failed to uplift the sections of society we left behind?

Even assuming there was no higher intention, someone should have moved these sections just for the power...why did it not happen at all? Interestingly, as a caste, while maybe Brahmins excelled in knowledge and maybe that allowed them to adapt to changing conditions sooner, my guess would be that most Brahmins would be the working middle class even today...so it was not money that drove the so called 'upper caste' to this...

I am all for affirmative action, maybe even reservation, maybe priority over natural resources as our beloved 'toothless' prime minister wants us to believe... but correcting a mistake does not mean you make the same mistake...