We all live under the same sun

Yes we all live under the same sun..

Its a wonder how we are so quick to point out someone else's fault. We have our own agendas, this may or may not match with the others around us. This often leads to confusion and conflict. The fact in any conflict is that the two people do not see eye to eye and this may lead to a blame game.

The fact also is that we are all trying and trying hard to work on our agenda towards our own goal. In the corporate world, if the goals are pre defined, it often solves a lot of issues. But in the absence, ambiguity prevails and leads to chaos.

In a training program, a nice old man called Zayed Ganjee asked us..How much do you know the people you work with? We were too quick to say quite well...but do we really see each other? Do we know what are the challenges faced by our own colleagues?

To know a person, its important to spend some time in listening to another person. Yet we often dont have time to. How are we different now than we were at college? With not much other than studies and exams on our minds, we had a lot of time where we heard each other out. We knew what our friends were going through. We helped them crack that econometrics paper they were struggling with. Do we do this now? Yes we do it with our teams, but isnt it necessary to do it others without an agenda in our mind as well?

Life was so beautiful when we spent time with each other and really helped another. As we grow, we also become judgemental, this often is limited by our own perceptions and this prevents us from forming real relationships. It is true that there are people and there always will be people who out of insecurity, knowingly or unknowingly, will harm you. But in the larger scale of things this evens out. Knowing this why cant being aware of the harm the other person is trying to do, just rise above and let it go. Its easy and necessary to do.

I have often thought of myself as a very simple person, whose needs can be met by just a little of what life has to offer. I aspire to lead a simple life near a beach running a small business which sustains itself and me & my family. Meeting interesting travelers and listening to their stories..but that doesnt mean I will not meet all kinds of folks..there will be feathers ruffled even then...the fact is that the key is to rise above and see why a person is behaving the way he or she is and then letting it go. This comes only with a lot of sensitivity and belief in oneself because in the end we are all here on a journey which will end someday. Lets make the most of it and be as adventurous as we can..there is so much to see in this beautiful world. Who really has the time to ponder on another's motive. Life seems unfair at times, but in the long run it all evens out for everyone.

Cheers folks to all of your lives and mine..the celebration will carry on!

Imprisoned....

Another year gone by and I maintain status quo....
for how long I wonder will this continue..

I yearn for a more simple life
I yearn to be more in touch with my surroundings and people
I yearn for interesting company
I yearn to learn from their varied experiences

I am scared that I might have turned out to be exactly what i was afraid of.
I need to jump from the cliff to fly....
what stops me is not the depth
but the imaginary chains that have clasped me
not just my body but my mind....

I need to break free...to save my soul...

Of scrabble and life

I recount some things which I loved and lost touch with. From sports practice to carom to scrabble to old english war movies.

The thing with not living in one place for too long is that many a times you find that you don't have friends around for long. Yes you tend to make new ones easily, but there goes the baddy you used to play every evening for hours or the 2 hr morning walks on holidays or the parties on weekends you got used to or the heated philosophical discussions between all of us who thought we are all new age guru's. Its a whole new adaptation to a different set of folks, people and friends.

A classic debate goes on in my mind...what is better? One hometown for long or lots of towns for a couple of years. Every place has a distinctive characteristic to it which influences your individuality. Often inadvertently.

Bhatinda cantt was all of riverdale, not more and definitely not less. It was about family and libraries, friends, grammys and oscars, summer camps, baddy, swimming and afternoon movie sessions.

Indore was about poha and banjo's and college for the first time and all that goes with it. Choral and I think this was when I was introduced to kishore and RD burman. I do think if I would not have met the set of friends i did in Indore, all the old Hindi music would have been been alien to me still.

Every new city has a different flavor. Pune then was quaint and family like. The bakeries of Koregoan were to die for, the burgers at Jaws were the best I have tasted, the parties, the cutting thela chai, the lovely weather...

Mumbai happened in two parts. One was about living as a kid and the other just work. The feel of independence and survival of the city was addictive. The vada pavs, the smell of the sea, bandstand, the ancient buildings in town, yokos, the US club view, navy nagar and the olympic size pool, the short weekend trips to nearby places, plays at prithvi. But Mumbai was about making a career, the clients and the BD calls, the team and the success was great.

Delhi..the roads and the greenery bang in the heart of the city, lodhi road and all the roads around India gate, its about parathas and biryanis I guess.

Its en richening to stay in many places for the exposure, yet you need to have a brave heart to do so I realize or be a foolish dreamer in your own dreamworld. Fiction at times is more real than real life and to survive on your own fiction seems to be mandatory. You often feel like a stranger in a strange land. You often do not have anything to do yet you dream of traveling near and far. It just gets harder finding people like yourself to do all the fun stuff with. You treasure it when you do.

Life seems to ask me questions now...and I seem nervously to give it answers. I cross my fingers till either of us decide to take a full circle again.

KISS - Keep it Simple and Stupid

( Post renamed from Its easy to be hard, but its hard to be easy)

This morning a colleague of mine, who is a usability expert in our company, showed me a calender which the usability training guys of HFI had given to all our Interface Designers after the training program over the weekend. A brilliant concept within HFI, in which they have internal contests and ask employees to come up with one-liners related to design which they brand as buttons and use avidly in trainings. This is where I got this line from.

The clue of a great website design is that you need to KISS..Keep It Simple and Stupid. Having spent much time on design and owing it to the great expert company I keep now-a-days, I have observed that this concept contributes greatly to why you like one website over the other. The Flickr pink for example, a beautiful way to highlight but pink for heaven's sake on a website, who could've have thought they could carry the concept off so well. But of course if you mess up with the search and features kiss or no kiss gets you no where!! (applaud please spoken like a true product person)

What do you like a messy webpage or a well prioritized easy to use webpage with messages like Oops bad bad server, no donuts for you?

Now what this statement basically stirred in me was nothing to do with webpages. Isn't it hard to be easy in life? Simple living!

Priorities, aims, wishes, desires...I agree keep changing, but if we can easily separate the chaff from the wheat, take it all one at a time and are able to live with a simple thought process, at times make fools of ourselves...I tell you life will be beautiful.

Lately I have been hounded by some complex delhi friends and have been a victimized as well as bored listener to conversations about why I should buy a big car, designer clothes, redo my transitional home and all that stuff people do to make their lives even more complicated. Trust me I love doing it up but not because you earned some money. I would easily spend big money on holidaying or buying expensive stuff I want but not because someone has it.

I have also often been lectured on relationships. Be hard, not easy...this has been proven umpteen number of times by collective experiences of most of my girl friends, in fact the results are instantaneous to see. A lot of fun this, but in retrospect the conversations between friends of planning and discussing results were more entertaining then the relationships themselves. The human mind I tell you sticks to what you cant have. But I have often observed that I have ended up poorer in the end of an experience like that. People who are attracted to what they can't have usually are no fun to be with and trust me they roam around in disguises. The fun of games is not what i refer to here, but the learning attached to the fun was simple to see.

Well may be just maybe the Usability concepts work in relationships too...you need to KISS...people you need to keep it simple and stupid!

Girls...some simple and stupid rules to follow. Guys some tips ;-)

1) Avoid guys who fall for all the games you plan with your friends. Though its a brilliant way to check initially.
2) Avoid guys who make you feel bad about how you look or want you to wear better and more complicated clothing, ofcourse unless you want to.
3) Avoid guys who don't KISS ( you know what I mean, I think I should rename the post, which i just did)
4) If its getting too tough to be with this guy...leave! Life usually is simple...the worst of circumstances can be dealt with simply and sensitively. If its getting tough one of you is making it complex. Your time will be better spent on playing tennis or those guitar classes you always wanted to do.
5) Avoid guys on whose priority list you appear anything but first...doesnt mean hound the poor fellas into shopping... some activities are just more enjoyable with the girls.
6) Understand making a fool of yourself, usually means spreading laughter...a great karma...so avoid guys who take it seriously.
7) Mostly for women in delhi as hoards available here - avoid guys who are avoidable...life will just get too complicated and not worth it..you could have learnt to play sultans of the swing by now!

Maybe the secret of Life is to Keep it simple and stupid.

What should you do in life?

Last night at I saw a movie called vertical limit- Its about mountaineering and expidetions. A brother and sister who survived an accident, but their dad did not. How the two of them went apart after the tragedy, one becomes a national geographic photographer and one still is a climber and how life puts them in a similar situation and forces them to get over the past and start a beautiful present. A beautiful movie, makes me wonder what must one do in life.

I have been trekking at 18000 feet, hence I know what how impossible 26000 is. The ability to survive in 70% less oxygen and climb icy rocks seems like a super human effort. But the fact is that we are capable fo it and thats the power of the mind. The power of the human mind is something that we all just ignore, even when we have seen glimpses of it in our life time and again.

In my last trip to the Himalayas, I met a Nepali who had just moved to ladakh 5 months back. He said in his first trip, he was out of breath all the time, till his 6th...he became an expert. He ran 2 hrs ahead of all of us all the time. Another couple i met really made me wonder what i wanted in life. A brazilian couple come to India to conquer the rocky nubra valley over 5 days with 1 liter of petrol to cook, 5 liters of water to drink and backpacks, in which they were carrying all the equipment they needed in 5 days - tents, blankets, clothes...etc. It took them 6 days, the food was over on day 5..the day 6 was the toughest part, in which they lost their way...the end was just in sight...but there was no way of crossing the river to reach it...so they had to go back and climb two more mountains and then come to where we were.
The absolute tired look and the the feeling of satisfaction, I saw in their face, is something I have seen only a couple of times in my life.

I truly belive that when one is doing something, he should be the best at it or instead of relativity, he should be able to put his best in it. When one puts his absolute best in the work/ activity he does, it automatically becomes inspiring to all.

We go thorugh our lives coming to office at 9.30am and leaving at 7.00pm every day. Have we ever really felt satisfied. I have when some impossible target has been met, but the joy was not something I could share with bosses, as then it was about competition and comparisons, which only promote the rat race, which in the end of a race, whether i win or lose, i am just a rat. I could share the joy with a couple of my team mates as it was never the competitiveness that drove them.

Does competition motivate or does it prevent you from doing your best. At the first level, i think you can motivate through competition, but if you go a level deeper, i think it prevents anyone from giving their best performance. I also think by going a level deeper, you truly get out world class employees and work.

When I look back at any success in my life...one of which was climbing 18000 ft in icy terrain...the feeling of reaching the pass at top...was just about me and the mountains. When I got a 99/100 in mathematics in class X, it was just about me and my dad. Never have i compared my performance with another human, but yes I have constantly strived to prove to myself that I can be better at what i am doing.The feeling at the end of a task always tells me how have I performed.

In life i think its very important to constantly find opportunities of what you think is beyond your potential. The life I lead now, does this exist?. Which brings me back to the question....what should one do in life. Lead a life by the rules...and keep working 9-7 or .....