Appreciate

Today, I want to talk about Appreciation. Some of my friends may find the content very obvious, but I would still like to write for myself and for my friends for whom it’s not obvious. Nobody is unaware of the fact that everybody loves to be appreciated. Everybody dreams of being famous and appreciated by others. Like every other person, I also love being appreciated. Though I was aware of word appreciation, but experience has showed me the real importance of appreciation. Appreciation holds importance in both personal and professional life. If we are working in a team, we should always try to appreciate our peers and sub-ordinates. Believe me, it does wonders. Though many of my friends already do this, but who don't should start doing this and observe the difference.

Even in the personal life, one can observe the importance of Appreciation. Most common example is appreciating your date. I must say that girls love to be appreciated and pampered. Though it’s an age old trick to impress a girl, but it still works today. But be aware that this trick may not work always :). Appreciation always disperses positive energy and boosts a person's morale.

But appreciation should not undermine the importance of facing and alleviating one's weak areas. One should be diligent enough to make a difference between a positive appreciation and cajoling done for someone else's benefit. So friends, appreciate others and enjoy being appreciated. I hope you guys enjoyed the read.

Chalo guys, bye for now. Will try to make entries more frequently. And ya, to add, this entry is a result of appreciation only :).

Deepak Datt
Blog : http://www.iamthecoolestguy.blogspot.com

A 'Pen'chant

This is the second time I am trying to write something. My first attempt got nice reviews which, along with some prodding from my friends, prompted me to write this one.
As I prepare to write this, one question keep coming to my mind perennially, why am I writing this? I am not sure. But I have come up with a list of reasons that could sound palatable to you, even if they don’t, by the time you read them, you have read them and that’s what they were written for!!!
Anyways, here goes the list:

1. A soothsayer once told me that I will have a good future with pen and paper. May be he wanted to tell me that I should open a stationery shop and hit upon teenage gals who come there with their mummies to buy lunch boxes and drawing kits. But destiny had some other plans for me.

2. My friends have been flogging me for past one month after I wrote the first piece.“You keep licking all these big books and newspapers all day, why don’t u write something on your own”. “Arre likho na! bahut achcha likhte ho tum” “Aajkal free hi to baitha hai be, likhta kyu nahi kuch saale!!!” and blah blah blah. They don’t understand that you rarely find interesting stuff that you could copy- paste and write your name under it, without getting caught. ;-)

3. Everybody is writing or should I say ‘scrawling’ something. Blogs, Forums, Reviews, Stories, Novels etc etc. It has become a widespread beemari now. So what the hell are you waiting for? You gotta write something. No matter if it finds any readers or not. No matter whether it makes any sense or not (like this one)? But you have to keep the bits and bytes of the Web flowing. And today there is no dearth of issues. From ‘Shoe hurling’ to ‘Hair Curling’, from ‘Badhti aabadi’ to ‘Rakhi Sawant ki shaadi’, from ‘Slumdog’ to ‘Your Girlfriend’s Dog’, you can write on anything. You just need to have a computer with MS Office installed and an operative key board. And, some idle time to kill.

But as I was writing the above crap, I wonder what goes on inside a writer’s mind, and by ‘writer’ I mean respected authors, not the random ramblers of the ‘www’ (World Weary Weirdos) family who daily tell the world what color of underwear they wore last day and with whom they slept last night. I am talking about Dan Brown, Robert Ludlum, Sidney Sheldon, Salman Rushdie and others of the their ilk. We appreciate them. We marvel how they could write such amazing, weird and convoluted fantasies in such simple manner, which we can never imagine in our wildest or wettest dreams. They address an unknown face when they write. They might have never thought that they would ever see or meet a guy like you and me who are going to read their work. They write just for the love of it. It’s not a profession for them, it’s their passion. They play God. They create lives, situations, vivid characters, unimaginable places, grotesque tragedies, shocking accidents, innocent love affairs, scandalous liaisons, incomprehensible relationships and what not. They say what everybody knows but a rare few could express. They can take you to the darkest cesspools of the human psyche in one chapter and can elevate you to the most sublime heavens in the other. They can help you straighten your life without even knowing what kind of shit u r sitting in. They could transport you into a different time zone and makes it so believable that the real world seems like a fantasy. They can screw your mind badly with the sordid details if you are not holding the reins of your conscience properly. They have the power to ‘change’, the most difficult thing to do for a human being.

They must sense a feeling which only can come after ‘creating’ something; I choose to call it ‘glory’. A mother’s feeling after giving birth to a child. A child’s feeling after building a sand castle. A painter’s feeling after completing a canvas. A S/W developer’s feeling after finishing the code. (Ok, Not that one. It’s somewhat closer to the feeling of a bull after slogging through the field enduring the heat and the hunter of the farmer all day long).

But yes, you gotta admit it that it’s a craft, kinda magic, which is innate. It takes years to write a good book. And an untiring will too. Shantaram took a good 14 years of Gregory David Robert’s life, not to mention the other trials and tribulation which he had to go through to get it published. Fountain Head and Harry Potter’s manuscript was rejected by 12 publishers. J.K. Rowling had to even change her name from Joana to J.K. because her publisher Bloomsbury feared that the target audience of young boys might be reluctant to buy books written by a female author. Today, these books are cult. So the moral of the story is –

“Don't get discouraged; it's usually the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.”

Similarly this piece may get trashed by many, but I will still keep writing. Because you never know which kick will wake the dormant genius inside you.

Signing off now, but keeping the lines open for kicks and kudos. Jai Ho.

Avinash Verma

Everything

From the very beginning to the very end...

Of good bad and evil... and of that perfect blend...

At most times we forget what is Godsend...

And instead.. tend to follow the trend...

It's easy to loose way... follow something that is partly Grey...

We love to play and forget the pray...

In the moment of our dismay...

we do sway away...

At times it may sting...

At other times it may feel as if you can fly with a single wing...

After winters, like the season of spring...

Only he can push your swing...

because he is the one...he is your EVERYTHING...!!

Mehtab Ahluwalia

Twinge to unearth completeness

I pen this down with thoughts running wild in my head. I have questions that are unanswered and I hope they will remain at that.

I believe in God and his creations, but I doubt the intentions of his creations.

When did we get the power to decide what is wrong or right?
When did we mere mortals get empowered with the authority to criticize someone else’s life and their decisions?

Why does everything in life have to be so calculated?
Why do we have a sense of paranoia of loosing what we have?
How come someone else’s life becomes fodder for gossip but when it comes to your’s your hurt?
How come life’s become so twisted the its getting harder day by day to untangle it.
When did we stop living our lives and started running after it?
I am told that the reason we have categorized things as good or bad is cause we want to find a pattern in our lives. That these patterns give us a sense of security and that these bring us some sought of solace. But I do not want these designs, do only definite patterns make a pretty picture.
Why were we stopped and told to colour within the lines?
When I see random splash of colours I see madness, nothing about it looks wrong to me but it is not acceptable.
Love is pure and forgiving, and it is supposed to be the most honest sense of feeling.
But how did it get categorized, why did we give this amazing feeling names and termed it as relationships. When you see a baby you just love that child, that love has no name, there are no expectations. I wonder if God Almighty had ever thought of all this when he instilled in us the ability to love.
Why can’t love remain pure with no give and takes?
When I look up to the sky I wonder why is it that it seems so different during the day but it is filled with riots of twinkling dots during the night. We have the same eyes don’t we, but we don’t see those shimmering dots during the bright daylight.
That’s how life is. Everything around is the same, but we just see it differently at different times. We say people change, things change but in reality I believe that everybody starts perceiving things differently to meet their needs.
I don’t seek answers cause I believe no one has them, cause when someone does answer you its their way of comforting themselves. I want to break out of norms and soar away, may be I will, and may be I wont. But no one can stop me from hoping cause I believe there is something called ‘leap on faith’ and that is where my hope lies.

Anonymous