Couple of weeks back, when I was in-front of  my home and catching up with a bit of sunlight to help my skin produce D-Vitamin, it was interval time for the kids. Many of them rushed out from school when the school-bell rang. Most of them looked to be seven to ten years of age.

I was listening to some music on my mobile and was idling with the phone’s camera as I couldn’t think of anything else. One guy rushed towards me and asked me: ‘Anna… can you take my photo?’ He was shy and smiling (the kid you see in the photo in cream color shirt and with a big smile). I nodded and by the time I turned my phone towards where he stood, there were few other kids with all smiles, one pulling the other in usual childish mischievousness. I managed to take two pictures while bending my back at an awkward angle to cover the kids as they tried to move near me, everyone trying to be in the front row.

After the pics were taken, everybody rushed and almost broken my mobile into pieces as they looked at the pictures. All smiles I need not say. They might have seen their photos many times before, as camera phones are very common these days. But the amazement never seems to lessen for them. Not like the days when I was a kid, a photograph was worth a million then.

Many times when I see kids smile innocently, I wonder where we adults lost that ability to smile and wonder at small-things of life. Watching a roaring flight in the sky, dancing in the rain-water, playing in the sand, making paper boats, and a lot more. All those things seem so distant and sufficiently faded away memories like they are from a different lifetime. Do we smile as often as the kids do? No, is the answer for many of us. Many times we produce laughter but we never smile the way kids do. We are programmed to laugh but the true laughter is rare.

I smiled with them and I wanted to share my feelings here and the pics too. I hope  you liked the article and pics and may be they brought a smile or two.

Thank you for reading.

Leaving the spiritual and philosophical aspects of life to the big brains and enlightened beings, for mere mortals like me, life is a series of events, starting from birth to the last breath. Biggest of the events and the most random being our birth. For majority of the population, where we are born and to whom we are born, inevitably plays a major role in what we are at any given point of time. If we were born in a war torn country, our life would be totally different in many ways from if we were born in a developed country. Yes, there are exceptions to this exceptionally random event. People defied their social backgrounds and rose far above what people around them expected. The fact is, they are very few and all of them made history.

What is behind this seemingly random phenomenon, that we call as life, is the mystery that seekers from primordial times of human existence always tried to understand. They tried to call this phenomenon God, the creative force and with lot of other names. In my limited knowledge, I can fairly say or rather assume that, every religion in some way had tried to answer this question: is life a random series of events or there is some principle on which life works on this planet?

Leaving the mystical aspects of life for the time being, though creation seems to be random at times, when we give a little thought, it seems to be an intelligent work or may be the most intelligent of all. If only, earth was few millimeters near to the Sun than it is now, I wouldn’t be typing these words and you wouldn’t be reading this either. There was a lot of intelligence involved in creating life on this planet. Remove one aspect of the creation and there it ends or may be it would have never started. As simple as it can be: if there was no water, there wouldn’t be any life on this planet. Was water created to support life or life is there because water was there in the first place? It is like the classic hen and egg enigma. Let alone how water got created in the first place.

Even though, every religion has its own ways of explaining God or no God, there never seemed to be a universal agreement among the beliefs of all religions. The safest bottom ground we can chose is that ‘we exist and the creation exists’.

Agreeing on the basic fact that we exist and creation exists, then the question is: what governs life on this planet? Is it a random process? Or is there some hidden principle that takes care of the events that happen in life? Are we all lost in randomness and fooled by it?

No single answer or dogma can convince everyone of us. This being the basis for different belief systems, sects, cults, and religions. No matter who preaches us the enigmas of existence, we are skeptical not to believe all of the preachings.

If the life was never created and only inanimate creation existed, who would have thought why creation exists? Who would have experienced the beauties of creation? Creation without life is barren.

No matter how advanced we are scientifically, there are questions that science is unable to find any answers. There seems no way, as of now, to explain the enigmas of existence. All we have are theories without concrete proofs.

The funniest thing of all is, we create tiny little worlds of our own and become so entangled in our own creation.

Lets wait and see if science can ever find answers to why and how of creation. Enigmas of existence.

Have you ever tried to imagine what if nothing exists? Where the creation starts and where it ends? Let alone when and how it started. I am not insane about finding answers or any such stuff, however, now and then these questions come in flashes.

I am sure this post leaves with more questions than answers. I am no enlightened being to fathom the enigmatic existence. I tried to empty few thoughts from my mind and I hope you enjoyed reading this post.

How my love with reading books started? Well, I do not know exactly. I have always wanted to read from the college days. Till I finished my graduation, for various reasons, I have never read anything more than five books that were not part of academic reading.

May be, we never know what we love unless we try. Once I started reading, I started loving it more and more as I read more and more varieties of books.

To start with, I started reading non-fiction and few biographies and then went on to read few self-help kind of books(Robin Sharma, The Alchemist). Then, I slowly started reading fiction. Before reading fiction, I always thought, it is just waste of time reading novels. It is only after reading few good novels, did  I realize that reading fiction is one of the best things to do if we have enough free time.

From general fiction, my interest drifted towards classics and literary-fiction. Started with reading Hemingway’s all-time great classic and which helped him get the Nobel for Literature: The Old Man and the Sea. Now, I read more of classics than anything else.

Reading is really good unless the following happens to you.

When you read too many books, chances are there, you will end up wanting to write one. Trust me, I have read many and I want to write one now.

No wonder, now, I am reading books on ‘writing.’ And few books on the craft of writing fiction.

After reading few books about fiction writing, I started looking at the novels from a completely different perspective. I will never read the novels in the same way I used to read before.

Few of my friends ask me:  why the hell you read books? The simple answer is: I do not know. The specific answer would be:

I meet interesting people, visit interesting places, and of course, all of it at the comfort of sitting in a chair and with a book in hand.

How can we know what a World War II soldier had gone through unless we read a book written by someone who had been there? How do we know how was it to be in the initial years after that great partition of India unless we read a book by an author who lived through it? Well, you might ask me, why should I care such things? If you don’t care, I say, you better never read books. Go, listen to music, learn guitar, play tennis, or better doze off the afternoon.

Nothing wrong in not reading books either. It is a highly personal choice. But beware, once you catch the bug of reading, it takes over you and it is only for good.

Many times, we hear people saying, so and so book changed my life. That is the power of written words. We hear these words not only from common people, often from celebrities even.

I do not know who said ‘a picture speaks more than a thousand words‘, but I am sure, ‘a few well written words definitely speak more than a thousand pictures.’

Following are few quotations on books from famous persons.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
- Henry David Thoreau

The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.
- Mark Twain

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
- W. Somerset Maugham

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most.
- Theodore Parker

We meet many people. Many times randomly. Few of them become best friends, few of them enemies, few of them acquaintances, one of them may become spouse, and few of them we just forget that we met.

Why do we meet certain people in our life?

What’s the big deal, you may ask. Please try this now. From your best friends list, just think for few seconds how you met each one of them. I am quite sure you have met at least one of them so randomly that there was every chance that you could have never met that person. Yet, you met that person(s) and became best friends.

Often times I wondered, is it a random process that we meet the people we meet or there is something mystical about it exists that we cannot fathom. I would be lying if I tell you that I understand this. Sometimes, I feel it is completely random without any meaning. But there are times, when I realized that there is something really more meaningful in every meeting with a stranger.

Have you ever wondered sometimes that what if you had been to a different college than the one you attended? A different school. A different workplace. Would you be the same person as you are now? Definitely not, is my answer.

It is inevitable that the people we meet influence our lives to some extent. May not be completely. But every personal interaction has a role to play in our lives either directly or indirectly.

Do you know how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple met? They were introduced by a mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, when Wozniak was 21 and Jobs was 16 years old and later went on to found Apple Inc. What if they never met? From what I understood reading Steve Jobs biography, it is very clear that they truly complimented each other in skills and that helped Apple in the initial founding years. They met and they made history. Who knows what would have happened if they never met? May be, Bill Gates would be the happiest and a little more richer person in that case. And may be, we still be using the old music players instead of sexy iPods. We never know.

I think a personal example from my life will help me convey my thoughts more clearly. I had been to Isha Yoga Center for a three week program in Coimbatore in May 2009. There were thirteen other people who came to participate. Many of them told me they had been planning from a long time to attend the program. As you know, three weeks break from daily life is not an easy thing.  Few of them were planning from a couple of years while few of them were planning from a couple of months.

So, what made all of us attend at the same time? Does it sound silly? There must be some people and so there were, is a simple explanation. But, give it a little thought and we understand that it is neither silly nor simple.

I met few inserting people there who in few ways influenced me. What if they attended the program at a different time? Will I be the same person I am now if I haven’t met them? Well, I am hundred percent sure I will not be.

Let me take an example once again to articulate my point. I met a Dhrupad singer there who was one of the participants. Though I respect Indian classical music, I always thought what is so great about learning to sing Sa Re Ga Ma for years. After few interactions with that singer, I realized how difficult is it to even sing a single note perfectly. She taught me the basics of swaras. Even in my wildest imagination, I have never dreamed of learning Indian Classical Music. But a couple of hours of learning there overwhelmed me. I now know how much hard work and commitment it takes to become a good professional Indian classical music singer. In my life I will never think the same way as I used to think before about singing.

I also learned from that singer what it means to be passionate about something we love and what it takes to be passionate.

I met one more person who is a COO of an event management company in Mumbai. I learned many things from him and I attended a classical music concert because of him for the very first time in my life. That is something new and absolutely because I met him. May be, I could have attended in future without meeting him even, but who knows future. Was it really a coincidence that he was there when my interest in classical music aroused? The company he works for organizes classical music concerts all over India.

Well, you might ask, whats so great about all this? Show me what you gained. Well, I gained a lot, but most of it is intangible.

My question is: what if I have never met them? One visible thing for sure is, I would have never known the basics of swaras. My interest in classical music would not have been aroused, who knows may be forever. Now I have decided to learn some classical Indian music in my life. May be not now or may be now. But I am sure I am going to learn at some point in my life.

Not only with the above two incidents, I could easily recall few other incidents where I met people so randomly and they have become a part of my life and influenced me in one way or the other.

I am almost convinced that the people we meet have a role to play in our lives and it is in no way a random thing. Everyone we know now was a stranger at some time. Absolute stranger. Even best friends were strangers once.

Has this happened to you? Have you sometimes thought on the same lines? If yes, I would be happy to hear your experiences. Please use the comments section to share  your thoughts.

Well, have you randomly stumbled upon this article?

In fact, sometimes, I feel that the trouble is with me. I do not have an occupation as of now to give a convincing answer. I mean not a convincing answer to the questioner, but convincing myself in the first place. I cannot say I am an entrepreneur, as I strongly believe I am not anywhere near to being called one. I cannot say I am a freelance-web-developer because that is not my full time profession anymore. So with blogging. So with writing. So with reading and anyway I have never met someone who said ‘I am a reader.’

Well, I understand that it is essential to know what other people do when we are interacting with them for the first time. But, is it not possible to talk to someone without knowing what that person does? If that person wants to tell us, he will tell us anyway even if we do not ask.

Let’s say, you are interacting with a person for the first time and you have been into conversation for quite sometime now without knowing what he does. You have no prejudice to judge him according to his profession because you do not know what he does. Now, suddenly, for example you come to know he is a lawyer. Most of the times, most of us start judging whatever he speaks based on the fact that he is a lawyer. I think that is inevitable.

The exact same words said by two people from different professions can be sometimes interpreted differently if you know their professions before.

The problem is that we cannot give an evasive answer to this question. If you say I do business. Then comes the question: what sort of business do you do? Well if you say ‘I do nothing,’  you are mistaken to be a lazy earthworm. You need to give or you are expected to give a specific answer, though there is no guarantee that further questions will not come. Well, even if I say something as specific like as Software Engineer, Lecturer, Doctor, Lawyer and so on. Yet, there will be questions that start with where, what kind of and which and how much you earn.

I have been through embarrassing situations in the recent years when people asked me this question, especially with a touch of sarcasm. I made it a point a not to ask this question unless it is absolutely essential to the communication. I usually ask this question when I am sure that the other person wont feel embarrassed by it. In few situations it is essential to know what the other person does.

Ask me ‘how do you do’ and I would certainly reply ‘I am doing fine and thank you and how do you do’. But, ask me ‘what do you do,’ I have a no answer now. I hope I can give an answer, may be, after an year or two.

First things first, let me explain how he looked. From his appearance it wasn’t difficult for me to guess that he was in mid-forties and definitely with some political backing. In India, if you see someone wearing a white trouser and white shirt, chances are high that he is from some kind of political organization (or a school going kid if its a Saturday ). He looked decent enough though except for that typical way rich people manage themselves in public places.

Coming to the rings, the total cost of all the eight rings can easily be in six figured Indian rupees. And who knows may be more as they contained some kind of stones etched in them. What I am sure is that the money can easily feed at least ten poor families for an entire year.

I really don’t understand why people go to such extremes to get the fortune work on their side. I often wonder whether those little metal rings really work to bring more money into people’s lives, let alone happiness. I mean no offense to people who wear rings. Even I wear one, but it costs less than a dollar! Engagement rings and wedding rings are different, they are part of tradition in most cultures and may be a way to express the commitment towards relationship.

Instead of saying eight rings on two hands, now I think, its better to say one ring on each finger except two thumbs. God knows why not on thumbs. May be its not possible to put a ring on thumb because it may easily slip out of the thumb. How bad the thumb might feel for not being able to hold something as simple as a ring. It might be really jealous about other fingers which are proudly showcasing the man’s lust for gold and money.

In my wildest imagination I thought how he manages his morning ablutions? Will he remove all the rings and put them back? If so, how will he manage to put the rings on correct fingers ? Somehow I could not stop imagining this. I wanted to ask him but you know why I couldn’t.

Coming to some serious stuff, God will be more happy if he donates the money those rings cost to destitute people.

Gold is nothing but like any other metal that is dug out from the earth. Except it shines. But people go mad for gold. I am sure most of us have heard stories of people who swallowed gold coins to hide them from thieves. How crazy people can go.

If only people like him – who have more money than they can actually spend in a few lifetimes – come forward to spend the money in a more meaningful way, this world would surely be a better place to live.

PS: If you are someone wearing eight rings or may be more or less, I have no intention to offend you nor the person who suggested you to wear them. I know it’s completely a personal choice. I thought this topic would give me a good writing excercise that I badly need.

Few days back I happened to read in a book or watched in a TV program an interesting explanation of profit and loss. After a tough attempt to recollect, I am really unable to recall in which book I have read it or whether I watched it on TV.

Its simple – in life there is no loss. If you give it a thought for a moment, you realize it is as simple as that and very true. Whatever you posses at this very moment is your complete profit. I just wanted to write few lines here on this concept. I am no saint or a guru giving a spiritual talk, but I wonder how often we forget the most basic facts in life in earning a life for us.

So, irrespective of anyone’s current financial position you are never at a loss. Everything that you gather from that very first breath you took on the earth is your profit.

How often we forget this and brood over small and petty things in life.

The next time when you think something as loss, I sincerely wish, you remember this very basic truth and be happy.