Nothing Should be Flawless

Before I continue with my dissection of "The Feel Good Factor" I wanted to tell this story to all of you. Sometime back I was competing in a Sit & Draw competition. The subject of the painting was a moonlit night. Beautiful romantic topic to be painted in blue, black & white. So me being an artist my imagination was running full circle. I wanted to paint the full moon shining on a river and a boat floating on it.
I wanted to stress on the boat. The boat losing its way in the waters trying to reach the moon. And the moon !!! I tried to make it as flawless as possible. Shining in its own glory, even making this bad world look extremely beautiful.
Every body who were there around me praised my efforts:

1) The moon looks so beautiful
2) The Boat look so lost
3) The World seemed to be a great place to live in.

And there was this other fellow, painting just beside me. his moon was not flawless. He painted the moon in its true form, and he painted only the moon with all its craters. Even he praised my painting. Everybody was sure of me winning.
Results were out soon.

I DID NOT WIN THE PRIZE. I don't know whether he won either.

The Feel Good Factor: The External Variables

Sometimes I feel that I should have been a Happiness Consultant rather than a Growth Consultant. No I am not claiming that I am eternally in the bliss, but I think my funda about being happy is sometimes good. ( A growth consultancy service provider itself is not perennially on the growth track ..Right??) or (A strategy Consultant does not always get his/her strategies right :) )
So what are the variables that makes one happy. Frankly the question is absolutely subjective. While you and me might be happy gaping in a Goa beach , she might not :). Got the twist!!!
So, let me quantify my feel good factor (I need a consultancy fee for others). There are two broad groups of variables: Internal ( You can say random factors ) and External. It would be easy delving into the external factors first in this blog. The internal factors would be coming in the next blog. It is a different subject matter altogether.
I would first write down a few things that no matter what makes me happy (feel good is a more apt state of mind). Based on those I would try to figure out the variables.
1) A room with my keyboard. And a few sad romantic, 'contemplating' songs. (Yes sad!!!)
2) A ground with a 2 meter high net and a round object called a volleyball with 11 others like me.
3) A long walk through metalled/non-metalled road crossing lakes, forests, paddy fields, (the environment has to be cool and serene)
4) A night out of random bakar with Sushil, Sushant, Gregory talking about the futility called Life, Music, etc... (The names are more figurative in nature)
5) Writing a good blog, reading it myself again and again ( I am a "Megalomaniac" to a few and they are correct...It is like the queen looking at herself in the mirror and enjoying her own beauty )
6) A long talk over the phone with some friend and giving him/her a nice speech on life, trying to set everything correct and then feeling good thinking I am such a philanthropist (God knows what they actually think of me..a pain in the a** may be).
7) Some good food by my grand mom (I am homesick :(( )
8) Jadoo Ki jhappi of my mom
9) Solving an intricate 'x' puzzle (x = Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, Physics, Economics)

.... Pause .......

Hupps.. I have taken a good 5 mins after writing the last point searching helplessly if I could find the tenth thing that make me feel good. The list is small. So the next step is to identify the variables.
Without getting into the reasons I am just listing the variables over here.
Feeling Good (me) = Function( external(music, games, walk, blog, bakar, fundas on life, grand mom, mom, brainteasers), internal (???))
So these variables externally create a complex interaction to make me feel good. Anyone thinks there might be some other forces at work as well??

A feel good factor: Part I

Have I deviated from my last promise?
Could not help. Know what..For the last two weeks I have been trying to write a blog on a potpourri of topics. Freewill, my Kayaking expedition, night outs in Chennai....
But somehow I would not be able to sustain the tempo. And frankly I don't like writing a blog that lack the punch, the x-factor :).
Let me try explaining the situation through a musicians perspective (The not so musical readers pardon me). It is like when you are trying to strike the right chord you know you are playing it correct but something is missing. You think it is the C-major (or minor may be). You are pressing the three notes correctly, but you feel hey!! I am just not there. Then suddenly you find that if you add that extra odd note (the fourth key). Making it C-Major 7th or C-minor 9th ... you say aha!!! My situation has been something like that. Though I wanted to pour my heart out in writing on Freewill or kayaking the fourth note was missing. And yesterday while watching the movie "The Proposal", feeling good, being randomly happy ..I felt Hey!! isn't that the thing I just love writing on. The random things in life that make you happy.
So I dedicate this blog to those who just want to be happy. Today is a day when I have thousands of things to do, but still I want to blog. Just because I am feeling happy. The Part II of this blog would give in the details. Till then just randomly keep on feeling good...HAPPY!! The feel good factor for me today is high..!!!

Freedom & Freewill

I could not resist posting this link to the blogs a friend of mine maintains:

http://srinivaskc.blogspot.com/2009/04/human-nature-part-1-this-is-first-in.html

A wonderfully structured, deep insightful blog that I thought you all who read my blogs should read. Quite intricating & provokes you to ask a lot of questions.

The immmediate question that I raise: is there something called "Negative Freewill"? If not then the bell shaped curve assumption cannot be true. EIther it is a truncated bell or may be something like a chi curve. I am giving it a thought and my next post is definitely be on "negative free will" which I believe can be defined.

Chennai

So the period of boredom has finally come to an end (or has it??) as I am spending my training days here at Chennai. Life is not too different from similar days before. The only difference has been the Chennai heat which by the way has been killing at times. The rest of the things have been routine like: Coming to office, Cribbing, Going out, Again Cribbing, Cards, Late Nights and the cycle repeats itself. Doesn't it sound familiar.
Yeah one more difference; after a long long time I am working at office in a weekend.

A kind of different incident

Yesterday evening I was biking through a busy street. Had I been on my legs I would have said I was 'moseying'. Could not find a better befitting word in the case when we are not on legs but on two-wheeler. And then suddenly I could see (sorry feel) a pulsar-180 zooming past me. He was fast. But that did bother me. True my Apache is only 150 cc but I couldn't be left behind like that. I rolled my wrist over the accelerator. VROOM!!! and I was speeding at 80 (through a busy street). Soon I could sniff the PULSAR.
But hey!! Isn't that guy just a teenager. How can I compete against him. Am I not looking like a fool. In fact at this point the other guy could sense my intentions. He sped up as well. I needed to shift to top gear now. But then this dilemma started in my mind. Am I being a bigger fool trying to compete with a teenager or would I look smarter if I can go past him. I thought the former is more important.
In the meantime the teenager once again zoomed away leaving me far behind.

Archive: The Beginning

I am kind of tired expressing my own feelings and incidents through my blogs. From now on I have decided to add anecdotes of incidents not encountered by me but my near ones, such incidents which I enjoyed listening to and would try not to forget. The world of blogs would be a good warehouse to archive these files. Of course I would not spare the stories from my own views and I would add a small note of critical appreciation at the end. Let’s kick off:
This is a story which I recently heard from my grandfather: A page from his childhood days, year 1940. My grandfather lives in a small village and in those days the village was smaller – I mean remote’-r’. He used to study in the local pathshala (Lower primary school) with a handful of other extremely studious pupils. I glorified them ‘studious’ because in those days education was a luxury which could not be afforded monetarily or was considered an absolute non-necessity by most. Result only the most ‘studious’ few were seen with books. The school had a single teacher; ironically he was also the administrative officer, principal, and even the peon - The sole person responsible showing the path of light to the villagers. The adversities of the monopoly given to such teachers are well documented in a number of Bengali movies. However the teacher in my story was dedicated to his job. One day he had some personal work and hence announced a holiday in the school. Upon getting an unexpected off in the mentioned day, my grandfather was roaming around under the hot summer sun with his marbles, trying to find a suitable partner for a marble tournament. This is when he saw two persons dressed in non-rural clothes-one of them in suits-coming up to him. They asked him the direction to the school and seeing it closed they asked my grandfather the reason for it. For the readers who are still wondering about the identities of these persons: one of them was the school inspector and the other was another dignified person from the school board. And yes they were not expecting the school closed. My grandfather took the responsibility of calling the pupils from their homes and in the process ended up gathering quite a large crowd of curious onlookers. In fact a large part of the village was soon seen inside the school premises. If you are wondering how such a large crowd could find a place inside the school building, let me tell you that the school building was mostly open air. The inspector kept himself busy asking different questions, thanks to the hard work of the school teacher, the pupils were up to it. This got the inspector visibly happy. It was around this time one could see an old man coming running down the lane. In fact he was not running, he was hobbling because of his corn affected foot. It was the school teacher. He had not got the time to put on his shirt and was bare chest. The moment he reached the classroom he started pleading guilty and was inconsolable. The inspector was however very pleased and he did not complain. It was soon known that the school teacher had applied for the school to be graduated from Lower Primary to Upper Primary and the inspection was solely for that reason. The graduation certificate was granted.
This is however one part of the story. Let me give you a few facts: the school teacher used to live around 10 kms from the school. In those days there was no bus service and he had to walk that distance. He had some personal work on that day (the reason for announcing the holiday). One should wonder how he got the information of the inspection and how he could run the distance with his injured leg. My grandfather says that the teacher -after finishing his work- was resting in his home when he had a dream. He saw goddess Kali was pinching him and informing him of the inspection in his dreams. This got him running, I mean hobbling. Super Natural!!!! Are you not convinced?? Then maybe you should believe it was telepathy a page from para-psychology. Whatever it was it saved the day for an otherwise extremely committed teacher and also the school. The same school now stands in the village which achieved some more levels of graduations since that day. It is now a higher secondary school and of course not open-air. How the funds were collected is another story.