My Pencil Sketches

Hope

Hope and expectation are the basic things that keep us going. We often get disappointed when things don't happen the way we want them. In every such disheartening situation, we realize that expecting something is the cause of all miseries. Time and again we learn this. Even after knowing this, we still keep hoping and expecting. Happiness and misery are the two possible outcomes of hope. The journey between hope and the outcome is life. We just have to add more fun to the journey called life. Where there's no hope, there's no life. Keep hoping.. Move on, let go, fall only to rise. Let the misery be a part of your history while you strive hard and make your destiny colorful.

My recent drawings

God!!

Every religion preaches about the existence of a super power who is the Creator and Destroyer of the universe and everything in it. He is the writer and director of our lives who organizes everything perfectly.

He is the savior who saves us from the suffering. On the other hand, he is one who causes the suffering to test our patience and make us strong. We feel relieved from the pain in helpless situations when we offer prayers or seek help from the super power. It soothes to believe that help is on its way and all we have to do is pray n be good.

Are we missing the logic here? If the creator has already written our destiny, it would still remain the same despite the prayers or the deeds that we perform. If the destiny hasn't been written and if it is just random, even then neither the prayers nor the good deeds would help. If the destiny keeps changing based on our actions, then all we have to do is act on it. I mean, don't just seek for the help, don't waste the time waiting for the prayers to be answered. Do it right or do it wrong but do something because if you do nothing, you'll get nothing.

P.S.: I'm not an atheist. I'm just trying to be practical here.

"NO"

It is a simple two lettered word. But I find it difficult to use this word most of the times. I almost avoid using it in many situations but even in the few instances that I use this word, it somehow gets ignored. When you want to say it without being rude, people don't even listen to it.

To use this word, one needs to have the patience to explain the situation n convince others. To me, convincing people is the most difficult job.

 The worst part in saying 'no' is, whether it is accepted or ignored, the result is only unhappiness. In the first case, when people unhappily accept a 'no' , it doesn't give a feeling of achievement or victory to the one who has uttered the word 'no' but leaves them unhappy too. In the second case, if one's opinion got ignored, it would definitely hurt.

There should be a way to avoid this word and handle the situation with better and polite words which won't hurt anybody.

P.S.: My vocabulary is too bad to find one such word.

To the women ogling creatures

Do u think she's beautiful? Are you attracted to her? Why do you stare at her? Does it give you pleasure? Do you think ogling is 'cool'? Or is it an involuntary action which is out of your control? How many women would you have stared at in your life? Is the pleasure that you get is different each time? Didn't your brain suggest that it is sheer waste of time and energy? By any chance, do you think it's a way to impress her? Have you ever felt that she's going to be happy knowing that you've been staring at her? Or is that a way of communication? What do you want to communicate? Did somebody teach you how to do it or have you learnt it yourself by watching others/movies or is it in your blood?

 If you are in love, you stare at your girl and she's happy about it, that's a different story. But why ogle at many other women. Just want to keep you informed that the act of ogling is unlawful in some countries.

 P.S. : Just got curious. NOM.

 Note: 'How do you know that somebody is staring at you?' You could probably have this question in your mind. Here's my answer. Wouldn't you know? It requires no extra effort. You'd really know.

Shopping

Some call it time waste and do it in haste

Some take the pain and call it strain

Some do it online while others prefer offline

Some just search while others do a research

Some make it brief to avoid the grief

Some make it a way to spend their day

Some can't do it fast as the options are vast

Some avoid it while others can't live devoid of it
Some love the discounts as they believe every rupee counts.

P.S.: Be it wise or unwise, it's nothing but 'expenditure' of time n money.

Another one on wishes

To my understanding, desires are different from wishes. Desire is something you could achieve with your efforts. Wish is something that you hope would happen.

Wishes would come true only in dreams and you would definitely be woken up from the dream however good or bad it is. If it's too late by the time you realize this, the only result would be disappointment n may be loss of a few tears.

Whatever I wished strongly never happened.But something better happened evrytime. May be, I deserve better things! The above conclusions are made from real life observations.

P.S: I know it's time to wake up from the lovely dream and live the reality. :D

Only one

Why fall in love with someone when you know that you wouldn't spend a lifetime with that person.
Let there be attractions, infatuations and crushes which are passing clouds in life.
Let there be only one person to carry the crown of your heart.
Let that special someone know how fragile your heart is.
Let him/her handle it with care because it ain't easy to deal with a heart break.
Let compromise come naturally to maintain the most important relationship.
Let ego suppress itself to keep your life contented.
Let anger know it's limits and fun cross the boundaries.
Let him/her complete you.

I wish..

I wish I were stronger
I wish I were smarter
I wish I were fit
I wish I were talkative
I wish I could fly
I wish I were selfless
I wish I were beautiful
I wish I were brainy
I wish I could write better
I wish it rained everyday
I wish that all my wishes would come true some day.

P.S.: This ain't the end of my wishlist. I'm too lazy to type the rest.

Silent thoughts

Everyday we meet many people. Some become friends, others remain as acquaintances. With so many friends and acquaintances, you would still feel alone one day. Sometimes you have a lot to talk but nobody to listen to you. At such moments, it's fun to talk to yourself and enjoy the silence. It's fun to be a silent observer of the things going on around you and smile away at the funny things. It's good to think about painful situations too. And another good thing about spending time with yourself is that you are free to imagine anything and nobody would comment or criticize you.

It's hard to explain this but if you have experienced what I'm talking about, you would know that these silent moments bring in lot of happiness. Well, if you haven't had such experiences yet, I might sound like a jerk to you. It is said that happiness increases by leaps and bounds by sharing, but this time I prefer being selfish about my happiness. :)

Goodbye Infy.

There could be a thousand reasons to crib about your work place, but when its time to move out, you would know what value it has added. Whatever I am today, is partly because of the learnings from the people I met and the experiences I had at Infosys. 'Thank you' is a small word to express my gratitude.

Leaving the people who loved you so much and filled your days with more fun, knowing that you would definitely miss all of them, if you have to walk away from the place which gave you wonderful experiences only to discover what life has got in store for you, saying Goodbye is one of the toughest things.

P.S.: I wish I could write more. But I run out of words to express what I feel right now.

Jana Gana Mana

The Indian national anthem, 'Jana Gana Mana', is known to almost every Indian. Every Indian would be taught not only to sing it but also to do so with respect towards the nation. It is written in Bengali but sung by every Indian irrespective of the language spoken by him/her. But it is a misfortune that the meaning of the song is actually not known to many of us. May be because we weren't taught the meaning of the song or may be because we never asked anyone about that or never showed much interest in knowing what 'The national anthem' actually means. It is really important to know it's meaning.

Today, after many years of singing the national anthem in ignorance, I wanted to know it's meaning. Thanks to Google.

P.S.: You can know the meaning of Indian national anthem from here.

Sreeram Chandra's concert at Infosys

Yesterday was the day when I waited back at my workplace to see 'The Indian Idol' perform and I felt lucky to witness such a wonderful performance. I wondered, how on earth could somebody have such immense levels of energy!

During the times when he performed for Indian Idol, we waited to watch him on the show, we loved the way he did magic with those songs, the ease with which he sung the toughest of the songs was remarkable, we prayed for him to be the winner in the finals. May be he was only a singer or just a performer back then. But after yesterday's show, I must say he is a rock star.

The stylish looking Sreeram started off with Khwaja mere khwaja, Subhanallah, Summer of 69, Bulla ki jaana main kaun, Sun raha hai na tu, Tu meri ahoori pyas pyas, Chammak challo, Dhinka-chika, Melikalu tiruguthunte ammayo, Kaatamarayuda, Who are you.. so on and after entertaining with his performance for 3 hours, he showed us that he's got more and he flawlessly performed Shankarmahadevan's breathless.

Hats-off to the rock star!

The 'OOPS!!' moment

Do you remember the feeling that you get when you miss out something, spend hours to figure out what went wrong and then find out that you made a silly mistake. Such experiences give you a moment to realize and accept at least for a while and say 'How stupid I am!!'.

To err is human. And it's true that machines make mistakes because they are human-made and human-operated. One might argue that only the human-intervention part of a machine could be faulty. But it would ultimately mean that machines are faulty.

Accepting the mistakes that we make and identifying the stupidity-quotient of ourselves is the best learning that we make in life. The first step for such great learning is to make mistakes. If you have made mistakes or experienced failures, I'm sure, you are going to see better things in future. If you think that you haven't made any, then its time to wake up to the reality that perfection is only a myth and it's high time for you to identify and accept your mistakes.

P.S.: If you think that you already know what you've just read, may be this is your 'Oops!' moment. Congratulations! :D

Gimme more..

Sir Isaac Newton said, "I don't know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then, finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me". Great people, great words! Our appearances to the world are different but in reality aren't we all such kids fascinated by pebbles and shells on the sea-shore. We are all unique in our own ways but one thing is common. We live and we want to make 'more' of this living experience. More happiness, more money, more luxury, more fun, more success and the list goes on. There's also a list of the things that we want to be 'less'.. less pain, less struggle, less failures. We can experience the heights of these in the 'more' list only when we know how deep is the ocean of these in the 'less' list. It is not possible to accept the difficulties with a welcoming smile. But we can't put an end to them if we keep cribbing. So keep moving, let it pass and never let that smile fade away. :) :)

A few words..

To me, women's day marks the celebration of the pride of being a woman. It is surprising that a woman is loved n respected for what she is in a society where the female infanticide is prevalent, where entertainment means watching women in bikinis, where it is impossible for a girl to reach home without being stared at or hearing at least one dirty word from somebody on road, where many young women are cheated in the name of love n marriage. Some have a hope that the society would change someday, but many of us have learnt to live in this society with all its deficiencies. A woman's pride lies in her strength n patience in dealing with the adversities. As a daughter, sister, sweet heart, wife, mother she has her way in playing multiple roles efficiently. Even in most difficult times she hides her worries n mesmerizes everyone with her charming smile.

Relativism

No two people perceive in the same manner. One's perception depends on the situations and the factors taken into consideration by oneself. The way a person looks at it at a particular point of time also depends on his emotional state and mental state. All these factors together play the tricky part of the game. This theory seems simple at first but it is more complex compared to the Einstein's Theory of relativity. :)

It is difficult to predict people's reactions, opinions and decisions. The main reason behind it is the complexity of relativism. Good and bad are relative terms. They differ with persons, events and conditions.

Consider the saying, "Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder". Beauty of a painting, to a person might mean "how good it looks, how vibrant are the colors and how perfect are the strokes "..  but to somebody else it might mean "how deeper is the vision of the artist". Both perceive it as a beautiful painting but the beauty indeed lies in the 'eyes of the beholder'. :)

A spoken word..

William Shakespeare said, "Four things come not back: The spoken word, The spent arrow, The past, Missed opportunity". I'm not going to write here my version of what he said. I'm gonna write how strongly I agree with his words.

A promise or a word of acceptance or a decision or something spoken in haste.. we just say it out. Sometimes, it might change somebody's future, it might affect their feelings or cause a huge loss to a huge community. When it causes such problems which are unexpected, we repent. We wish we could go back and change that 'spoken word' which in turn would change its consequences. But it is already out of scope. A word is as powerful as a sword. It works wonders to a person who is wise enough in using it. To the hasty one, it shows its adverse effects.

The spent arrow, the past and missed opportunity are the other three things, according to Shakespeare, that don't come back. I totally agree with these words. The value of something that can't be changed is known only when you really want to change it. In such cases, I feel, repentance is useless. It would be better to accept the truth and live with it.

P.S.: Thank you for reading it completely :)

People..

We meet people in different ways in life. From school to workplace, we meet strangers everywhere whom we later call teachers, friends, acquaintances, classmates, team-mates, colleagues, etc. Every person we 'know' today is a stranger at some point of time. When we meet them, we make impressions about them. These impressions sometimes turn out to be true, but most of the times, they end up as false ones. Somebody said, "First impression is the best impression". I don't know what is the 'best' part in this because usually the first impressions we make about somebody is by their looks, the way they talk and their body language. So, in a way these impressions we make about somebody are influenced by what he/she is trying to project to us about himself/herself. But as you get to know in-person about him/her you'll know many of their traits, some of which might leave you surprised.

Everything looks good through a binoculars, but when you look through a microscope, it looks different.

P.S.: I don't carry a binoculars or a microscope physically. I keep them hidden in my eyes.. :) :P