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Was watching an old interview of Yash Chopra…He was talking about ‘Lamhe’ (my all-time-favorite movie)! He said “Lamhe was so dear to me that when it flopped, for almost six months I couldn’t do anything! After all, it was a part of me…my heart!”

In life, we all have something – a venture, a project, a deal, an exam or a relationship – to which we give our ‘everything’ and it still doesn’t work out in the end! Leaving us wondering how to deal with it…?

The problem is that…All of us are very good (actually too good for our own good) at calculating and concluding! We live our life almost like ‘stock-market update’…keeping a daily log of our movement…declaring ourselves a success or a failure almost every evening or weekend! That leaves us seeming like a ‘commodity’, traded on the perception-exchanges of the world!

But then…it is natural, isn’t it? Because if we don’t have benchmarks then how would we evaluate things? After all, we are accountable to someone somewhere for everything…Well! That’s where my difference-of-opinion is…

I do agree that all of us are answerable to the world for our deeds, but if the world has all the right to evaluate us by our results (the destination) we should still reserve the right to evaluate ourselves also in terms of our effort (the journey)! So, it is important to accept the world’s definition of failure and get affected temporarily by it, yet not letting it permanently change your definition of success!   

A testimony to it is…when in the end, Yash Chopra said with a smile “It is my favorite movie, my most cherished experience, as I came really stronger out of it…Because, the fact that it failed cannot change another truth…‘that I had given my BEST to it!’”

Chasing something is a bigger thrill than……actually getting it! …Re-living it all over again…courtesy initiation of a research pending for almost an eon …!

Well! Coming out of your comfort zone and being back to where ‘rubber meets the road’ is not really much comforting. A part of you feels daunted, wanting to go back to the familiar terrain of your cozy world, where you are the king of your roost…where people know you by your nick-names…where your life runs via either your organizer or the schedule on the board. In short… ‘Your space’!

But you forget how you reached that so-called ‘your space’. What today you call ‘yours’ was also once alien to you, a part of the wilderness that you always feared! So, in fact, nothing is really yours except that very quest which brought you there. So! In other words, I am again out there…testing the hypothesis!

…You know something! Yesterday only, I saw something really special! A young man was driving a scooter, with an old woman sitting on the backseat and in her lap sitting a little child (must be her grandson, son of the man driving)! The woman was holding man’s shoulder with one hand and the child with other…and child holding man with his hands!

…Well! They say it right…Your future is nurtured in the hands of your past…driven by your present! Or, in other words, the only way to go forward… is to go back to your roots!

So…! Back to…‘where rubber meets the road’!

There are some conversations you wish would never end…It was one of those!

It was Doctor’s Day and every year, I make sure that I pay a visit to a few who have been close to me over the years… not wanting to miss an opportunity to say “Thanks”!

…He is a famous Doctor and it has been our privilege to count ourselves as his family-friends. In his 60s, he is a Teddy Bear personified; with cheeks bulging out so much as if commanding to be Coochie…Coooed! Possibly still hanging on to night’s hangover, he was in a jolly good mood! Speaking like a story-teller, and sounding like a Sufi…

He shared with me that yesterday one of his cousins had died. As there were many pending patients so when he reached, his cousin was already ashes and his other cousins were pretty upset with him! When I asked “Then?” he smiled and said “Nothing! I asked them to come with me for a few minutes and took them to a famous Lassiwala…! First they were startled but I said ‘Yaar dekho…maut apnaa kaam kar rahi hai isliye zindagi ko apnaaa kaam karna chaahiye!’ ” (I was not sure whether to laugh my heart out or to bow my head in!) And when I asked “Then?” he winked his eyes and said “They could refuse to me…but who can refuse to Lassi?”

I was literally in splits and even before I could stop, he said “This is nothing! Once when someone died in my friend’s family, along with the Tiffin for all the guests, I sent through my servant a bottle of scotch with ice and glasses, and also a note saying ‘if you feel hurt then please accept my apology and return the bottle’…”! When I – wide-eyed – asked “Then?” he said “Nothing! Servant came back with a note saying ‘Everyone gave consolation but no one gave the medicine! Thanks!!!”…

…While laughing hysterically, I asked him “How can you do this?”…He said “You know! I have built a wall around me, not allowing any sorrow to touch me…no matter what happens! And I try to do the same to others…”

When I said “But why?” he looked straight into my eyes and said “Who knows better than a Doctor…that one’s time is limited…!”

…I almost felt like saying “Happy Teacher’s Day”!

PS: I am a teetotaler and thought a lot about deleting ‘his reference to scotch’ from this blog…but then decided to trust my readers’ maturity and discretion!

It’s dark outside…and it’s raining! And I am standing in the balcony…with some raindrops on my face and many memories in the lump of my throat…

Years back, Grandma would go sit in the balcony when cows would start returning home; refusing to come inside until all the members of the family would come back in the house…Waiting anxiously, staring through her glasses… wishing to go much farther than her eyes could reach…

And when everyone would be in, she would slowly walk back to her bed…sitting there with a sense of calm…as if her world was complete!

Now…the inhabitants of that house have travelled away and far…following their destinies…coming back to different houses in different cities…

Now, Grandma is not there…

…possibly that’s why we all come late.

Rajesh Khanna has already died…in his own eyes, years back, with his stardom!

The testimonial to the phenomenon he was is that Amitabh, in an interview, confessed that he felt huge inferiority-complex due to Kaka; and he discretely remembers that he got so envied looking at Khanna’s photo on a cover-page, that he muttered “Ye bandaa khaata kya hai! Iske gaal itne gulaabi ho kaise sakte hain!”

But as they say… “A girl looks beautiful as long as she doesn’t know that she is…and a guy seems intelligent as long as he doesn’t test if he is!” Similarly, when Kaka got aware (and addicted) of the kind of impact he has on people, the impact started diminishing!

Possibly, at first he was too innocent to be wise, and then too wise to stay that innocent! Whatever the cause, time changed…but Kaka got stuck in the time-zone of yesteryears, choosing to lock himself in his own self-image, within periphery of his own house…

But why did this happen??   

Somebody said it beautifully…With one-tenth of his talent, one-fourth of his looks but half of his waist-size, Jeetendra made a long and successful career as a hero, due to only one reason – Discipline!

Kaka, while getting carried away with his success in the form of wrong habits, people and choices; forgot that the exhilarating lad called ‘talent’ is a huge curse, unless accompanied by its boring ally…

…Boring, because by definition, Discipline is“doing those things that you don’t like to do…to get those things that you would like to get…

(written last night…pretty late)

It was a tough day…! Actually it was meant to be…and I knew it even before it had begun!

On such days, I either just keep working, working & working or reading, reading & reading; because I know that if I would give mind any option to think then it would slip into its lows. Today also, I did the same but I knew that…this time the odds were heavily against!

Today happens to be the death-anniversary of one of my closest friends…

He was one of the best people I have known…and I wonder how almost all such good people meet similar fates; as if goodness is a curse! Possibly, he was too-good-to-be-alive…emotional, empathetic and idealistic.

He was going through a really difficult (and long) phase…We all know how such a phase is…when you come to discover the superficiality of relationships, fragility of friendships, insensitivity of the world and vulnerability of your own will-power. You suddenly come to realize that you are just a resource…meant to be deployed, for optimum utilization!

But strangely, he had just started looking up…And I remember when I asked “How have you suddenly become so fine?” he said “It’s a mask bhai! Because now I don’t find anybody close enough to trust my sorrows with!” Possibly, he was convinced that nobody would stand by his side if he would share his real self, which still had depression, sadness and anger…As if he had simply given up on ‘trust’!

The day reminds me that under the veil of ‘All-is-well’, there are many such sensitive-souls amongst us who are just one bad-day away from destruction…just one wrong-decision away from collapse! Let’s help such people retain their innocent faith that they would not be left alone…

…I am saying this because somewhere I know that he did not die of the battles he was fighting…he died of the feeling that it was ‘He…versus…rest-of-the-world’.

“John who??? I don’t know any person with this name”… was Bipasha’s reaction to a question asking her response to John Abraham’s wedding plans with Priya Runchal…

…One of the most difficult things in life is to accept that the person, who once loved you, doesn’t love you anymore… And even more difficult thing is to accept that now that person loves someone else…!

Right through those butterflies-in-the-stomach first feelings… sentimental late-night messages…intense craving for each other… passionate trysts…and for-ever promises; one fact that can’t be denied is that in the process of being in love with someone, we subconsciously start pursuing a bid to own him/her!

…Yes! It is almost impossible to resist the temptation to possess the one you love! And ironically, the moment we start possessing people, we start to treat them as things! Then… it is difficult to stomach their individuality, their prerogative-to-choose and their right to change…

Moreover, we forget that emotions are Eternally-in-motion…transient by their very nature! So it’s only commonsensical that if people can fall in love…they can also fall out of it! Who are we to decide that they shouldn’t? ‘Storm doesn’t disappear by your closing the eyes’…Change is always impending! And if that change eventually comes, then it is hard to let go…

Let’s remember that Loyalty is a beautiful virtue as long as it is voluntary, and not imposed. And let’s also not forget that…True love liberates! …

… This gets beautifully manifested when Sanjay Dutt said about her ex Ria and Leander Paes “They look beautiful together! I am so glad that she is getting all the happiness she had always deserved..!”or Honey Irani telling her ex Javed Akhtar “While flipping album of Farhan’s marriage, I got so proud to realize that Shabana was in more photographs than I was in!”…… Well! Javed Akhtar felicitously says “Mujhe is baat ka fakr hai ki talaaq bhi hamaari dosti ka kuchh nahin bigaad sakaa!”

Yes! It’s easier said than done…but let’s try that when we say ‘my own people’…we don’t mean ‘my owned’ ones!

PS: …it’s as true in social & professional space, as in personal.

There is nothing more special than to witness a champion making a comeback…!

Watching Masha (as Maria Sharapova is known to all us fans across the globe) winning the French Open the other evening felt as good as I have ever felt!

…Not because she is one of the richest athletes in the world, but because she is the girl who left her home-country at an age of seven to pursue her dream…Not because she is one of the most beautiful girls to adorn the tennis court, but because she is the girl who was written-off during months of lonely fight with injuries and isolation…And not because she is world no. 1 today, but because she climbed up to here from the 126^th rank where she found herself after resuming her journey to redemption!

…I am sure Late Harivansh Rai Bachchan would be proud of what seemed like the perfect personification of the spirit best-captured by his legendary lines “Ye mahaan drashya hai…chal rahaa manushya hai…ashru shvet rakt se… lathpath… lathpath… lathpath…agnipath…agnipath…agnipath” (meaning that there is no greater sight in this world than to see a man carrying-on on his path – the path of fire – in spite of all the pain, hardships and hurts)!

…And what makes it more special is that she did it not to prove the world wrong or to prove herself right! When she was asked ‘how?’, she simply said “I love my work…I love playing tennis…and when your love for something is bigger than all other things, then you continue to keep getting up in the morning and hitting the court… believing that you can still be better at it!”

That’s the stuff legends are made of! …When the whole world is saying “You won’t”, they say I “will”… …epitomizing the virtue thus called… Will-Power!

It’s amazing how when people travel, they discover all the appetite of the world in them…wanting to eat everything they come across! …and more surprisingly, everything tastes soooooo good!

Actually speaking through experience…! Well! Took a rare break for a day and went to the original native-village …with our kith-n-kin! The best compliment to such a big-joint travel comes when the driver says he enjoyed more than he ever did! The most representative thing about a Kuttumb is how everyone can finish each other’s sentences (as if they were Fill-in-the-Blank Qs)… how the same humor clicks to multiple people at the same time…and how all vintage anecdotes sound new, inspiring the same laughter again (even in installments)! … It’s purely fundamental-fun!!

There is another offshoot of such togetherness…when one of the senior ones proposes a plan then everyone has to conform to it; and the beauty is that after sometime you forget whose decision it was, and it becomes ‘our choice’! …In our case, it was, visiting one of the most revered places of worships on the way!  

I am not a very religious person in the conventional sense of the word! So again, the mob-mindedness in the name of darshan and collective-filth in the name of chaddhaava put me off completely. Add to it the commercial undertones at every step of the process and I was totally tuned out.

But what I hate to admit is that while I was there, I got possessed by the beautiful resonance that got created as a result of so many people gathered at one place, for the same purpose, looking towards the same thing & singing the same words! And when I left, there was an utter silence inside the heart… as if somebody had aligned the fractured soul through an unseen plaster!

As we further continued towards our destination, a realization had dawned on me that ‘Modern Man’ is an idiot! While he attaches his opinions to everything, he forgets that… “You can only analyze the things that are before or beneath you…and NOT the ones that are beyond you and your tiny-understanding of this grand phenomenon called LIFE”…

…Those things are meant to ‘be experienced’!