To Dream is to Be

Currently I am reading this book – Wild At Heart by John Eldridge. Couple of you guys must have read it. For those who haven’t, get a copy as soon as you can. The book will stir within you a sense for adventure and a sense to get to the core of who you really are.
One of the key things that the book talks about is ‘Dreams’. Drawing from that I am writing this note or whatever you would like to call it.

What surprises me about many people these days is that they lack ‘The Dream’. You cannot blame them for that either. The current scenario that we live in doesn’t allow us to pursue our interests and at the same time be a ‘Family Man’ or the ideal girl. There has been a dynamic shift in our vision and goals that we set for our lives. Nowadays we live for Survival and not for dreams. Right now what one works for is a good job which pays well enough to enjoy two vacations a year, a nice family car, good schooling for the ‘munnas’, etc. there are very few of us that live to pursue a dream. A dream that is yours alone and a dream where your place is forever yours. It’s a tough call but an exciting and an adventurous one. Many will at this point scoff and say, that is all madness and it doesn’t happen now. That is the very reaction that some of us who live our life for that dream have to battle and many do succumb to the numb arrows like those that are aimed at them.

What we are going through right now, as I said earlier is a survival era. Here is where the poser’s part comes in. You see when many of us succumb to the numb arrows and compromise with our dreams; we end up living a life which was not meant for us. We end up even becoming someone else. Maybe you are not that someone else. You are meant to be you and the place you have in your destiny no one can take unless you let go of it. If many of our ‘role models’ had’nt dreamt, they simply wouldn’t be. Imagine this – if Sachin would have given in to his teachers sayings that cricketers don’t go anywhere and education is what will earn you your bread and butter, we wouldn’t have the Greatest Batsman in the World being from Mumbai. If Shah Rukh, Alshay or Aamir wouldn’t have dreamt we wouldn’t have had such fine actors in the world. Steven Spielberg dreamt of making movies ever since he was 8, if he wouldn’t have dreamt then and worked towards achieving that dream we wouldn’t have had half of the modern day classics.

Every person dreams different. Some dreams may be similar but not everyone dreams alike. And as I mentioned earlier, every dream has only one hero. The moment you deem it as impossible and unreachable without trying to work or live that dream you are letting go a part of yourself. I met a man in his fifties the other day, he looked with deep longing at a guitar lying next to him and told me about how he always wanted to be Hendrix or page but couldn’t because he thought it better to play it safe by joining a shipping company as an accountant. The longing in his eyes said it all. What if? That was his biggest battle. Times when he sits alone he asks him self, what if I had chosen the guitar over the numbers? 

To give up a dream is to give up a big part of you are and replace it with a self you either are or your not. It’s usually the latter. Then starts a circle of living a life, which we trudge along with dissatisfaction and the eternal What If’s? Sometimes taking the plunge into the unknown is the only option and often the more exciting one. The others even though more safe and monetarily satisfying wont give you the same thrill as what the fulfillment of your dream will give you. That is an experience in itself.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well its simple actually – 1) Personal Conviction and 2) I want to see a renewed youth and a world where the generations to come won’t be afraid of dreaming. A couple of days back my close friend Aditya and I were sitting and discussing our Golden Globe speech and another close friend came by and told u don’t dream such big things. Adi nonchalantly replied, dreams are the place where you define whether you will be or you wont. And why compromise while dreaming. Dreaming alone is not enough but we have gotta work towards living that dream or making it come to pass. Whats a dream if its not one to be? 

You see ever since I was a kid I always wanted to be a cricketer, but it’s a fact in Mumbai, most kids want to become Sachin Tendulkar. But circumstances and lack of encouragement thereof made me look in a complete different direction. Then I wanted to be a Chef but then once again due to a series of events that dream got crushed too. Finally after a lot of deliberation I chose to be in the Media field with the single focused dream of being an actor and a director one day. For that too i had to fight to get my way, you see by then I had made a decision not to give up no matter the pressure. And I am happy I did so. The field of Media gave me opportunities and breakthroughs that I had only Dreamt of. Now my dreams have become more ‘cinemascopish’ rather than the handicam quality types. Even though some dreams have been fulfilled faster that doesn’t mean it stops at that, it only means I start dreaming and aspiring new things and new heights and places. 

The question then arises. What if we fail? Then I would say try again. If you believe your dream, you don’t need it to come through, you will make it come through. Dreaming alone doesn’t help, as I said before. You need to work towards building and making your dream a reality. Sometimes we dream but don’t have the qualification or the gifting to, we need to be aware of these things and go about in enhancing our talents and gifting in that particular area. And if we still fail, then maybe we gotta pack bags and settle for the next best option. But then again you wont be like the 50 year old guy I met who lived in What if’s? at least you know you pursued it to the best of your abilities.

Never stop dreaming. Dreams motivate you and charge you up to reach higher and push yourself to the maximum. Imagine the satisfaction Tendulkar must have felt when he reached the 10000 run mark or every time he scores a century. I want to feel that feeling. When I am old I want to look back at my life and say yes I lived my Dream. I Dreamt and so am I.

To Whomsoever It May concern

Heeding your instructions
I set out to build a house 
Secure and acceptable.
Against my reason and 
Along your experience 
With labour and love
Pain and all I had 
To your suggestions I gave in
When the hardwork was done
And my labour of love 
To you I showed
With four words of supposed guidance
Of a better future and
A better character
Like a pack of cards my house you blew
The fresh paint you smeared 
With your rebukes and 
Foggy interpretations.
The beauty not appreciating
One window missing you saw.
My house so lovely 
So carefully made
For you to please, for you to lay
My weakness explored 
My strengths left flaying
Left alone in the wind
You went where you truly belonged
Leaving me in ruins
And tears and sorrow all I bore
Till one day the good lord
Came to me and showed
Not to you or for you
Have I ever to live
But my life is for me to make
And build
So my own house dear d I will now make
With my true being in it instilled
Your welcome to see and admire 
What I have build
Your rebukes
Leave to the passing wind

Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes – the first time I wrote the word I spelt it with two ‘T’s’. Its funny how this insignificant barely noticeable but highly stingable insect has become the subject of my highly esteemed blog which has been read by only three people so far, no sorry four that is including me.

Let me start off by saying I Hate Mosquitoes just as much I hate having the flu or eating boiled French Beans and burns on my backside after acidic meals. I loathe the very thought of mosquitoes for the sheer reason because of my eight hours of sleep, these less than half a centimeter insects ruin my eight hours of necessary sleep and make it a mere four hours, as a result of which I sleep during the day and miss out on a lot of good things I had rather be doing than sleeping to catch up my medically certified required sleep.

Let me tell you about my experiences with these ferocious insects. Their one bite wakes me from the best dream I may be having in days, a dream that consists of good food, pretty maidens some good rock music and me acting lead in a James Bond movie right at the part where i say “shaken not stir….”

I thought I had come to a place in my life where I could say I am immune to those little *peep* mosquitoes when they started biting with renewed vigor once again. This time they bit in the same places again and again. I wonder how much blood these fellows actually drink at one time. I mean common they bite forever and suck forever; do they have a Cameron Diaz Metabolism?

My three years in Dubai were the most peaceful as not one mosquito was ever seen in that place. The funny part about the mosquitoes at my place is that I kill literally about fifteen of them with the electric mosquito killing bat.

With the bat in my hand, I fancy myself to be a warrior set on a mission to destroy all the mosquitoes in the world and bring vengeance to the fallen species of mankind. Well I kill about twenty of them every night but the surprising thing is by three in the morning another battalion of mosquito attackers have made their way to parts of my body which I can’t specify in this blog for reasons you must be knowing. So I start killing them once again, this time I am more ferocious than Gengis in his epic battle. I swing my bat and watch them fry, fry to a painful death. The sickening stench of their burning bodies brings a smile to my face and I know that the entire world is looking up to me to clear the scum from the face of the earth. After half an hour another fifteen start biting me all over.

So clearly the bat was not working out for me since every mosquito I didn’t kill went back and called back his other friends to feast on my deliciously filled body.

Next I started using the mosquito coils, I nearly choked to death because of the fumes. My eyes watering and my nose wanting to cut itself away from my body and commit suicide, I bear the pain. I sleep peacefully for two nights. On the third day the mosquito coil is rendered useless, these fellows start biting again. So now I don’t only have to bear my watering eyes, suicidal nose but also the nasty stings these little fellows give me. 

According to my observations I think that mosquitoes have their own little world where they r given steroid shots to gain immunity to our mosquito mats, coils and liquids. The doctors labour day in and day out to find out solutions to our weapons of mosquito destruction and then inject them with those medicines and send them to collect blood form us out of which I think they are making a super mosquito that will wipe out the entire human race and conquer the world and rule over it.

But little do those tiny chaps know, I am going to foil these plans of theirs, I have come up with my own special recipe to kill mosquitoes. Its made out of human gas, yes the same gas you are thinking about. My weapon shall be read by early next year and I shall give the weapons to people who have been tormented by these insects and those who want to join me in the war for world peace. To those who want to join my underground movement of liberating the world of mosquitoes let me warn you that the fight is tough and some of us may lose our lives in the process, but this has to be done. its for us, our future, our future’s future.

I dream of a world where we can sleep in peace, we can sleep without fear of being stung by an insect. A world where we can sleep without our shirts and not be worried of how many mosquitoes may bite us. I dream of a world where mosquitoes are extinct. I dream of a world at peace while sleeping only in their underwear.

 

Delhi Blasts

firstly its pathetic that we, human beings have come down to a level where we cant sort things out by peacefully talking to one another and amicabilly sorting out differences. in my generations lingo, IT SUCKS. i guess the future holds guns and bombs on a day to day basis to resolve marital probelms or fights with neighbors. 

we all can invariably, as said by all news outlets, stand as one and say, yeah this should not happen and its disgusting and insensitive but truth be spoken to what extent does this affect us? do we really feel something deep down for the victims, for the people related to the victims. when we see the NSG and the bomb squad close to the live bombs doing their best to diffuse them, what are we thinking? are we waiting for the sensational or are we saying a prayer for their protection.

we are so exposed to terrorism and loss of lives at regular intervals that we have in a way vaccinated ourself from feeling for people. why?

a friend of mine whom i was telling about the Delhi bomb blasts made this comment, "oh, only twenty people died?". i sent her an IM with "?" and she replied saying, "Well Errol i have become so used to listening to 200 and 500 people dying that 20 seems like hardly anything."

i didnt reply to the IM. what would i tell her anyways?

have we lost the concept and value of life? do we measure life by 'how many' rather than'who'? can only news of a thousand people dying and another five thousand living like semi hacked vegetables for the rest of their lives make people feel for others? is that what we "God's most acomplished masterpiece" have come down to? a level which is actually is a marsh land of sinking sand made up of our modernistic values and outlook so tainted by the 'me' concept that we fail to see our very own next door neighbor struggling.

with the happenings of Orissa and now delhi its time we try and find that heart of ours and just for a brief moment focus it all on the cryings of mankind thorughout our country itself. i am not a social, PETA, WWE or watever activist. i am a normal human being who feels because as rightly said one day someone whom i dearly love may be there dying or even dead and at that time i would want my fellow indians to stand with me and just for a moment understand my pain and in that moment make it their own.

i guess the terrorists too have found out about this laid back mentality of ours, they must be thinking "oh well lets develop bigger bombs now, people dont care about one or two they want hundreds to be rattled" and that is what is happening. they are now making advanced bombs - bombs with more power, difficult to diffuse. 

we in a way are responsible for bringing things to this state. i am not condemning everyone for i too am guilty of, at times having the 'so what' attitude. i mean well as long as its not me its cool right? but well today was different, i felt the pain once again and i appeal to you as a friend take time off and think about these victims and say a small prayer for them, God listens at all times, that little miracle they witness of their life coming thorugh may be the result of your prayer.

thanks for bearing with my outburst.

Pain

i have been down with fever, cold, cough, headache, delusions, alien visitations, etc. you know the package deal you get once you get the flu. it was a hectic time, trust me. sucks to have cough, cold and a headache at the same time, you have no clue what irritates you more and that irritates you all the more. 

so yeah initially i thought it was my body that was aching, but no my body seemed ok compared to my breathing cycle. i took a deep breath in and realised my nose is blocked and every time i tried to suck in whatever stuff was within the nose of mine my head felt like it was doing the rounds in a 1975 rickshaw with himesh reshammiya remixes on.

so yeah my neighbor, the typical plump lady, walks in and tells me "baba the headache is because of your fever". looking at her smiling at me with concern and those aged brows frowning with wisdom i said, "OK lets get this fever out". 

out came the tiger balm and heaps of it on my chest, neck, ribcage and back. well friends the next 10 minutes was agony, it was satan using my stomach as a training ground for eternal fire!!!!

anyways i bore through that just as well a baby would, shouting, bawling, jumping around and tucked myself in with come collective soul (god bless them) music.

so the next morning my fever was gone but the headache, it still remained. now this is not your regular run of the mill headache its the headache that makes you say your final confessions and prepare for the great judgement before the Big J himself. 

so yeah once again i took in whatever it is my nose is holding for this holiday season and the headache got worse. so yes i knew the problem was my nose. i did my whole two month baby routine again and my aunt, after two days of agonising pain comes and tells me oh you have cold??? well here baba take this. it was some nasal drops. after getting the nasal drops in, my nose thankfully is cleared. 

the headache is still on though. its like a stupid teenager who has just learnt to mouth fag and wants to try every cigarette at the pan beedi shop where no one will catch him/her/it/(alien genders) - now u know what i mean by delusional?

so yeah my head hurts. still. it has no connection with my fever, cold, cough, pancreas. its an entity in itself which needs to be treated separately.

well this is my observation about pain -

if more than one part of your body hurts, trust me all hurt equally bad. its just a matter of which pain you identify more with.

for example - i thought my body hurt more than my nose and head. but no all hurt equally bad when looked at in itself. its just a matter of shifting focus form one to another.

why did i write all this? i have no clue

but hey there was a lesson to learn.