Rats

Ah, the great truth of life:
It's a rat race. Even if I win, I'd still be a rat.
No one wins in a rat race. It's a round track, and everone's running, huffing, puffing, trying to overtake others.
The only ones enjoying the race are those in the stands :)
---
Why am I running?
It's pretty obvious, someone tells me. And it is.
Why did the pig cross the road?
To actualize its potential. That's what it's all about.

Quotes!!

These are some of the fav quotes. I have a long list actually, so will keep adding them here or maybe put them to other posts. Either way, you should be expecting a lot of them on this page :)


"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-Marianne Williamson

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“Sometimes you have to give up who your are to become who you can be.”
- Blaine Taylor

"If you're still in control, you're not going fast enough!"

"If the going is getting too easy, maybe you're going downhill!"

Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)


"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
- Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.

“An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red stoplight. The truly wise person is colorblind.”
— Albert Schweitzer

"Ships are safe in the harbor, but that's not what ships were made for."

Why sex is better than religion: There are laws against forcing sex on minors who can't think for themselves.

"Any fool can turn a blind eye to reality. It takes a special kind of idiot, though, to ignore a dream."

"Nothing is worth more than this day."
- Goethe

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

"There's no such thing as strong coffee. Only weak people."
- Mike Walton

"They came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a communist;
They came for the socialists, and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist;
They came for the union leaders, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a union leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me."
- Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984

You know you've spent too much time on the computer when you spill milk and the first thing you think is, 'edit, undo.'

"I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus With tigery stripes, and a face on it Round as the moon, to stare up. I want to be looking at them when they come Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots. I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces. Now they are nothing, they are not even babies. I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods. They will wonder if I was important."

We, the Nation

It's been two weeks since I last posted. A lot has happened since then. A lot to write about. I should start off with what's on my mind at the moment.

Manu Sharma got a life sentence in the Jessica Lall murder case. A lot of things about this case bother me . It depicts the times we're living in, the system, the public -everything, it's a collage, a portrait of the present India. A well-connected politician's son shoots a bar-tender in a high profile party and thinks he can get away with it. What's worse, he almost did. Had it not been for the relentless pursuit shown by the media, Manu Sharma would've gone scot-free along with the others (Vikas Yadav- who also happens to be a co-accused in the Nitish Katara case and Amardeep Singh Gill).

The case is also a shining example of the hypocricy that sorrounds us. When Shayan Munshi said that he was not supposed to be there, I agree with him. He was the only one, who stuck his neck out, and deposed before the police. He was as brave as he could get. Others present at the party didn't even bother. And when he later retracted, everyone went hysterical. Talk shows discussed how shitless he was to retract, newspaper articles discussed ethics, morality, bravery and Shayan Munshi. Let me clarify at this point - I'm not trying to absolve Shayan Munshi of his guilt. I'm sure he sometimes gets sleepless nights thinking about whether he should've taken the other route.The point is that most of us would've done the same in similar circumstances , just that we would never admit it, hypocrites that we are -all of us.I also know there are some who would do what's right. Bina Ramani is one of them, and I respect her for that.

All's well that ends well. Jessica Lall did get justice, after all this . This along with several other high-profile convictions (Priyadarshini Matoo case, Shibu Soren) will definitely reaffirm the lost faith in the judiciary among the people. I sure do feel good. I hope this feeling lasts for some time.

Oh, and yes, it's a long weekend, and since I don't have any special plans for Christmas (as yet), more posts would follow :).

Hairy tale

I've finally applied for a driving license through an agent and went today for my learner's. Nine people, all of us, cramped together. The only girl amongt us was pretty mad coz of the delay that had been caused and was fuming. Ofcourse, I didn't tell her that I was the cause - I had come in late, and on top of that, filled up the forms in the office, which had taken up some further time. I tried to steer the conversation to somewhere else. Big mistake! The lady happened to be doing research in physics, and as it turned out, loved analysing things. At this point, she invited my inputs on whether the gentleman with his wife in front of us wore a wig (I told her the hair is real - it's the head that's fake). Points in support, points against them, and finally had me convinced that he did indeed wear one. After which, she claimed he shouldn't have, since he was married.

Fact 1: I'm going bald.
Fact 2: I'm single.

Was she suggesting me to wear a wig?

Bleary-eyed!

The transition from the nice-cocooned life at IIT to the corporate-job life is huge. It's not difficult, just huge. More so for someone like me (in majority, in case you didn't know).

Tom Peters summed it all up pretty well : "Some people enjoy corporate life; then again some people enjoy nipple clamps."

Enjoy people. :)

"I'll moider da bum."

I've finally managed to get myself my a new blog (after an almost year long hiatus). My lukkhagiri had reached to such gigantic proportions in recent times (courtesy the time gap owing to the shift in job) that I could literally feel the rust coming off my head. After exhausting the huge database of movies that I had, reading the books that I had meant to for a long time, waiting for and watching Shireen Bhan on CNBC TV 18 shows and other random stuff, I had nothing better to do. So here I am.

I start the new work on Monday, so it's still 3 more days to go. I am also supposed to go through this reading material, which I haven't even started, and I don't think I'll be doing it in the near (or distant future), so we'll rather move on to something else. As George B Shaw (rightly) put it:"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."

Hopefully, I'll be penning down stuff here regularly.

BTW, If you are wondering about the title - that's what heavyweight boxer Tony Galento said, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare.:)