Love Actually!!

From past couple of days, I had been wanting to watch this movie "Love Actually" for the reasons that are only known to me. It is movie that revolves around various classes of people include a British Prime ministers to C grade movie artists to already married man to an adolescent boy - All in search of love. Of course most of these themes are westernised and takes some effort to see them in Indian context.
When I was randomly browsing on Zee 5 app, I stumbled upon this Kannada movie, Happy New Year. I very much liked a song from this movie, apart from this I had no clue that it is influenced by Love Actually! Of course all themes are completely Indian.
Love is such an amazing experience, feeling or emotion which is impossible to express in words. I don't think it is mere longing for someone, it is such a profound concept, various artists have written very touching dialogs about love.
My favorite is - "True love is putting someone else before yourself, even if it means not being happy" from movie Frozen.
Yes true love is doing everything to make that person happy, even if it pains you. Here, the domain of love includes parents, kids, your true love, anybody you care for.

The movie Happy New Year depicts how each one of them, people from various rungs of life, find their love. One finds it by fulfilling her last wish on her death bed, one finds it in searching for her, a father, when his daughter and wife understands him, when a rowdy finds it is a foreign lady though he doesn't understand her language and so on... The movie managed to make my eyes moist, the song "Preethiya Hesaru Neenu" will keep filling my heart for a lasting time...

A story and music have so much power to fill an empty heart and to keep the person going. It was a well spent Sunday. A Sunday best lived!!

Some Vague thoughts

This post contains some of my random and raw thoughts, learnings, explorations, confusions on life...

Of late, Satya and I are discussing some of the next level stuff about life and existence. What is our purpose here, why do we have certain desires, how to control our minds, what is next?

Often times, I have failed to understand the meaning of 'Self' or the 'the soul'. I follow Swamy Sarvapriyananda's discourses on Youtube. I do understand to a certain extent but I feel there are gaps in my understanding.
Swamyji says meditation is the key to control the mind. We carefully prepare our food so that the stomach does not get upset from what we eat.
We don't just take a morsel of junk and put it inside our mouth. But we do exactly that with our minds. We take in things from the world indiscriminately and dump things into the mind until it becomes a mental dumpster. Through the cyclic process, these become part of subconscious mind. We don't have direct access to this part of mind.
I will write more as and when I get some more insights.

A random act can change someone's life forever

A random act of someone can change one's life forever. Changes can be positive and negative. Those resulting in positive changes are often selfless acts and we often forget to recognise.

Around March of 2019, my mental and physical state had reached its worst. My body weight had crossed 3 digit figure in kilo grams. I stopped evening walks, had very few clothes that fit my obese body. Could not sleep during nights. Was losing concentration at work. As a result of all these, I was losing confidence in myself. A trek to Bear mountain in March shook all of my confidence. I was struggling for breath after climbing one floor. I hope that was my worst ever possible state - mentally and physically. I believe I was on the verge of depression.

Yet, I was not doing anything. This is when my cousin Ganesha gave me a 7 day free pass to cult.fit fitness center. At this point I did not have a slightest idea that it is going to change my life forever.
Though he had been going there for several months, he had not pushed me to join. Madhu and I visited the JP Nagar 7th phase cult.fit center. The manager was nice and explained how things work. I signed up for free classes, then bought annual subscription, and the rest is history.

Now, I am regular at cult.fit and manage to do 2 sessions some days. This opened avenues to express myself. All my inhibitions were shattered, that dance move I had been suppressing for years, burning the flab that was always coming in my way, it is an awesome feeling at the end of the day.
In 4 months, I have lost 8kg of body weight, I easily fit into old clothes. Last week, I walked 15km at Turahalli forest, yesterday's 63+km friendship day bicycle ride is boosting a lot of confidence in me.

I must thank Ganesha for being the reason to change my life forever. Another lesson I learnt is, I should also always try to influence others for their well being - it doesn't matter if they follow, but my duty is to help.

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara

I don't know why I hadn't watched this movie so long. I kind of had an idea about the message the movie might convey, but for some reason avoided watching it. It was last Saturday (3rd August) that I eventually watched it.

Oh boy, I think it was my destiny to not have watched this movie so long and finally to watch now. It had profound effect on me, given my situation and mental state. I think there could not have been better timing. For sure it is going to have some change in my life (however small it may be)

I think most people can relate to many characters in this movie or have been through those situations. What stumped me are the dialogs, the movie has excellent, punching dialogs. Somewhere it felt like the script writer has stolen few dialogs from my life!! I would like to mention one here.

Sieze the day my friend.... pehle is din ko poori tarah jeyo, phir chalis ke bare mein sochna - Laila
So true, isn't it? Sometimes we miss living today worrying about future. So my version of this is - "Sieze the day, because you never know if you are going to wake up tomorrow"

So go ahead, do the things that you are always postponing - strum those strings that you always wanted to on that guitar, play those keys on the keyboard, sing from your heart, dance like you are crazy, write those lines.... don't let someone else spoil the day, because it is your day, you have to make best of it.

There was a plan of bicycle ride with my buddies Sridhar and Karthik on Sunday. The movie elevated my spirits for this ride. And it was friendship day too... what more could I ask for, it was one of the best days of my life. I hope this new found spirit will be part of me until my end.

My friend Satya said, "Shashi, the purpose of our existence is to express, not for survival". This too had great impact on me. May be it deserves another post.

Until then, Yay, life! Express yourself, it is your life, you have to live it.