My fight with Existential crisis

I am sure at some point in time, everyone faces one or more of these questions

• What is the purpose of my life?
• Why should I exist?
• Who is going to remember me when I am gone?
• How should anyone remember me as, when I am no more?
• Does anyone know/care that I exist?
• Why should I achieve anything at all in life?

and so on....
When faced one or more of above questions, you are dealing with "Existential Crisis". (Actually, I did not know that it is a general term even when I chose the title of this post!!)

Since, I am writing this post, it is very clear that I am currently facing Existential crisis. If I think deeply, I know I will get into depression. So, without giving into the easy ways, let me document my ways of fighting with it. Although, I had my own downtime of couple of weeks.
The solution is simple - "A sound mind in a fit body".

How to achieve a fit body - Simple Join a gym. I was so lucky, I should thank my cousin Ganesha who introduced me to Cult.fit. It is changing my life beyond I could imagine. As of today, I have lost 10kg of weight in 5 months. I am actually in a jolly good mood now.
I enjoy weight and strength exercise, dancing, boxing and prowl.

• Cover at least 100km of bicycle ride each month.
• Walk at least 30km each month.

To keep track of my resolutions, I must keep posting my progress every month here. I am doing it for myself, so no cheating here :)
So, I tackled my "Fit body" problem.

Then comes to tough one - the sound mind. Mind is something that is extremely volatile. There is no limit to the train of thoughts that pass through the mind. Most of the times, I wonder how I ended up with a particular thought. The train is lost! It is extremely difficult to keep the mind from wavering around. It steals away sleep. No matter how much tired the body is, if the mind does not stop its activity, it is a sleepless night. I had my quota of sleep deprivation. My overall productivity hit the bottom. I had to do something to stay relevant in the universe. Thats where I went to my friends for help. And below are my resolutions to take the flaky mind to a sound one.

• Read lot of books - Starting with "Travel gods must be crazy"
• Learn a new language - Spanish
• Learn a new skill - Learning guitar since 3 weeks.
• Regular journal of my activities (hence this post!)
• Master a technology - Machine Learning and AI
• Give the world, something it needs, free of cost - Teach somethings I am good at. This is still being shaped.

Wow, so many things to achieve in one short life, what I am waiting for.... Hey, world here I come!

Actually writing this post itself is bringing a lot of positive impact.

Recent movies about intense love

After almost more than a decade, I watched a Telugu movie, Dear Comrade. I watched it because I loved the Kannada version of the song - "Kadalante kaada kannu". It is kind of crazy, liked the Kannada song and watched the Telugu movie. But that is not the point.

The movie was quite refreshing. I don't want to go over the story line, but want to document my take on 'love', the intense version of it.

Another movie is Kabir Singh. I didn't know its original is Arjun Reddy, until a friend told me. I watched this movie after falling in love with its songs.

In both the movies, the boy and girl love each other intensely. Both movies deliberately ignore the details or the reason for their intense love. It is just given. Once we fall in love, we can't find reasons for it. The suffering after break up, is so intense and painful. Both the girl and the boy go through it. The more you love, the more you suffer due to break-up. The suffering just increases, because both love each other, and both think they are correct. Their reason is not selfishness, not to inflict pain in other, not hatred for someone, not misunderstanding, but it is pure love for one another. Both are ready to sacrifice anything, both love each other, but something keeps them apart. That is the strangeness of love. Somethings can't be explained at all. 

Perhaps a quite introspection could have helped, but things suddenly go out of hand due to aggression and anger. In both movies, it is shown that more suffering makes the love more intense. Not sure if that is the case in real life.

I started this post to express something, but I failed due to lack of words. Perhaps that is love, you can't express in words, you have to feel it. Finally it is love that wins over everything in the world.

A sound mind and productivity

A sound mind can do miracles. Even though it is very apparent, I failed to record the earlier episodes in my journal.

We all go through ups and downs in our life continuously, of course, that is life. When we face situations where we can not make decisions because we think whatever we decide is going to alter the course of our life. Actually the random events change the life more often.
The mind keeps weighing various options and starts projecting how each decision is going to affect the future. In this phase of life, the productivity is at its lowest. Because the mind is occupied with analysis of endless combination of inputs, decision and outcomes, we ignore to notice apparently obvious things.
At this point, friends play an important role. They provide perspectives that our mind is not capable of, due to its preoccupied thoughts. If things lead to depression, expert consultation helps.
But in my case, most of the times, I come out of this phase eventually (of course after couple of sleepless nights and some tragedy movies!), and voila, things become quite clear. I wonder, why was I not able to think this way.

Once the mind is on a high tide, we miraculously achieve many things, solve problems. I wonder how many people on this earth are fighting their own war. What if everyone makes peace with mind and become productive. We can make earth a much better place!!

I stumbled upon a Medium article about how to stop thinking. I liked these lines from it - No matter how much you want to achieve in the future, and no matter how much you’ve suffered in the past, appreciate that you are alive now.

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.

Hello journal!

I think it is time I resumed my journals and upgraded the infrastructure that hosts it. I will be back very soon.

Premam - The movie that woke up "the myself"

I am always excited to have done something that is a possible answer to the question, "When was the last time you did something for the first time?"

What did I do now? Well, I watched a Malayalam movie for the first time!! Of course with subtitles!

This is second time I watched a movie of unknown language. Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish movie was the earlier one.

Now, coming to the movie Premam - Oh boy! what a movie. It woke up "the myself" that was buried under the graveyard of long-term memories. The story of growing up, the infatuation, the love, the longing, the feeling of skipping a heartbeat in one sight, the elation, the depression, the pain, the feeling of butterflies in the stomach, the realities of life, the responsibilities... Oh boy, the movie took me back two decades ago.

What an amazing dancer Sai Pallavi is. Did I not feel like I want to learn dancing... The hell I did. I even hatched out some plans to learn dancing. I don't know how long that desire will last, but somewhere it found a place in my bucket list.

Did I love the natural beauty of Kerala? Yes of course, I want to travel all around Kerala, get drenched in the rain(Oh my god, I am missing rain!), another entry into the list!

Coming back to the story, it appeared like too centered around one character, but I bet everyone will find a place to live their past in that character. To me, the movie conveys the message that there is no thing such as end of the world, the best of life will eventually find you, enjoy the sweet pain(is this an oxymoron!?) of life. The beautiful emotion that only a human being can experience. I bet everyone would have a Mary and Malar in their life, hopefully a Celine would come along to bring out the best in what is left in it. I wish everyone finds their Celine.

I have fallen in love with the song "Malare", I am practicing the lyrics to hum along the song. Another good feeling to have subscribed to Apple Music.
Finally thanks to Madhu (my cousin) who told me about this movie. He does some good things at times!

Winter Trek to Kedar Kantha Summit - Part 1

Background

I was not planning for any trip this year, largely due to my career related changes that had put a restriction on time and budget. This was the reason I did not accompany Sridhar for Himalayan Odyssey 2015.

When Madhu sent two links to winter trek programs organised by youth hostels, the traveller in me started to get restless. I just needed a little push. Madhu also suggested me that it will be a good break from my hectic work-life. That was enough. Better than the break from hard work, I did not anticipate earning more friends from the trip.

Kedar Kantha

There were two choices - Sandakphu in West Bengal and Kedar Kantha summit in Uttarakhand. We chose Kedar Kantha summit as there weren't enough slots open for Sandakphu matching our dates. We wanted to plan something special on 1st Jan, after completing the trek.
Two of Madhu's friends (Harsha and Deepak, who were going to be my friends soon) and a cousin (Rajat, who happens to be a friend already) were joining the trek.

The plan

We started hatching out plans for the trek. Since we knew the roads and weather in Uttarakhand, we had to add buffer days and book accommodation till we reached our base camp at Sankri. It was amazing that the entire trip did not deviate from our plan, except for the ridiculous delay of return flight!

Considering lots of factors such as leaves, 1st Jan plan etc, we decided that 26th Dec would be our reporting day at base camp, Sankri. We worked backwards to arrive at departing date from Bangalore. 24th Dec 2015, Monday marked the historic departure for an adventure whose memory was going to be part of our lives.

We planned to reach Delhi by flight, take an overnight train to Dehradun. Take a bus to Purola (5-6 hours journey from Dehradun) and overnight stay at Purola. Following morning, a bus journey of 2-3 hours to reach Sankri base camp. Stay at Haridwar on 1st and 2nd Jan, 3rd Jan, stay at Delhi, 4th Jan early morning flight to Bangalore. 

The preparation

We started a WhatsApp group and a Google group to share information and collaborate.

All this happened around September 3rd week. I met Harsha and Deepak at Decathlon. It was shopping time to buy all the gears for the trek. Search started for proper Shoes, back pack, gloves, jackets, thermals, socks etc. Back packs were bought from Wildcraft and rest of the gears from Decathlon.
We all reserved our slots on youth hostels website for the trek, reporting on 26th December, 2015.

It was first Himalayan trek for Rajat, Harsha and Deepak. It was also first flight journey for Rajat, so our trek included several firsts in our group. 

I always want to optimise the budget to the extent possible. Only variable in the entire plan was the airfare. Harsha and I started checking out the airfare regularly. We got very good price for onward journey to Delhi on Go-Air. We waited for almost a month to get a good price for return flight. During this time, airfares were only going up and there was a apprehension in our minds that we might end up paying high price for waiting. Finally ended up getting a very good deal on Air India for return flight.

We started our fitness improvement activities, which mainly included jogging. I could reach my peak of jogging non-stop for 1km. I know that is stupid, but given my situation, that was my best shot. Others were more vigorous and did some group runs at Lalbagh on weekends. In December, I started working on a new project, that took all my time and energy, I could not even go for jogging regularly. I started to worry that I could become a long pole in the group.

The Departure

Finally the day of departure arrived. Fours of us reached airport in a cab and Deepak came alone(We all know a Tiger is solitary) as he lives in a different part of the town. Thus started a wonderful and unforgettable trip that was going to last our lifetime...

An achievement

I am always intrigued by the question, "When was the last time you did something for the first time". It is really challenging to do something new, especially when one is past average living age!
However, I feel elated when I do something that fits an answer to above question..
Yes, I am very proud to have completed a course on Coursera. I completed Machine Learning course with 96.9% score. It is a complex subject that required a lot of math. Luckily, this time I had company. Satya and I started this together and helped each other to recover from traps. Hope this is a good stepping stone to steer my career towards Statistics and Data Science.

Monsoon Trek to Kodachadri - Day 2

Sometimes we think others are too unfair to us. That was exactly what I felt when some devotees did not let us ride in their hired jeep, though there was plenty of space. Least did I know that Almighty had different plans for us!

Rain had given some brake in the morning. At poojari's house, we had a plate of plain and set dosa each. I never thought Dosa would be so tasty at that altitude and terrain. It was very tasty indeed. After breakfast, we did not want to trek down as the shoes were completely wet and fear of leeches. We requested some devotees if we could get a ride back to main road. Though there was space, they did not let us ride along. So we decided, it was futile to wait for more Jeeps as generally nobody comes up with vacant seats.

So we decided to trek down. I calculated that was a saving of 400 bucks!! We put our wet shoes on and started our descent. As expected leeches were waiting for us. Sun was out, no rains made it very humid and that is when leeches are very active. We had lost the leech candy that we carried previous day. So we were defenseless against leeches. We paused briefly in the clearing, but it is difficult to remove leeches without proper weapon. We covered the path swiftly and reached Santosh Hotel tight and fit. We had half a dozen leach bites in each leg and blood was oozing out, which is not scary anymore.

We departed from Santosh hotel after savoring fresh guavas and 2 shots of hot lemon tea. We decided to take an alternate route to reach main road, as the one we took yesterday for our onward trek was also infested with leeches. On the way, we thought of checking out at Iskcon temple. It was pretty big farm and Krishna temple there. We were just in time for afternoon prayer. We attended the pooja and the devotee there offered milk. That was quite tasty and gave me needed energy.

After the Iskcon temple, there is a deviation to the right, another Jeep trail. We walked along this new route. after about 10 minutes, we heard a stream flowing nearby. Few minutes later the stream was right next the jeep trail. Madhu was excited at this sight and asked a localite

Madhu - "ಇದು ಯಾವ ನದಿ?" (Which river is this?)

Localite - "ಇದು ಹಳ್ಳ.... " (this is just a pit...)

For us it was heavenly, we immediately decided to take a shot at the water. We did not realize we had spent more than 1.5 hours in the water. It was very refreshing.

The walk to the main road was easy. On the way, we bought a jack fruit too. At Kollur, had nice darshan of Goddess Mookambika. While walking back to the bust stand from temple, booked return tickets on VRL, thanks to technology. After having some light food, it was time to get back to Bangalore traffic.

Epilogue:

The Jack fruit wasn't very tasty. Few leech bites were itching for a week. Memories are ever lasting.

Dreams - Chemical activities in brain

This was very strange. I was trying to find a derivative of myself, and was shocked when I found it is zero. How is it possible? I am not a constant function, I was awakened from sleep, I realized it was a dream. I was sweating, could not sleep for a long time.

I have been studying Calculus recently as a prerequisite for more deeper Neural Network. This is my yet another honest attempt to understand Neural Networks. It was like Déjà vu going through differentiation after more than a decade. I think, I still don't remember the complete dream, but it was really strange. I can't believe I was trying to find derivative of myself!!
The following day was very dull which was expected. I could not sleep following night too, woke up at 12AM and watched 'August Rush'. I loved the movie. The amazing effect music has on someone like me who don't understand the technicality.
It brought me back my new dream to learn music. Not sure how it is going to affect the brain cells. It has been 2 days and no dreams yet!!

Monsoon Trek to Kodachadri

Day 1:

It has been one of my dreams to trek to Kodachadri in monsoon. It came true on the last weekend of June 2015. This was my 4th time to Kodachadri, but this one was going to be a special one.

Madhu readily agreed to join when I told him about the plan. I did 5 rounds of running/walking in Vijaya bank layout park on a sunday and some 30 min work out another day. That was my fitness test to ensure I can endure the trek!

We reached Kollur at 8:30AM by SRS sleeper bus, one hour behind the schedule. Freshened up and had idly and dosa at a local Ganesha hotel. The KSRTC bus conductor was grumpy and did not seem to like 2 lunatics with heavy backpacks trekking to Kodachadri in the rain. Nevertheless, he was kind enough to stop the bus at the trek starting point. It is unrecognizable now, because of overgrowth of vegetation in rainy season and concrete road.

Get set go....

A step out of concrete road, there were waiting ever hungry leeches ready to suck our blood. After tightening the shoe laces and making sure everything is fine, we began our walk into the wilderness by about 10:30AM. It is a walk through a defunct Jeep trail for about 5 km initially before actual climb begins. For about 3km from mail road is thick jungle and lot of fallen leaves on the trail had made it perfect setting for the leeches. There were dry patch of open land where we could stop and remove the leeches. Since the gradient was small and we were brisk, not many leeches managed to reach skin. It was however drizzling intermittently.

After about 5km we come to a small village called Valur. It was approximately 12:15 when we reached Santosh Hotel, which is now quite famous in blogs, is a good resting point. The hot lemon tea was very refreshing. As usual, Madhu had a dosa here. I was happy with nice guava and lemon tea. By this time, rain gods were in full mood. We left Santosh Hotel at about 1PM.

 Jeep Trail, near Valur

Made some friends @ Santosh Hotel

The path becomes steep and it is through thick jungle. That means, it is leech territory, where leeches were brisk and we were slow. Thanks to the Santosh Hotel owner who gave us a weapon to fight against leeches (A mix of salt, tobacco and lime tied in a cloth and a stick to hold the lump). This was quite effective, a touch of the tip will make the leech fall off. Once has to see it working to appreciate it. There were lot of trees fallen across the trail, raining heavily, we had to take a short detour into the jungle to go around and find the track. All this had to be done very quickly, a second pause will give a dozen more leeches to get onto the shoe and make their way inside. Once off track, it is very difficult to get back on track because it is very easy to loose orientation inside the jungle. Every direction looks same, fear of leeches and heavy rain will make it crazy.

Negotiating Obstacles...

The weapon to ward off leeches!

After about an hour of climb, we reached a bald patch of the mountain. I remember the view from here was breath taking, in my earlier trips. But this time, we were in the clouds. We could hardly see anything few feet away. Occasionally mist cleared giving us the glimpse of the surrounds. It was totally out of the world. Heavy winds were making rain drops reach ground horizontally. It was as if some one was spraying water on me. I just sat here on a rock and enjoyed the sound of wind and rain. This is where one feels a connection with nature. Mind becomes empty.

The paradise!

There is one more stretch of climb through thick jungle before we reached Kodachadri. Throughout the climb it was raining continuously. Thanks to the de-leeching stick, both of us reached the peak without a single leech byte. I consider that as an achievement given my fitness level. It was about 3:30PM, approximately 4.5km uphill trek.

When we reached the government inspection bungalow (IB), water was dripping all over us. The guy in charge asked us to dry ourselves outside. Entrance hall to the IB was all wet and I could understand the situation. The rooms have to be dry to sleep in night and naturally the IB in charge was quite irritated. After having quick lunch (wasn't great!), we started towards the Sarvagna Peeta. This is where Sankaracharya witnessed goddess Mookambika. 

This was the best part of the trek. Rain gods lashed us with full fury. Continuously rained till we reached the peak, which was approximately about 1.5km uphill from IB. It was as if gods wanted us to bath in fresh water before visiting Sarvagna Peeta!! It is a dilapidated stone mantapa, inside is a stone statue of Sri Sankaracharya. Sat here and closed my eyes, let all the thoughts flow. This is where one can review all thoughts - happiness, miseries, challenges, achievements and strike a balance. When I was ready to leave, felt lighter. After this would prefer to walk in silence.

Rain had stopped by this time. Sun was setting in west. Started walking back to the IB. There s a small Ganesha temple in a cave (50m detour on the way). It was very pleasant and calm. Offered sesame seeds laddu to Lord Ganesha.

I was not in a mood to eat dinner, so slipped inside the sleeping bag and called it a day.

I was never so confused...

All along the way to home today, after reaching home, I have this strange feeling. I was not normal. My heart feels heavy, mind confused, I am totally blank. It was like the sixth sense at work. 

Unable to comprehend what was happening to me, I just sat in my room alone. It was a terrible feeling, I had to sort it out, otherwise I know I can't sleep for days.

I just sat alone and started introspecting. What happened today. I had just resigned from my job at Honeywell. What does it mean?

1) I am unemployed. There is no protection.

2) I will not get salary. I have planned to take care of stuff for few months.

3) The world outside is wild. There is no corporate might that protects interests. I am prepared for this.

4) I have to work harder. I love this.

5) I will no longer meet, talk to my friends regularly - Yes. The heart beat is confirming, this is the reason for my mood swing. I am afraid that I am going to miss wonderful people I was working with. I am going to miss tea times, all interesting discussion during lunch, deep technical discussions, debugging and solving problems, spontaneous humor. This is what I am going to miss most. I am already feeling lighter as I discovered the reason. I convince myself, I can be in touch with my friends by various means. So, it is like going onsite, though there is no Lync or Outlook as in corporate, but there are WhatsApps and Facebooks in social space.

At the end of this writeup, I am feeling relaxed and lighter. Things are getting clear.I think I need a really heavy movie to cheer back, I think Shawshank Redemption will do the job.

Power of Subconscious mind!!

It was dark. I am running to escape from a big ball of rock that is rolling towards me. I am huffing and puffing in my bid to escape from it. I know it is going to crush me, unless I did something. Suddenly a screen flashes in front of me with two options.

Somehow I know the option "DISMISS" is my only option to escape from the impending doom. As the rolling rock approaches me, I press "DISMISS". Suddenly, everything is calm and placid.

When I woke up, it was 7:30 AM and it was bright and sunny outside the window. I am confused, what happened to the alarm clock? All the dramatic events came flashing in my mind(conscious one this time). Bloody hell, my subconscious mind is playing with me. The stupid thing that is the result of some chemicals in my brain tried to control me. What the heck. Next day, I kept the mobile on the table, farther away from where I sleep!

By the way, I sketched that picture... something I did after an eternity!

Back! after a long peregrination

Finally I am back to writing after a long, nomadic peregrination. A lot of things have changed for me. I too tried a lot of things, but nothing gave me solace as writing. This is how I talk to my-real-self, look back, reflect, retrospect, introspect, fix things that can be fixed, cherish beautiful memories.

Wow, I am feeling so relieved that I am back to writing. It feels so good to write, I will need good content to write about, so I must do certain cool things that would become the content, then I write about it. I hope this virtuous cycle would give me enough escape velocity to jump to a higher orbit. That sounds like a good plan. All the best for me to execute it!

My Love Story - Books

Books are great companions that are always by my side wherever I needed or not needed. Just carry a book everywhere, it will always act as a filler for boredom. I am forever grateful to my pal Sridhar who introduced me to this wonderful hobby. Back in engineering days he gave me this book, Jurassic Park, written by one of my favorite author, Michael Crichton. That is when I fell in love with books.

Recently I finished The Krishna Key. It is our own Indian version of The Da Vinci Code. It was a page turner with anagrams, interesting characters. There are characters equivalent to Robert Langdon, Silas, The Teacher, Bishop Aringarosa etc. I like the way author explains importance of 108, connection of 786 to 'Om'. This book also added new goals to my travel love story. One day, I want to visit Somnath Temple in Gujarath, Vrindavan and Mount Kailash.

It has pure Indian connection, as the name clearly indicates, it is about Krishna. Author has done a neat job of connecting a lot of dissimilar things to carve a fiction story. Somewhere in the middle, though I was loosing interest, the story immediately gained momentum. Prior to this, I enjoyed living through Shiva Trilogy.

I am not a fast reader. I enjoy imagining the whole scene and become a part of it. There is also a phenomena called Post-Read Depression. Last time I went through this was when I finished 7th part of Harry Potter series. After I completed this book, I didn't know what to do. I took some time to come out of depression, reading the 7th part second time also helped!

Now that I have finished a book, I enjoy choosing the next book. I have been planning on a non-fiction from sometime. Thus my love stories continue....

Love, Life - wandering thoughts

"Love" as a noun means "A strong positive emotion of regard and affection". I am referring to this meaning of "Love" in this post.

It is such a wonderful state of mind to be in Love with someone or something, it can not be explained in words. One has to go through this state to feel it. When one is in love, one starts to live for it (Listen to 'Find Yourself' from Cars!). As one lives through it, one will make a love story. The story invariably ends or looses its intensity at some point in time(Could be happy ending or otherwise).

Now, what next? I think this is very unstable state. One becomes very unproductive in this state. Lot of questions start haunting the mind. A slight negative thought is disastrous in this state. This is also the beginning of a change.

What I propose is that one should start finding the next thing to fall in love with. I think falling in love is the most important and beautiful thing.

e.g. Fall in love with music, learn a musical instrument. Live for it, live in it. Life seems so beautiful.

For geeks, fall in love with a technology and live learning it and live in it.

For elevated souls, fall in love to bring a change in society. Fall in love with nature, follow every rainbow, climb every mountain.
But there are some things that are impossible to fall in love with. Don't loose heart, that is where movies like 'Lucia' comes to help. Fall in love with such things in your dream. Live the impossible in your dream.

Wow... there are so many things to fall in love with. One life is not enough to love everything that is out there!

Lucia - One of a kind movie

"ನೀ ಮಾಯೆಯೊಳಗೊ, ನಿನ್ನೊಳು ಮಾಯೆಯೊ" (Are you inside an illusion or illusion inside you)

This was the whole essence of this movie "Lucia". This is one of the best movies I have watched in Kannada. This has everything - Simplicity, Energy, Life, Love, Dream, Melody, Deception, Fear, Comedy, Greed, Reality, Colors, Devoid of Colors and so on... in appropriate quantities.

This was the second of all the movies I have watched in theaters that I wanted to watch again... no, I wanted to live the movie again.

Songs are very different, people will have their reservation to like or dislike. But I liked.

I don't want to write more. This movie should be watched in theater and one should live the movie. Watching this movie a second time will make it a very different movie.

Director Pawan Kumar has amazingly played with colors(and devoid of colors). Hats off to you Mr Pawan. I am sure you will go places.

As I write this post, I am listening to the very song sung by Sri Vidyabhushana Swamy. Aha, I wish I get lost in my dream, and I think my dreams are devoid of colors.