Friday, June 16, 2006
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
The Greatest Superstition of Our Times
There are two kinds of superstitions which have been haunting mankind since Adam ate that goddamn apple: harmless and harmful. Suppose we are leaving our home for office, and somebody sneezes. We stop and wait for a while because we think it’s a bad omen. No problem! Not much harm is done. Actually we end up having a couple of minutes to relax in these time-starved times. Now suppose we are going on a street, and a black cat crosses our path. Our love for the idiotic notion makes us stop again for the same reason. Again, it’s a harmless situation. So, there are more and more examples in which we stupidly flirt with our superstitions, but come out with no serious damage.
Then there are superstitions which are harmful, and that too to such extent that they complete rob us of our happiness. But we hardly care for them. We have so much faith in them that we rarely think that they are superstitions at all. On the contrary, we, the logic-minded human beings, treat them as gospel, as the golden rules which make the world run and as Brahma-vaakya (universal truth). One such popular superstition is the topic of discussion here which has contributed in the overall unhappiness of us more than anything else has ever done.
Yesterday, most of my colleagues at office had gathered around to do the favourite antidote of work stress: gossiping. We started off with the past experiences of every participant in his/her previous offices, and then sailed through the problems we were having at the workplace, the demonic attitude our boss had towards us and the places we were thinking of applying for. Then all of a sudden we moved towards an issue which is considered to be a little secretive and to be done in whispers: our salaries. The simple statistics of the digits everybody was getting on his paycheque brought forth a startling revelation I have always heard about but never believed.
The workaholic ‘go-getter’ guy who used to swear by the dictum ‘Work is worship, and money is its prasaad’ was living the most screwed-up life out there. His family life was as good as Gujrat after earthquake, and his mental condition indicated the urgent need of consulting a competent psychiatrist. He had a purse heavy enough to balance the load of the bills of the costliest restaurants in Delhi, but his digestive juices failed to cooperate even with the simplest dishes available in a roadside dhaba. He was the earliest to reach the office, and the latest to depart. In harsher words, he had no other life beyond the doormat of his office. But look at his tenacity; he was working harder and harder to increase the load in his bank account, ignoring the hardships taking their toll on his life as a whole.
On the contrary, the man getting the least salary was having a life which could make the director of my agency- the guy I just talked about in the preceding paragraph- dead jealous. That peon had a good family life, a good stomach that allowed him to enjoy even the most ordinary food in the best possible way, a sense of humour that made people make beeline to him, and some free time to do the things he really enjoyed doing. One of them was listening to Radio Mirchi.
So, the revelation was, money doesn’t make us happy. Money is like a joke, we love playing on ourselves, which gives a great buildup but fails to deliver a good punchline. It’s a superstition we have more faith in than a priest has in his stone deity. We hardly find a living example where this superstition has kept its promise. Still, keeping our all logic aside, we invest the best and most of our time in running after it, amusing ourselves with the thought that it can compensate for everything we are losing at the cost of it. Little wonder, many of us feel so empty, so unhappy despite the flashy clutter we have earned paying too much of a price.
Then there are superstitions which are harmful, and that too to such extent that they complete rob us of our happiness. But we hardly care for them. We have so much faith in them that we rarely think that they are superstitions at all. On the contrary, we, the logic-minded human beings, treat them as gospel, as the golden rules which make the world run and as Brahma-vaakya (universal truth). One such popular superstition is the topic of discussion here which has contributed in the overall unhappiness of us more than anything else has ever done.
Yesterday, most of my colleagues at office had gathered around to do the favourite antidote of work stress: gossiping. We started off with the past experiences of every participant in his/her previous offices, and then sailed through the problems we were having at the workplace, the demonic attitude our boss had towards us and the places we were thinking of applying for. Then all of a sudden we moved towards an issue which is considered to be a little secretive and to be done in whispers: our salaries. The simple statistics of the digits everybody was getting on his paycheque brought forth a startling revelation I have always heard about but never believed.
The workaholic ‘go-getter’ guy who used to swear by the dictum ‘Work is worship, and money is its prasaad’ was living the most screwed-up life out there. His family life was as good as Gujrat after earthquake, and his mental condition indicated the urgent need of consulting a competent psychiatrist. He had a purse heavy enough to balance the load of the bills of the costliest restaurants in Delhi, but his digestive juices failed to cooperate even with the simplest dishes available in a roadside dhaba. He was the earliest to reach the office, and the latest to depart. In harsher words, he had no other life beyond the doormat of his office. But look at his tenacity; he was working harder and harder to increase the load in his bank account, ignoring the hardships taking their toll on his life as a whole.On the contrary, the man getting the least salary was having a life which could make the director of my agency- the guy I just talked about in the preceding paragraph- dead jealous. That peon had a good family life, a good stomach that allowed him to enjoy even the most ordinary food in the best possible way, a sense of humour that made people make beeline to him, and some free time to do the things he really enjoyed doing. One of them was listening to Radio Mirchi.
So, the revelation was, money doesn’t make us happy. Money is like a joke, we love playing on ourselves, which gives a great buildup but fails to deliver a good punchline. It’s a superstition we have more faith in than a priest has in his stone deity. We hardly find a living example where this superstition has kept its promise. Still, keeping our all logic aside, we invest the best and most of our time in running after it, amusing ourselves with the thought that it can compensate for everything we are losing at the cost of it. Little wonder, many of us feel so empty, so unhappy despite the flashy clutter we have earned paying too much of a price.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Lizard the Guru
Serendipity seems to have an undying relationship with life. The best and the worst things invade us in the least expected moments, making us shocked, pleasantly and unpleasantly.
Let me tell you something about such an ordinary incident which left an imprint on my mind extraordinarily. I had just returned from my college after a deadly series of classes which had the potential of the making the most hardened insomniac go dead sleep. It was a summer noon, and I was taking rest in my room, curled up in my bed, trying to sleep. But the ability to nod off was light years away from me as I had finished most of my sleep in the last bench of my class, the best place to protect oneself from government’s unfriendly education policy.
After some exercise in tossing and turning, I became static, and my wandering eyes locked on a small, brown lizard taking rest on the front wall. It was so passive that I felt it had fallen asleep. I got jealous of him. Hell, he can nod off standing on a vertical wall, and here’s me, unable to catch 40 winks even on a four inches high mattress. Then my eyes shot off for another creature, an insect sitting on the other wall, nearly two meters away from its enemy. A passing thought came to me: the lizard is planning to have that insect for his lunch. No way, I thought. The lizard can never catch the insect. It’s so far. Besides, the insect can fly at the smallest sign of danger which his predator can’t. Well, after a while that small, unassuming reptile proved me dead wrong.
It was so clearly visible to me. The lizard had his eyes Fevicoled on the victim. Slowly, making sure the poor chap got no hint, he took a few steps in a slightly off direction where his meal was carelessly sitting. Then he took rest for a couple of minutes. Again when he made sure that his morsel was lost in his own thoughts, he inched forward, step by step. Gosh! I was even more tense than the reptile might have been, anticipating each and every second that the insect might fly off.
What I saw afterwards was a classic case of patience and cool. The lizard kept coming near to him in the same way. He took more than twenty minutes to complete the 80% of the journey. Even the slightest carelessness on his part might have snatched the food away from his mouth. The remaining 20% of distance was like walking on a thread. Chances of the insect getting warned were at the optimum, and the lizard was resting for around 4-5 minutes before taking the next step each time. Now he was quite near to his dish, but I felt he still needed 6-7 steps to take the first bite. Then what I saw was so different from what I had been seeing so far. That lazy, patient and passive lizard jumped (it looked more like a flight) and had its toothless mouth wrapped around the poor insect in a fraction of second without even letting him know what hit him.
I don’t want to go into the details of how he ate, chewed and swallowed his delicious win. But he taught me a few things I’d have hardly learnt anywhere else. First, have patience and you can have anything. Second, keep your calm but let your mind work like hell. Third, you need to be more careful when nearer to the goal. Fourth, use your capability according to the need of moment whether it’s waiting like a corpse or moving forward like lightening.
And, last but the most important, you can learn things from anything and anybody. Keep your eyes open. This world is a great school, and even the most insignificant incident may turn out to be the most significant lesson of your life. Just like it happened in the lizard’s case. Amen!
Let me tell you something about such an ordinary incident which left an imprint on my mind extraordinarily. I had just returned from my college after a deadly series of classes which had the potential of the making the most hardened insomniac go dead sleep. It was a summer noon, and I was taking rest in my room, curled up in my bed, trying to sleep. But the ability to nod off was light years away from me as I had finished most of my sleep in the last bench of my class, the best place to protect oneself from government’s unfriendly education policy.
After some exercise in tossing and turning, I became static, and my wandering eyes locked on a small, brown lizard taking rest on the front wall. It was so passive that I felt it had fallen asleep. I got jealous of him. Hell, he can nod off standing on a vertical wall, and here’s me, unable to catch 40 winks even on a four inches high mattress. Then my eyes shot off for another creature, an insect sitting on the other wall, nearly two meters away from its enemy. A passing thought came to me: the lizard is planning to have that insect for his lunch. No way, I thought. The lizard can never catch the insect. It’s so far. Besides, the insect can fly at the smallest sign of danger which his predator can’t. Well, after a while that small, unassuming reptile proved me dead wrong.
It was so clearly visible to me. The lizard had his eyes Fevicoled on the victim. Slowly, making sure the poor chap got no hint, he took a few steps in a slightly off direction where his meal was carelessly sitting. Then he took rest for a couple of minutes. Again when he made sure that his morsel was lost in his own thoughts, he inched forward, step by step. Gosh! I was even more tense than the reptile might have been, anticipating each and every second that the insect might fly off.What I saw afterwards was a classic case of patience and cool. The lizard kept coming near to him in the same way. He took more than twenty minutes to complete the 80% of the journey. Even the slightest carelessness on his part might have snatched the food away from his mouth. The remaining 20% of distance was like walking on a thread. Chances of the insect getting warned were at the optimum, and the lizard was resting for around 4-5 minutes before taking the next step each time. Now he was quite near to his dish, but I felt he still needed 6-7 steps to take the first bite. Then what I saw was so different from what I had been seeing so far. That lazy, patient and passive lizard jumped (it looked more like a flight) and had its toothless mouth wrapped around the poor insect in a fraction of second without even letting him know what hit him.
I don’t want to go into the details of how he ate, chewed and swallowed his delicious win. But he taught me a few things I’d have hardly learnt anywhere else. First, have patience and you can have anything. Second, keep your calm but let your mind work like hell. Third, you need to be more careful when nearer to the goal. Fourth, use your capability according to the need of moment whether it’s waiting like a corpse or moving forward like lightening.
And, last but the most important, you can learn things from anything and anybody. Keep your eyes open. This world is a great school, and even the most insignificant incident may turn out to be the most significant lesson of your life. Just like it happened in the lizard’s case. Amen!
A Balloon to Prick
I remember an amusing incident. I was a child then, and had gone to my Grandma’s home for my cousin’s marriage. It was a big ceremony, and hundreds of people from the other villages had also come. But there was one guy who was stealing my attention. With a twirling moustache on his upper lip and a gun in his hand, he was loudly chatting with others of his flock. Meantime he also laughed with intolerably high decibel level flailing his gun-wallah haath.
Guns attracted me always, thanks to Mithunda’s movies I used to watch with the concentration of a seasoned yogi. So I was watching his gun without blinking my eyes even once. But there was one thing which was bothering me. The barrel of the gun was not as broad as the guns of dacoits in Sholay had. So, it shook my faith in the genuineness of the machine.
Innocently, I went to the guy, slapped his back, and asked, “Bhaiya! Aapki yeh bandook asli hai kya?” (Brother! Is your gun genuine?) There was a dead silence for one or two seconds in the flock. The moustache-guy was hurt, and growled at me sarcastically, “Nahi! Chiriya maarne waali hai.” (No, it’s for shooting birds.) There was pain in his eyes, and embarrassment on his face.
I didn’t understand why he reacted like that. Now I do. The poor guy might have invested thousands in purchasing the gun, and had brought it to show off among his friends. And here was me, a small kid, challenging the gun and shaking the roots of his confidence.
This incident hasn’t happened just once in my life. It keeps repeating in different hues and shapes. Somebody says something against somebody, and the second somebody feels greatly offended. His confidence gets shattered in a blink. His calmness fades away in a nanosecond.
'The Da Vinci Code' comes, and the faith of many Christians gets a major jolt. Cartoonists in some faraway country draw a picture of Mohammed, and the self-proclaimed guardians of Islam get uneasy. Some artist paints the Hindu goddesses nude, the Hindus start destroying things to vent their anger.
Crazy, no!
Seems like our faith in our religion, in our ideas and in ourselves is too delicate to handle even a little challenge or doubt from somebody no matter how insignificant he is. Just like that gunman who felt at a loss because of the query of a kid. Pumping our ego-balloons with others’ approval seems to be a bad idea, but we keep doing it till some needle comes up to give a micrometer-deep prick.
Guns attracted me always, thanks to Mithunda’s movies I used to watch with the concentration of a seasoned yogi. So I was watching his gun without blinking my eyes even once. But there was one thing which was bothering me. The barrel of the gun was not as broad as the guns of dacoits in Sholay had. So, it shook my faith in the genuineness of the machine.
Innocently, I went to the guy, slapped his back, and asked, “Bhaiya! Aapki yeh bandook asli hai kya?” (Brother! Is your gun genuine?) There was a dead silence for one or two seconds in the flock. The moustache-guy was hurt, and growled at me sarcastically, “Nahi! Chiriya maarne waali hai.” (No, it’s for shooting birds.) There was pain in his eyes, and embarrassment on his face.
I didn’t understand why he reacted like that. Now I do. The poor guy might have invested thousands in purchasing the gun, and had brought it to show off among his friends. And here was me, a small kid, challenging the gun and shaking the roots of his confidence.
This incident hasn’t happened just once in my life. It keeps repeating in different hues and shapes. Somebody says something against somebody, and the second somebody feels greatly offended. His confidence gets shattered in a blink. His calmness fades away in a nanosecond.
'The Da Vinci Code' comes, and the faith of many Christians gets a major jolt. Cartoonists in some faraway country draw a picture of Mohammed, and the self-proclaimed guardians of Islam get uneasy. Some artist paints the Hindu goddesses nude, the Hindus start destroying things to vent their anger.
Crazy, no!
Seems like our faith in our religion, in our ideas and in ourselves is too delicate to handle even a little challenge or doubt from somebody no matter how insignificant he is. Just like that gunman who felt at a loss because of the query of a kid. Pumping our ego-balloons with others’ approval seems to be a bad idea, but we keep doing it till some needle comes up to give a micrometer-deep prick.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Why Mondays are Mourn-days
Adam and Eve had eaten the apple. They succumbed to the temptation. They sinned. God decided to punish them. He gave them one minor and one major punishment. The minor one was dictated to them, and is described in Bible. The major one was given silently, and went unpublished. But it hardly mellowed down its harshness.So, you know, God made Mondays. Not one, two, ten or hundred. Countless, so that no week ever goes without them. Not even a single week. So ungodly!
When after enjoying one or two days of the heavenly weekends, we start getting used to them, something happens. Something which falls upon like Indra’s Vajra. Yeah! The reminder that Monday is knocking at your door. An alarm clock or (for some) a calender!
Then begins the agony after the ecstasy. And it feels more painful because it comes just after the ecstasy. It embitters each memory we had so fondly built in the last two days. It destroys everything. Ruthlessly.
Then we start dragging our feet, one by one, towards office, the ultimate concentration camp. (Hey, Hitler didn’t think of this. Why?) But there is one solace. Every night has an end; every week has a weekend.
From Chulha to Microwave Oven
A week ago, I asked my mother something. To understand the question, I need to give a little bit of background. My father is a bureaucrat, and he used to get transferred into remote towns and villages as a part of his job. With him we, the family members, also had to move on every two or three years. And those were difficult days.
There were places where electricity failed to spark even once in a whole long month. Mind it, I’m talking about summers. Then we had small quarters provided by government, which looked more like ruins from Harappa. To cook, we had coal-fuelled chulhas taking half an hour to get ready to boil one cup of water. To commute, there was a shattered, aging Rajdoot motorcycle who used to scream like Ravana from the old Ramayana serial, whenever my father used to kick-start it. For entertainment, we had an old television which always failed to show our favourite serials on Sundays. I’m not blaming him; after all he also needed something like current to get into action. Just imagine, only one TV channel (no need to tell it was Doordarshan), and we couldn’t watch even that.
Things have changed a bit now. We have now a decently-built house in a moderately posh colony at Patna. Power is regular, sometimes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our kitchen boasts of a modern Microwave Oven which, they say, uses the same technology in cooking food the nuclear bombs had used in Pokharan. That old Rajdoot retired long ago, and has been placed by a car which has something called air-conditioner too. Now we have a colour TV, equipped with remote control, 100 channels and God-knows-what 23 ultramodern technologies. And yeah, I’m not talking about DVD player, video games and the other entertainment-mongers at my home.
So, in a nutshell, we are richer than we were years ago, and we are tolerably rich by the Indian standards. Now I come to the main point. I asked my mother if she was happier now than she was years ago.
Her answer was- No. Just imagine, despite such a splurge in fortunes the happiness quotient remained the same. Then I asked her if she would like to go back to the older conditions. After all, the changes hadn’t made her any happier. Again her answer was- No. Losing the newly-gained things was going to make her unhappy, but on the contrary, they were not making her happier too.
When I see around, I find more or less the same case with others also. New things give us a high for some time, then they become like chewing-gum, tasteless no matter how much we chew it. But we also don’t want to spit it out. Blame it on the mechanical habit we developed in the last half an hour.
These new things can be anything- house, job, girl/boyfriend, car etc. Everything claims to make us permanently happy, but falls short. Really short. It just makes us used to it.
In Basu Bhattacharya-directed movie 'Aastha', Om Puri says, “Kaarkhaanon me humaari jaruraton ka saman nahi, humaari jaruratein banti hain.” (Factories manufacture our necessities rather than the objects of our necessity.) And we have no other way but to succumb to the necessities manufactured by the growth-maniac industries and advertised by the sale-obsessed agencies. Despite having no happiness-growth at all.
There were places where electricity failed to spark even once in a whole long month. Mind it, I’m talking about summers. Then we had small quarters provided by government, which looked more like ruins from Harappa. To cook, we had coal-fuelled chulhas taking half an hour to get ready to boil one cup of water. To commute, there was a shattered, aging Rajdoot motorcycle who used to scream like Ravana from the old Ramayana serial, whenever my father used to kick-start it. For entertainment, we had an old television which always failed to show our favourite serials on Sundays. I’m not blaming him; after all he also needed something like current to get into action. Just imagine, only one TV channel (no need to tell it was Doordarshan), and we couldn’t watch even that.
Things have changed a bit now. We have now a decently-built house in a moderately posh colony at Patna. Power is regular, sometimes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our kitchen boasts of a modern Microwave Oven which, they say, uses the same technology in cooking food the nuclear bombs had used in Pokharan. That old Rajdoot retired long ago, and has been placed by a car which has something called air-conditioner too. Now we have a colour TV, equipped with remote control, 100 channels and God-knows-what 23 ultramodern technologies. And yeah, I’m not talking about DVD player, video games and the other entertainment-mongers at my home.
So, in a nutshell, we are richer than we were years ago, and we are tolerably rich by the Indian standards. Now I come to the main point. I asked my mother if she was happier now than she was years ago.
Her answer was- No. Just imagine, despite such a splurge in fortunes the happiness quotient remained the same. Then I asked her if she would like to go back to the older conditions. After all, the changes hadn’t made her any happier. Again her answer was- No. Losing the newly-gained things was going to make her unhappy, but on the contrary, they were not making her happier too.
When I see around, I find more or less the same case with others also. New things give us a high for some time, then they become like chewing-gum, tasteless no matter how much we chew it. But we also don’t want to spit it out. Blame it on the mechanical habit we developed in the last half an hour.
These new things can be anything- house, job, girl/boyfriend, car etc. Everything claims to make us permanently happy, but falls short. Really short. It just makes us used to it.
In Basu Bhattacharya-directed movie 'Aastha', Om Puri says, “Kaarkhaanon me humaari jaruraton ka saman nahi, humaari jaruratein banti hain.” (Factories manufacture our necessities rather than the objects of our necessity.) And we have no other way but to succumb to the necessities manufactured by the growth-maniac industries and advertised by the sale-obsessed agencies. Despite having no happiness-growth at all.
Every Friday is Good Friday
I wonder if any day of the week gets as much love as Friday does. Friday isn’t just an ordinary, run-of-the mill day. It’s different, it’s unique. It’s the promise of a two days long paradise.In childhood, this honour was zealously enjoyed by Saturday. From the day Monday, we used to wait for it minute by minute, day by day. Those times, we used to have half day on Saturday in schools. By the time clock’s both hands embraced each other vertically, our enthusiasm touched the highest peak. After all, it was not the bell of school that rang, but the bell of freedom that poured honey into our ears.
Things haven’t changed much. Bars of schools have been replaced by those of the offices. Wardens have transformed from teachers to bosses. Home-works have got sachcha waaris in assignments, deadlines and projects. But what hasn’t changed is the happiness which comes rushing to us when we come to know that our trauma has been suspended for two days.
But, how come we enjoy and love Friday more than we actually do Saturday and Sunday? After all, Friday itself is not a holiday. The answer lies in a famous Hindi dictum, “Prakriya hi lakshya-sukh hai.” (In process lies the pleasure of goal.) We don’t enjoy the thing itself as much as the promise of it. We love chasing things, and crave for the excitement of the moment when they are about to fall into our lap.
No wonder Friday would keep getting the love and adulation of everybody who feels life is bigger than work. Till the day when a new work philosophy comes up which makes weekends of three days. Then we would love Thursday more.
Capote vis-à-vis Rang De Basanti
There seems to be a striking similarity between the reel life story of Capote, the Academy Award winner movie, and the real life story behind Rang De Basanti, a movie which hardly needs introduction to Indians. Let me tell you what.In case you haven’t seen Capote, you’d need a brief introduction to the story. It’s about a writer, Truman Capote, who goes on writing a novel “In Cold Blood” based on a pointless murder of a family in a tiny nowhere town in Kansas. To gather material for his seminal book, he pretends to establish a deep relationship with the young criminal and befriends him. Slowly he sheds all personal ethics, and manipulates his subject to squeeze the story out of him. As soon as he gets the story, he dumps the murderer and leaves him helpless till the day he is hanged. Well, then we see Capote celebrating the success of his novel in the lofty circles of New York, committing a parallel crime in the eyes of many.
Well, let’s come to Rang De Basanti now, a film which has added new hues of patriotism in the hoi-polloi of India. As everybody knows, its story is about a few young hedonist people who take revenge of the accidental murder of their pilot friend. They kill the defence minister who is accused of purchasing substandard parts of fighter planes, which later on lead to the death of the promising pilot. The plot of this movie is partly inspired from the life of Abhijit Gadgil, an Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot who died in a MiG aircraft on September 17, 2001.That’s the point when Capote happens to Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra,the director of RDB. He approached Kavita Gadgil, the mother of the pilot, for the story and promised many things before he squeezed the story out of her. Many people had met Kavita to make films on the story, but she agreed only to Mehra because of some of his ‘genuine’ intentions. She was hoping that she could probably organise a charity show for her trust "Abhijit Safety Foundation Trust", and Mehra promised the free screening of the movie for this purpose. But as soon as the movie was out, not only her name was conveniently erased from the credits, Mehra also failed to mention her contribution and help. She was not only kept totally unaware of the making of the movie, but tickets for the preview also were not sent to her. (Please go through a story titled “Brave Heart”, based on her interview, published in Society, March 2006.)
Just look around piercingly, and you’d find Capotes and Mehras are not that small in number. Sometimes you’d feel these ivory tower intellectuals, known for finer sensibilities and greater thinking, just behave like hardcore businessmen when it comes to their profession. Worse part is that they also get the title of social engineers-cum-revolutionaries after raking in millions.
Shouldn’t we be more careful about choosing whom we applause? Maybe people with genuine intentions are more deserving than those with artistic expressions. In this case, I’m sure Kavita Gadgil should deserve the credit first.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Onesome sex: The Last Refuge of Singles
Our society has a remarkable history of condemning things which are genuinely worth doing. One such thing is the point of discussion here.
More than 95% have done it at some or other point of time. Some love it so much that they see it as a bright option even though better ones are available to them. Such is the charm it has.
It’s free, hardly needs any expertise, and gives one of the best pleasures ever discovered by Homo Sapience. And, the best thing is it can be done anywhere (although suggested to be done in the absence of prying eyes), anytime and many times a day (well, it depends upon your ability).
You don’t need to depend on anybody. You don’t need to persuade anybody. You don’t need to impress anybody. It’s some sort of self-employment where you are the employer and the employee both. What you need to do is to have some trust in your hand. As they say in Hindi, "Apna haath….. jagannath.” Well, you may also take some help of your imaginative faculty. A good exercise to improve creative visualization too, huh! (I wonder why Emerson forgot to put it into his essay ‘Self Reliance’.)
Nowadays, as the capability to sleep is fast becoming extinct, this activity can also work as the best tranquilizer. With no side effects- that’s the beauty of it. No pill-popping, no maa ki lori- just a little bit of hand-work, you see!
So, what’s it? You might have guessed it by now. Married or unmarried, there is one thing which binds both these worlds. One thread which connects the memories of the first and the exploits of the second. But these are the singles who value it most. After all, they need it most.
More than 95% have done it at some or other point of time. Some love it so much that they see it as a bright option even though better ones are available to them. Such is the charm it has.
It’s free, hardly needs any expertise, and gives one of the best pleasures ever discovered by Homo Sapience. And, the best thing is it can be done anywhere (although suggested to be done in the absence of prying eyes), anytime and many times a day (well, it depends upon your ability).
You don’t need to depend on anybody. You don’t need to persuade anybody. You don’t need to impress anybody. It’s some sort of self-employment where you are the employer and the employee both. What you need to do is to have some trust in your hand. As they say in Hindi, "Apna haath….. jagannath.” Well, you may also take some help of your imaginative faculty. A good exercise to improve creative visualization too, huh! (I wonder why Emerson forgot to put it into his essay ‘Self Reliance’.)
Nowadays, as the capability to sleep is fast becoming extinct, this activity can also work as the best tranquilizer. With no side effects- that’s the beauty of it. No pill-popping, no maa ki lori- just a little bit of hand-work, you see!
So, what’s it? You might have guessed it by now. Married or unmarried, there is one thing which binds both these worlds. One thread which connects the memories of the first and the exploits of the second. But these are the singles who value it most. After all, they need it most.
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