M4

That’s the secret- Letting go… More of the small/trivial things you let go and the sooner you do it, more will be the peace you’ll have and you’ll have it sooner too. It is true that these smaller things take up little spells of our time, effort and mind space. Also true is the fact that we usually tangle ourselves in a gazillion of these small things- day in, day out- and they add up. Ask yourself, when was the last time your mind was empty- utterly, totally empty- of all thoughts. Sitting quietly on a park bench, our mind goes for a jog alongside all the people strolling in the park- he’s fat, she looks good in the sun, look at that cute kid, god how I wish that stupid bird would shut up and so on. When you are not too occupied with your head inside your smartphone, that is. And for the hyper-sensitive, attention-deficit youngsters of today (of which I am one myself), it takes very little to push them over the tolerance threshold- dusty roads, vague signboards, faulty g...

Says everyone, but I’m sure nobody- not one- means it, ever. No matter what they say about themselves, everyone has a huge bloated ego and when you say something to their face that they is contrary to their beliefs, it is certain that they’ll fight tooth and nail to refute it. Hence the prevalent use of terms like ‘with all due respect’, ‘no offense’, ‘with due consideration’ etc. intended to ameliorate the situation. Ironically though, when people use these terms, they seldom mean it and that leads to hilarious circumstances sometimes- hilarious to the audience, I mean. These situations are far from hilarious to the speaker and to the recipient; the recipient will take offense, without exception and the speaker will have many an indignant person to deal with. So the next time you tell your boss something that starts like this- “with all due respect sir…”- take my seasoned word that it doesn’t matter at all what you say after the phrase. That time you say ‘no offense…” to you...

Recently, I’ve moved to a new city. Being just out of college, all friends from before moved to different cities for work. So, I just happened to have moved into a new circle of friends. And things changed. These are loud, totally random and unpredictable, binge eat and drink like a fish; their apartment is a pseudo dump. But over the past few months, I liked hanging out with them- it’s easy, natural and somehow I felt at home there with them. That was totally unexpected for me- I mean, this is not the ‘me’ I knew. So, that got me thinking- have I been keeping bad company before or I didn’t yet know what this new company is doing to me. Here are some things that struck me in retrospect: These guys don’t have facades- no pretences. Doesn’t mean they don’t do stupid stuff or have their privacy. Just that they don’t have anything to hide. We respect one another’s secrets. No patronizing. All of these are elder to me at least by a couple of years. And of course in better job...