Advice

Free advice is never valued. The response is always convenience driven.Along the lines of the Joker, never advice if you are not getting paid for it. The lack of it, and subsequently the absence of the results due to its non-implementation might make the individuals realize. If not, then one of the two, advisor and advisee, is a fool. In most cases, both are. Atleast, I always am. I am not getting any richer.

A TRYST WITH DISTRUST........

I have been closely following a set of events, my own life and many other issues. These issues may or may not be relevant to me. But following something closely gives me, a deeper sense of understanding, I firmly believe. At the same time, I also speculate whether one’s understanding of things around are fair or are they biased as a function of other factors in one’s life. I know I am contradicting myself. I do not have a clear mind at times. I have tried to describe the whole process of trying to understand ‘what trust is, and what it means’ in the following few paragraphs. While describing the process, I have tried my best to follow a close outline. This in turn, has helped me to filter my thoughts and classify my feelings in a better fashion. I hope, at the end of it, things are more clear to me. Well, that has always been the intention of me jotting down something. Self realization.

Childhood and growth:

We all are deeply influenced by our parents, guardians, and elder people closely related to us. Well, the time of influence (not the span) is the childhood. We all are still in a state where we can be molded. The message conveyed by the family to the child, again, depends on the background and values of the family in general. Some families may try to inculcate a ‘good values’ system in the kid. The definition of ‘good values’ itself is subjective. What you consider to be good values, need not be approved by me. Hence, the essential difference comes in the childhood itself.

Anyway, I stick to one case, and one case alone. I was taught by my parents and people who influenced me that trust is very important in life. Since I was told by people who were my mentors, I blindly believed it. Ah yes! My father, mother and teachers tell me, trust is an important thing in life. Then it must be true. I need to trust everyone and in turn everyone will trust me. Life is so good. Peace.

Is life so simple?

Maybe.

I grew. I was a teenager. It was time I get influenced by others and other factors. Still, life was good. I was having fun, and loads of it. I never looked beyond a certain dimension. I was innocent. Trust me (Ironical… isn’t it?), innocence is good. Television, Sports(in my case Football), movies, papers, magazines, friends, and family, all play an important role in one’s development during this stage. I was liking it.

Then sometime in my early teenage - Shock. I don’t remember what it was all about. But I did feel it once. That was my first meeting with distrust. I was taken aback. I mean, here I was, with a value system, which tells me that every being on this planet is perfect, and everything happens for the good. I still couldn’t question my value system. Very well, I thought, maybe it was something to be ignored. I went on.

It is funny but I have to mention this now. I was extremely addicted to WWF then. I used to follow every fight and sequence of events that were designed to entertain the viewers and keep them glued till the next session. I remember very vividly, Stone Cold Steve Austin coming on to the ring, creating havoc. More importantly, I remember his punch line: ‘’Never trust anyone’’. I am not sure whether he follows it himself in his off screen life. But it did affect me a lot. I used to go around screaming my guts out. A few people told me that I had gone insane. But most of my friends liked it. And we still had a great trust in one another, which was essentially a result of that screaming. Funny, but true.

As I grew, I realized life wasn’t that easy. I started seeing wrong things happen. It never really disturbed me. But it definitely made me start thinking. Since then, I have been meeting Mr. Distrust quite often. I thought more. Innocence was no more. More thinking.

 Ignorance is a bliss, I have met Mr. Distrust again & no I am not at all hurt I am too much preoccupied with my prior commitments to now worry about people breaking my trust but the lesson I have learnt today is never trust anyone completely, yes I made that mistake & I am not going to repeat my mistake again, for some people honesty has no meaning & they like only manipulators but whatever their need be I believe in myself & my belief, cause this attitude of mine has earned me some of my lifetime friends.....

Learnings:

Life became ugly. But, thinking gave a deeper understanding of things around.

I learnt that an individual has a choice all the time: the choice of doing the wrong thing.

Well, once again, the definition of wrong thing itself is subjective. This degree of freedom is available with every person, and the sanctity of trust lies at the core of this choice. There are people who choose to exercise this freedom, and there are others who do not. Which sect will one appreciate? This choice lies with you. And your choice defines the sect you belong to.

I think now. Has life really become ugly? Maybe not.

   However greatly I distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still I think they tell more truth to me than to anyone else.

Implications:

You can either be happy being naïve, or choose to know that there are other things which will disturb you, but be happy at the same time that you have a better understanding of things.

''To learn something, one has to sacrifice the state of not knowing the same.

sensation, perception, conception

I am having a brilliant train journey today, from Gulbarga to Chennai. Kurt Cobain songs are a wonderful company (miss you kurt) and Ayn Rand kept my mind working most of the time. I felt that this particular paragraph from her book 'For the New Intellectual' has to be put up on my blog. The logic seems just perfect. Though I tried to come up with arguments against the logic and reason that she gives in the paragraph, I couldn’t really help but get convinced by her thoughts.

''Man's consciousness shares with animals the first two stages of its development; sensations and perceptions; but it is the third state, conceptions, that makes him man. Sensations are integrated into perceptions automatically, by the brain of a man or of an animal. But to integrate perceptions into conceptions by a process of abstraction, is a feat that man alone has the power to perform - and he has to perform it by choice. The process of abstraction, and of concept-formation is a process of reason, of thought; it is not automatic nor instinctive nor involuntary nor infallible. Man has to initiate it, to sustain it and to bear responsibility for its results. The pre-conceptual level of consciousness is nonvolitional; volition begins with the first syllogism. Man has the choice to think or to evade - to maintain a state of full awareness or to drift from moment to moment, in a semi-conscious daze, at the mercy of whatever associational whims the unfocused mechanism of his consciousness produces. ''

P.S: I am an animal. I will, very soon, be a man

life status

Spoke to a good friend, and the takeaway from the conversation: 'Live life with respect, and not in retrospect!'. Probably one of the most trippy profound statements ever made.Till now i was walking on the boulevard of broken dreams, thank you Mathur for bringing me back on track. At the risk of sounding like the title of a self help book, moments finally seem to be shaping my life for the better.


Sign offffff............

awesome

                                  now that's what i call a true geeks watch 

curiosity

“Curiosity killed the cat,”

                                                                                   “And satisfaction brought it back.” 

If u say me it was curiosity that killed the cat than I can only say the cat died “nobly”.

This topic popped up during a chat with one of my friend a curious way to strike upon a topic as curious as “curiosity”, sounds too rhyming...but that is the usual way for a curious mind to find what it requires, even at the times when it is not even thinking about something but out of nowhere the revelation strikes down.

Even before Newton apples used to fall & Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why? It was the curious mind of Newton to discover gravity, even though the guy was a clever thief who stole many of his students work & other theoretical physicists, but let’s not take credit from him for some of his original work. Curiosity is an important trait of a genius. I don’t think you can find an intellectual giant who is not a curious person. 

 Curiosity is an encouragement for doing work, when I am curious about anything and I want to find the answer it makes me more efficient; I do my best and I put my brain into it.  It inspires people to invent, even to think!

Curiosity is a hunger to explore and a delight in discovery. When we are curious, we approach the world with a child-like habit of poking and prodding and asking questions. We are attracted to new experiences. Rather than pursuing an agenda or a desired set of answers, we follow our questions where they lead.

Socially, curiosity let us really listen to other people because we want to know who they are. We open ourselves to the morsels of knowledge and experience they can share with us. We relish having discoveries of our own to share.

If a person is bored than I suggest the cure to be curious. In this case I feel I have special powers as I am passionately curious, it’s an eager confession I am particularly proud of, basically, I have been compelled by curiosity.

Guided by my blind impulse of curiosity, I am a vagabond..

Sign offffff..........

RENAISSANCE

Every now and then you find movies that beg to differ from the pattern. They start a new genre all together, and redefine the ways the movie experiences are meant to be.

This movie is not one among those. It is their grand daddy!

 This movie changes the way people perceive when they watch something. The art work is godly and the ways the motions have been conceptualized and eventually implemented are mind blowing. Take it from me, you will not pause the movie to do something else during the movie. You just cannot. But you may pause, a large number of times, to appreciate the art, to appreciate the way the sequences have been put together, to appreciate every inch of black and every half inch of white. And you will definitely pause, to stop, and stare at the screen in awe.

  I might have made it sound like I was doing a piece as if I was Pablo Francisco. But this movie definitely deserves and calls for all the attention.

  And when I say that, I say that out of experience. I had not slept properly the previous night, and it was already 12 midnight when I decided to try this movie, and my eyes were totally weary. For the next one hour forty minutes, I could barely blink.


Don't be confused by the poster that it is just some movie of 1960's, this movie was released in 2006 and as a matter of fact Renaissance took six years to complete on a budget of 15 million dollars.


 As an aside, the plot gives you the feel of a regular sci fi, but everything else just steals the show. So the plot eventually does not matter.

  A user comment on IMDB -
''First things first, this movie is achingly beautiful. A someone who works on 3D CG films as a lighter/compositor, the visuals blew me away. Every second I was stunned by what was on screen.''

Watch the trailer if you have the time right now -

   Unfortunately, I do not see these kind of movies coming to Indian screens any time. So if you want to watch it, get a DVD and make sure that you watch it on a really nice screen and really good speakers. It was my luck that i saw this movie in a movie library while randomly surfing through the contents there & what particularly caught my attention was its cover & title so just thought of giving it try, who says you cant judge a book  or movie by its cover, as a matter of fact sometimes you can. TRUST me, you will find it worth your time.