Vaada

"Tere vade pe jiye hum, to ye jaan jhoot jana;
ki khushi se mar na jate agar aitbar hota."

Ghalib

Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice

By Ogden Nash

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologzie publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

On Discipline

"Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work".

Flaubert

I am currently searching about William Styron. He had this quote pasted on his work desk.

I too have been thinking on similar lines for the past few weeks now. Because, it's now been too long- almost an year- since I first started toying with the idea of a novel. I've started writing it a few times, but abandoned it after just a few pages. The idea, though, has not left me. Instead, it's been developing, evolving each moment, without any conscious effort from my side. That voice has just been there, at the back of my head, all this while. Talking to me, giving me its perspective on each and every thing that's been happening around. Anything I see, or think, that voice tells me how it could contribute to the novel. It's been one continuous thinking process, over a whole year. It's been one intense thinking process, to the extent that it clouded everything else. It's been as if I've been walking in a daze, conscious and yet not quite awake. I've been getting more and more absent minded, and getting more accepting of such a state of mind as 'normal.'

I know that I just have to write, and get it all out, if I am to get over this state of brooding. I know that. And yet, it's not coming out!

I sit on the computer, open a blank word document, close my eyes for a minute, and try to concentrate. I am going to start writing. In a minute. Ok. 'The moment' is still a minute away. I open my eyes. I open google. I open yahoomail. I open orkut. I am just going to check what's up. Then, I will return to the blank page. It'll just be a few minutes. I promise. I check them. I close them. As promised. Then, just as I am going to close the google page, I think of a writer who I should search on. What was he doing when he was my age? Did he too have the same dilemmas? I enter his name, an information deluge floods in. I read one page, then another, then another. Follow one link to the next, land on to another interesting writer or artist or book or anything. Then, from there to something else. When I start feeling tired, too tired to carry on, that is when the urge to write returns. But, by then, I no longer have the energy. So, I write down the idea on the blank page, and save it. I will come to it the next day, and write the story it carries in its womb. Its a promise.

My folder is full of such germs of ideas.

Each time I read them, I can't help feeling sorry. I should have finished that story then! It would have made such a good read! Now, I can't write it, because I am no longer in that frame of mind.

Yet, day after day after day, I leave stories unfinished.

Is this what they call the 'writer's block'?

Did I get it even before I became a writer?

On writer's block

I had the syrup but it wouldn't pour.

Gertrude Stein

On Character

"Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." Abraham Lincoln

I just read this article about Lincoln.

Men like him and Goethe fascinate me. Men who left their mark despite many self-doubts and failures. Indeed, confidence is not the absence of self-doubt, but the ability to fight it, and march on.

I am becoming more and more interested in biographies. They assure me. :)

My Way

And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, Ill say it clear,
Ill state my case, of which Im certain.

Ive lived a life thats full.
Ive traveled each and evry highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, Ive had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, Im sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.

Ive loved, Ive laughed and cried.
Ive had my fill; my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
No, oh no not me,
I did it my way.

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!

Frank Sinatra

The First Day

After an hour, I’ll be at my new office. My first. Job. Independence. Responsibility. Growing wings. It means so many things. Its raining outside. I’ve just done a last minute check on all my documents. I am not thinking anything.

Are you an original?

Two days back, I discovered Pink Floyd, and just went “Wow!” To create beautiful songs out of the angst of existence is true art! Their songs are refreshingly intelligent.

‘We don’t need no education.’ I had heard this phrase quoted before. Now, I heard the song. And, while searching more about it, I came across this interesting analysis.

On first appearances, this is a song of rebellion- young students are firmly telling their teachers that they don’t need such a rotten education system, which believes in controlling their thoughts, and limiting their mind’s independence.

However, this song is sung in chorus, thereby implying that all the students are saying exactly the same thing. They are not speaking their own mind, but one common language. There is conformity even in their supposed rebellion!

Isn’t that how all ideological movements/ revolutions are? The people who actually think of the ideas/ ideals are just one or two. The rest are just the followers. They may agree with the ideators, they may believe in what they say, but the idea was not theirs.

Doesn’t every revolution/ movement operate with these dynamics? There is one person who actually rebels. He’s the one who does all the thinking. He has enough charisma to attract devoted followers. And then these followers do the fighting for him, they propagate his cause, devotedly.

The obvious example that came to my mind was of religions. I believe that this is how all the religions grew. I don’t buy the myths about the founder of a religion being a special messenger of god or a messiah. Rather, I think they were great philosophers, who had the talent to talk to people in a language they would understand, and to convince them of their philosophies. And, the main flaw in each religion is that it doesn’t encourage others to think independently. Rather, it makes blind faith seem like a virtue.

Such obsessive, irrational devotion is not confined to the religious domain however.

I am reminded of a page I read on Ayn Rand last year. It made her look almost super-human. She was stated to ‘have taught herself how to read at the age of six’. For a normal person, one would say, that he ‘learnt’ reading at six. But of course, this widely circulated biographical piece on her is written by a ‘fan’.

She originated the idea of ‘Objectivism’. There are many takers for the philosophy. But in their arguments, they use ‘her’ quotes, and novels to justify themselves. Isn’t that being a conformist? You delude yourself that you are being a rebel, a proponent to a new cause, whereas actually you are just conforming- blindly, zealously- to another man’s philosophy. That is what we end up doing in our efforts to ‘make a difference’ or ‘break a new path.’ Don’t we?

On Commitment

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back--always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans - that the moment one definitely commits oneself - then, Providence moves too! All sorts of things occur to help one, that otherwise never would have occurred.

Goethe(Faust - 2nd Preamble)

"I am what I am"- is it so simple?

Yesterday, as I sat in the waiting room at the dentist’s, a colleague of my mother came. There was no vacant seat. I considered getting up and offering her the seat. But that would mean closing the magazine I was engrossed in. I kept sitting. After some time, mama too stood up from her seat, so that the two ladies were at least in the same position. I cringed inwards. I knew I should have got up. I avoided her eye for the rest of the time she was there.

It was a small incident, but it left me feeling hollow. Why do I find it so hard to be the person I wish to be? Why do I always have to falter even at such simple decisions? On one hand, I berated myself thus, and at the other, I defiantly told myself that I need not follow all the diktats of “what you ought to do.” I had my reasons for acting the way I did, and it was ok. I need not conform to the set expectations of geniality or ‘good’ behavior.

Yet I couldn’t help feeling a weight on me.

At times, I feel unable to decide between the opposing tugs- the desire to simply be myself, and the idea of a conscious effort to be my imagined ideal.

Is it so with others too, or is it just me?

P.S. I searched for Goethe on the net, because in his biography, I had traced similar indecisions and conflicts. It would help to know that someone could live a worthy, highly ‘successful’ life despite them. My search led me to this article on Beethoven. Nothing could have been more reassuring!

Here's a link to a BBC audio programme on Goethe.

The Terrible People

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it,
And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it.
I dont' mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it,
But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.
But no, they insist on being stealthy
About the pleasures of being wealthy,
And the possession of a handsome annuity
Makes them think that to say how hard it is to make both ends meet is their bounden duity.
You cannot conceive of an occasion
Which will find them without some suitable evasion.
Yes indeed, with argumetsn they are very fecund;
Their first point is that money isn't everything, and that they have no money anyhow is their second.
Some people's money is merited,
And other people's is inherited,
But wherever it comes from,
They talk about it as if it were something you got pink gums from.
Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing,
But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing.
The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure,
Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor.
Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won't buy, but it's very funny --
Have you ever tried to buy them without money?

Ogden Nash

Read more delightful poems of his here.

This is going to hurt just a little bit

Ogden Nash

One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open.

And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self-possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest.

So hard to retain your calm
When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line or love line or some other important line in your palm;

So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity
When you know your position is one of the two or three in life most lacking in dignity.

And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on.
And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there isn’t a nerve in your head that you aren’t being irked on.

Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.

And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,
But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.

And the circumstance that adds most to your terror
Is that it’s all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,

But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he won’t get mixed up, the way you do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget that left is right and vice versa?

And then at last he says That will be all; but it isn’t because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof
With something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a horse’s hoof.

And you totter to your feet and think. Well it’s all over now and afterall it was only this once.
And he says come back in three monce.

And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest,
That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition
when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition
is so that he won’t have to go to the dentist.

What I learnt at JWT

Fourteen days. Much drama and action can be loaded into this small packet of time. New principles learnt. Old myths shed. New visions formed. Old beliefs confirmed. New friendships forged. Old stories remembered.

My two weeks at JWT as a trainee copywriter were a treasure trove of experience. Here are some of the gems:

1. I realized that

a) Yes, I am a good writer.
b) I am not a good ideator. And, copywriting needs that.
c) I am more of a philosopher. Serious writing is what comes naturally to me.
c) Copywriting is a full-time job- something one should do for passion, not merely for bread-and-butter.

It’s writing that I have a passion for. Not copywriting. That for me was just an interesting job, which would give me creative excitement, and money. However, the reality is not so rosy. A copywriter has almost a 24x7 job! It’s no cakewalk.

So, maybe, I should look at other avenues where I could get a good day-job making use of my writing skills.

2. I am glad I didn’t make it to MICA.

MICA was the only B-School I applied to when I wrote CAT 2006. I was clear that I wanted to do an MBA only to gain a foothold in the creative industry, like Advertising. Only MICA, with its MBA in Advertising, fitted the bill.

My interview went pretty well. I was confident I would make it.

I didn’t.

I took it calmly. All that happens is for the good.

I can now see how.

Had I got through MICA, I would have spent two years doing MBA in Account Planning. Only to realize, upon joining an ad agency, that it was not what I wanted. The creative work is done by the copywriters and art directors. And you don’t need an MBA to be one.

3. Two days after I started my training, I decided that I wouldn’t go to Infy. Instead, I would continue as a trainee here (for six months if possible) and then try to join some agency as a junior copywriter. My mama, for once, wasn’t amused and strictly ordered that I had to join Infy. The deal we finally reached was that yes, I would go there, but if, at any point of time, I wanted to leave, she would not stop me. She agreed, sort of.

On day twelve, I got a mail from Infy. We would now have our training not at Mysore, but Chandigarh.

All my dilemmas solved! In one masterstroke! I was delirious with joy that day. Was I destiny’s favourite child or what? Dancing on my terrace, singing with the stars, excitedly telling all my friends ‘the news of the day’, I couldn’t help but think that, with a big, wide grin.

4. I am sure now about joining Infy, and not leaving it unless I have a tangible replacement firmly in my hand. (I am my sensible self again)

All the planning cartwheels I have made during the past two weeks have shown me (yet again!) how impulsive and hypothetical I can be. I am a romantic, an idealist, who passionately stands for her beliefs. And that can be dangerous, when the beliefs are built on wrong foundations, or are one-dimensional.

5. I learnt the KISS (Keep it short and simple) principle. I am now making a conscious effort to prune all the ornate adjectives, and use the simplest sentences. "Easy reading is damn hard writing" is the holy phrase.

6. I met the girl I could be, four years hence. She’s much like me, only more mature and more experienced. We share our birthday, our interests, our nature, our likes, our favorite dressing style, our attitudes, and the fact that we both are dreamers. She has been an awesome mentor, who kindly guided me through the new alleys. I tried to absorb each word she said. Her words of encouragement mean a lot. And, she became a dear friend. And, the one regular reader that my blog has.

Here’s a toast to Shalini- the lady I met at the crossroads :)

A Kazuo Ishiguro quote on his writing

"Maybe overall as a writer I have become less interested in realism. Partly perhaps because things like cinema and television do that kind of thing so well. When I write a novel perhaps some part of me wants to offer in a book an experience that you can't get easily sitting in front of a cinema screen or a television screen. For that reason, one of the strengths of novels, I think, over camera-based storytelling is that you are able to get right inside people's heads. You're able to explore people's inner worlds much more thoroughly and with much more subtlety. That's not to say there aren't many great filmmakers who really get you into somebody's head. But the form is different. It's a third person exterior form."

Kazuo Ishiguro, British novelist

Read the interview.

Writing funny

Here's a Scot Adams post on how to write funny. Humor as a genre is something I need to develop my skills in.

Strength

When in the dark

"To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night;
To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change nor falter nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory."

Shelley

Yawnhoo! mail

This is a post I didn't intend to write, but the half hour and many refreshes it took me to access 3 new mails (all of them forwards, grrrr!) have irked me enough.

A few days back, I had tried comparing the speeds of gmail and yahoo mail, by opening both my accounts at the same time. Yahoo mail had a lead by the few seconds it took me to fill my boxes in gmail home page. And yet, it was left miles behind. I had read my mails, and sent one too by the time the yahoo inbox finally yawned open.

It's beginning to look incompetent.

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,

pray that the road is long,

full of adventure, full of knowledge.

The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,

the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:

You will never find such as these on your path,

if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine

emotion touches your spirit and your body.

The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,

the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,

if you do not carry them within your soul,

if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.

That the summer mornings are many, when,

with such pleasure, with such joy

you will enter ports seen for the first time;

stop at Phoenician markets,

and purchase fine merchandise,

mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

and sensual perfumes of all kinds,

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

visit many Egyptian cities,

to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.

To arrive there is your ultimate goal.

But do not hurry the voyage at all.

It is better to let it last for many years;

and to anchor at the island when you are old,

rich with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

Without her you would have never set out on the road.

She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.

Wise as you have become, with so much experience,

you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy, 1911

Link: What Ithaca actually is?

Life!

Simple. Confounding. Beautiful.

Mowgli!

Jungle jungle baat chali hai pata chala hai
Chaddi pahan ke phool khila hai phool khila hai..
Ek parinda hua sharminda, tha wo nangaa
Isse pahle ande ke andar tha wo changaa
Soch raha hai baahar aakhir kyun nikala hai
Arre chaddi pahan ke phool khila hai phool khila hai..

I just so admire the amazing verstaility of Gulzar! So many of my fav songs are written by him.

It felt so good just now to read this jingle. Brought back those lazy sunday mornings, and a nostalgic smile.

Practicality everywhere

"Romance, not in the sense of a love affair, but as a concept, the idealism associated with it, has taken a backseat in today's world. Realism has overpowered romance. There is so much happening at such a fast pace, while romance needs leisure." Gulzar

If I were to die today...

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Steve Jobs

Stairway to heaven- its mysterious meanings

"If you're between seventeen and fifty and 'Stairway' is not your
favorite tune, you're probably too out of it to care that rock's
eight-minute miracle turns twenty this month." Karen Karbo

"If your child is born today: [November 8, 1971]... he will be one
of those charming young people who needs complimenting when
something unusual is accomplished. Any work connected with pleasing
the public is fine here... Do not try to give music lessons if
football is desired." Carroll Righter, The Carroll Righter Institute


Enough of quoted eulogies. I placed them to give an idea of the ardent fans this song has. Now, my voice.

I was introduced to the 'Stairway of heaven' a few days back. I loved its evocative music. And, I thought its lyrics spoke to my current dilemmas. Well, some lines did. And, I didn't understand the rest.

"There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold (like me)
And she's buying a stairway to heaven (Buying? not building?)
And when she gets there she knows if the stores are closed
With a word she can get what she came for" (What does that mean???)


The rest of the song too had similar tigerstripes of insight and ambiguity about the meaning.

So, I looked up on the net for the answer. I was surprised.

There are many, many people asking the same question. And there are no satisfactory answers. I am still as clueless.

A few theories that I came across are:

1. The song was written in a drugged state. It has no meaning whatsoever.
2. It means whatever you want it to mean.
3. It's a devoutly Christian song.
4. It has hidden Satanic messages hidden in it.

'Reverse speech' and 'backmasking' were unheard words for me. Till an hour ago. Now I am making a face at the prospect of hearing them again.

Nevertheless, I am going to read more on them. Because, this whole story has me hooked. Many questions have fascinated me.

1. How did the song become so famous if no one really understood its meaning?
2. Does the fact that it did indeed manage to do so not speak about our herd tendency? That people listen to a song, and recommend it, because they know its very popular, and is known as 'one of the greatest songs of all times', and if so many people say that, there must be some sound reason for the same (though that reason has eluded them somehow).
3. Or is this explanation for its fame too simplistic? What could be the other factors?
4. In 1982, a committee of the California State assembly convened to listen to the song for the allegedly backmasked Satanic messages, as some Baptist preachers had charged it to contain. They played the song backwards, and supposedly heard the words ""here's to my sweet Satan."
I find this ridiculous, and it shocks me to know that the rumours were taken seriously enough for a legislative committee to formally investigate!!! And, the net is teeming with people who claim to have heard more hidden messages in the song.

Do people still believe in Satan? So seriously? So sincerely that they actually beleive it possible that Led Zeppelin may be an agent of the Satan?

I am amazed!

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

The Power of the dream

Deep within each heart
There lies a magic spark
That lights the fire of our imagination
And since the dawn of man
The strenght of just "I can"
Has brought together people of all nations

Theres nothing ordinary
In the living of each day
Theres a special part
Every one of us will play

Feel the flame forever burn
Teaching lessons we must learn
To bring us closer to the power of the dream
As the world gives us its best
To stand apart from all the rest
It is the power of the dream that brings us here

Your mind will take you far
The rest is just pure heart
Youll find your fate is all your own creation
Every boy and girl
As they come into this world
They bring the gift of hope and inspiration

Feel the flame forever burn
Teaching lessons we must learn
To bring us closer to the power of the dream
The world unites in hope and peace
We pray that it will always be
It is the power of the dream that brings us here

Theres so much strength in all of us
Every woman child and man
Its the moment that you think you cant
Youll discover that you can

Feel the flame forever burn
Teaching lessons we must learn
To bring us closer to the power of the dream
The world unites in hope and peace
We pray that it will always be
It is the power of the dream that brings us here

Feel the flame forever burn
Teaching lessons we must learn
To bring us closer to the power of the dream
The world unites in hope and peace
We pray that it will always be
It is the power of the dream that brings us here

The power of the dream
The faith in things unseen
The courage to embrace your fear
No matter where you are
To reach for your own star
To realize the power of the dream

Celine Dion

Feminism

A feminist is a woman who negotiates herself into a position where she has choices. Arundhati Roy

Rushdie to young writers

When asked in an interview to advice the beginning writers, this is what Salman Rushdie had to say:

"I guess the best advice I can give has to do with perseverance. You know, my writing career did not begin easily. I graduated from college in 1968. The first time I really had any success as a writer was "Midnight's Children," which was in 1981. So there was like 12½ years of paying my dues. Some writers are lucky that they get there right away with their first book, like Joe Heller with "Catch-22" or whatever. But one of the things that I found was essential to the business of becoming a writer was to have that determination and perseverance to keep trying in the face of failure and without any guarantee of success. And if I look back at my young self, battling away for a dozen years, I'm very proud of that. And I'm not sure now, if somebody asked me would I start work in some field where it would take you 12½ years without any guarantee at the end of it that you would be any good at it, I mean I would not do that. I'd be crazy to do it. But I think writers, when starting out, are crazy in exactly that way."

Another link: A Hindu article: Between Imagination and Reality

On Freedom

"...If you have the great privilege of living in one of the relatively few free societies in the world, use the freedom. The point about freedom is to use it. It's not to say, 'Oh well, it's nice to have the freedom but let's not bother to use it because that would be a bit scary'. Freedom is scary, and it's not peaceful either. It's turbulent. 'Speak' is what I would say."

Salman Rushdie

Hrithik Roshan

I am not star-struck as people usually are. But there are some actors whom I admire. Like Hrithik Roshan. I searched up on the net for him the day I watched 'Kkrish'. I had come back fascinated by the hard work that he was sure to have put in to give such a difficult performance. There was a beautiful rhythm in all his movements, as he performed the most improbable stunts, or the dance steps.

He is a self-made man. This is what he said in an interview about his first steps:


"Even as a kid I knew I would grow up to be an actor. But it wasn’t until the first year of college that I let my parents in on my plans. That’s when the protective concern of the parents took over. They were not OK with the idea of my becoming an actor. They knew how dad struggled - this is an unstable profession where your struggles are all your own. No matter who’s son you are and even if you are genuinely talented, luck plays a vital role in shaping the course of your career. It’s a very risky line and dad was really concerned for me. He advised me against joining this line. Then I considered going abroad for special effects training. But I abandoned the idea when I realised I was running away. Then I reasoned with dad that if I didn’t go through hard work and toil, how will I experience the kind of exhilaration and victory that he’s enjoying at the end of 20 years of struggle. I urged him to trust me. “I am your son, I won’t let you down,” I pleaded and he relented."

Orhan Pamuk- his initial struggle

Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2006, at the age of 54. He had wanted to be a painter in his school days, but his family talked him into architecture- a profession that would satisfy his artistic impulse, as well as be useful to the society. However, he couldn't go beyond the third year. He dropped out of college, with declared intentions of being a novelist. His family didn't approve of his decision, though his father continued to give him "pocket money" till the age of 32. That was when his first novel was published.

This is what an article says about that phase of his life:

'Several contemporaries were, like Pamuk, interestingly quirky thinkers. "But while they fell by the way side, he pushed on and found out who he really was through his writing. And it was difficult. For families from his class engineering was everything. Of course there were quite a few of us interested in artistic things, but there was a very strong feeling that anyone with skills should put them in service of the country. His family were not happy at all about what he was doing but that wouldn't mean they didn't support him. Your family is your social security over there."

Pamuk says he received "pocket money" from his father until he was 32. "But even my father, who had translated Valéry, said I should stay on and finish that stupid architecture school. Their attitude was that all the artists and intellectuals in the country were doomed because there was not much interest in what they had to offer. And they were all drunks. So I worked very hard to make myself a novelist and finish my first book. I didn't want anyone to say - even though secretly I was saying it to myself - that I left school for nothing and was wasting my life."

I wish we shared more!

Each person's life is an experiment in how life should be lived. How helpful it would have been if everyone frankly shared their life story with others! How much we could have learnt from others' experience! How many errors would have been spared repetition! How many lives could have been lived better! How much potential could have been saved from frittering away in worries and agonies of a life built on a wrong foundation!

Just how much better life could have been, had we more faith in each other, and more confidence in ourselves to speak the truth, of the errors and experiences of our life!

I wish we were all not so defensive about ourselves.

On Beauty

Unless you have your individuality with your own flaws and perfections, you will look like anyone else around.

Laughter Riot

Better find a no-nonsense reason to make me laugh...else I will start giggling for no reason at all. Nilanjana Gupta