Rohit’s Weblog

Success-Surely the most coveted word in anyone’s personal dictionary of Life. But would anyone be able to define it?? I never could isolate success to a definition. It could be related to what we get,what we lose or even what we experience. Success for everyone has its own ‘relative’ meaning. Success is just a form of comparison or just another form of discrimination. Otherwise how would you differentiate between a highly respected person and a highly satisfied person?? Who is more successful. ?

I haven’t found success yet. The two times I really wanted something I got so close that it hurt to lose out. It could have been luck, it could have been destiny,it could have been incompetence or it could have been astrology(:)) which is doing this to me but is it really ‘the success’ I am looking for ? Language is a major deterrent to the mind. How I wish there were no negative words and all the bad could be said with some kind of sarcasm. I have been unsuccessful. Lot of people may not agree but it is a FACT which is difficult to avoid. But having said all this, I really don’t think I have lost everything. I am having the best time in a job which many people said was too ‘non-technical’ for a so-called ‘technical person’ like me..:) I haven’t found success in finding a dream job but I was successful in finding a job which has given me enough learning to dream of bigger things and redefine success. So in the end there is only one comparison for success and that is with ‘yourself’. To reiterate using Baz Luhrmann’s line from the song ‘Everybody wears Sunscreen”

Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

In this major tussle for definitions there is one quote which puts all this in place. I have it written on my wall. I seldom read it. But surely would love to live by it.

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived;

This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stars,fanfare,associations, fans-shows,copyrights(ya right!!) and family businesses-something very localised to the great Indian time-pass-MOVIES. When it comes to South India it is just another level. Heroes( not actors) are demi-Gods, fans associations are registered, it is ‘politically’ correct to say that a star can make a good administrator. People actually fight over their favourites. Having been a Telugu movie buff all my life and disappointed by the stereotypes which is a commonplace in this industry, I have started watching movies just to see why they are bad. But there is so much talk about our movies. Lost count of the number of discussions which just revolved around the ‘movies’ topic. Of gossips,of copied songs, of ‘treatment’, of background scores, of entertainment and of course about the title ‘Stars’. Strangely as soon as an actor is tagged a star, he becomes just a hero,devoid of all the acting skills that have got him till there. Some of the titles(aliases) of the ‘Telugu stars’

• ‘MegaStar’ Chiranjeevi ( The word mega has become synonymous with him that his fans are called mega fans, his soon to be launched party is being quoted as ‘mega party’, even the blood donation camps are tagged with the word Mega. This is one actor who did brilliant movies in start of his career but no longer has the bandwidth of his fans’ attention span to do meaningful movies.)
• ‘NataRatna’(Gem of an actor) NTR ( HE is a household name in any Telugu family who rose from an actor to a star to a politician to a CM post)
• ‘YuvaRatna’( Young gem) Balakrishan  ( He is the son of NTR and that explains his title . He puts all fantasy hollywood films to shame with his stunts and is lovingly( duh!) called Balayya. Check out the ‘we hate Balayya’ community on Orkut to check out his popularity.)
• ‘NataSamrat’( Emperor of Acting) Akkineni Nageshwar Rao  ( Veteran of the Telugu cinema who has played the most diversified roles in the true sense)
• ‘YuvaSamrat’Nagarjuna   ( No points for guessing. He is the son of ANR. )
• ‘NavaSamrat’ Sumanth   ( oh yeah! same family,the grandson)
• ‘PowerStar’ Pawan Kalyan  ( Brother of the ‘Megastar’. Still don’t get what the power is about, sounds more like a special version of fuel)
• ‘StylishStar’Allu Arjun    ( this guy has surely got some cosmetic styling done to his face. If you watched his first movie you would agree)
• ‘MegaPowerStar’ RamCharan   ( Son of the Megastar. I guess you could draw the connection ! A title given to him even before his first movie released. Wonder if he will ever get a chance to really ‘ACT’)
• ‘Victory’Venkatesh   ( Every time you think he is down and out, he gets back with a sentimental movie just to declare his comeback on the box office.)
• ‘CollectionKing’MohanBabu  ( Was supposed to bring in collections for the producers.. But HOW!????… never understood this thing. Both his sons are ‘heroes’ now. I guess they will be called collection princes or jr. collectors.)
• ‘SuperStar’Krishna ( 300 movies and still counting. Settles for nothing less than the protagonist role. Wonder how bored people are watching him?.. would prefer superstar Rajni to him anyday)
• ‘Prince’ MaheshBabu  ( Son of the Superstar. Deserves an honor but his father surely doesn’t deserve to be the King)
• ‘LoverBoy’ Tarun  (Sadly not being loved by the producers anymore)
• ‘YoungTiger’JrNTR ( Probably his liposuction signifying the receding density of tigers in India)
• ‘UniversalHero’KamalHassan ( Sounds like a beauty pageant winner. But this guy is one helluva actor and there is no sarcasm in this statement!)
• ‘RealStar’ SriHari ( Just another fake star!)

The list goes on and on.I could just remember these Few(:P). If you are wondering how I knew even this much, then you must meet few of my friends with whom I fail to realise sometimes whether they are talking or memorising movie dialogues.:P

If you still think this is some kind of exaggeration, then just do a Google Image Search for Telugu and tell me what catches your eye!.

I hate the Gym. There is nothing fun about it. Huge mirrors to make me self conscious of my so called flab(:P), treadmills which literally don’t take you anywhere, music which I can’t dance to, the stink of the indoors, weights which for a reason are called heavy and to top it all it is not a SPORT.

But I still VISIT it.:). Surely not an obsession for a six-pack or a size-zero but for the one basic reason-Health. Surely an irony when I say health as in quest for size-zeroes and chiseled bodies people are bothered about anything but their health. Lost count of the number of anorexic death cases reported in newspapers and that too at a time when hunger deaths of the farmers who feed us were larger in number and getting a smaller headline. Calories have become poison and Subs are the new sumptuous meals. Wonder where it all started???

Rave-parties, Coffee’pubs’, disrespect to elders, materialism, blind-dates, one-night-stands, ‘accent’uated language- the list is endless. Few popular habits of the generation X Y or Z which have raised eyebrows of our reverant seniors. Rarely has such a cultural change flooded a nation in so little time. But there is just one question to be asked ” Are we heading in the right direction or are we too far ahead of the U-turn?” But when the question of ‘culture’ arises, why the disrespect to ours and openness to the west? Is it right to say it is wrong?

I have the right to question but am I asking the right questions? Especially with questions which arise from the uncomfortable subtleties of our culture,who is the authority to answer?-Surely not the moral police of chennai or the shiv sainiks of Maharashtra. They may be the smartest but surely are not the wisest . Anyone who understands the taste of forbidden fruit may testify that.

So I set out looking for answers on the virtual world and stumbled across some definitions of culture. Wikipedia defines it as-’Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be “understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another’

Somehow I never seemed to have flair for definitions from school days so I guess I will just summarise Culture as a sharing of common ancestry or sharing of common interests. I surely do not agree with the second as I strongly believe that if Man’s interest is the basis for a culture then greed would be its religion. Then is culture just a sharing of common ancestry??? Then what would define the culture of our great nation- the non-violence in the fight for freedom against a nation which has taught us a language which is our greatest value add today, the unification of a predominantly Hindu nation by a Muslim warrior, the advent of the Aryans who made it difficult to distinctly identify the so called natives of this nation or the Great Hindu writings in the form of Vedas, Mahabharatha and Ramayana which are a repository of the all the lessons of life. Whatever the issue maybe, the greatest culture imbibed by the generation is to find faults. Is finding faults wrong? Are we to accept what we are told ? There is always a thin line between enquiry and accusation. So maybe it is right to question and not so right to find faults- A Golden Rule. A lesson I learnt from an illiterate educated lady more than three times as old as I am. A story which made me look at all my Grandma’s stories as something more than stories. The story which apparently is my previous post.

A story which can teach humility( not sure if it will). But surely something worth a mention. The argument may go on as long as it is culturally acceptable but as everything in life, there will not be a consensus.

Year 2279. December 31st. Nuclear attack on 5 continents. Mankind wiped out. But wait. There are a few survivors. Somewhere in the midland of India few coal workers checking the mines for leaks 50000 feet below the earth’s surface survive. They come out to this wide world to notice everything destroyed. Few places have some electrical appliances running on some solar power. Life must go on. These few people start building the world all over again. But wait, these are coal workers and are uneducated( being very pessimistic here) . They have no clue how any electrical appliance works. Life processes take place and a new generation looks at these appliances  with great curiosity and they question their parents. The parents can never say they don’t know(human ego persists even then). So a story is built. It becomes God’s miracle. Little will the further generations know that these are things which have been mastered in the past. Life goes on.Appliances are wiped out. People are still mystified by the existence of a ‘power’ which can be transmitted. They may have found some artifacts which describe what is happening but do not have the imaginative capability to comprehend them.This is initial stage -Acceptance.

Few more generations later, some brilliant soul will question the existence of God and will try to prove something that is happening to be purely coincidental. He will be charged of heresy by the so called ‘learned people’ of that age and burnt alive. This is the denial stage. Next comes the enquiry stage where people secretly start forming rebellious groups and start questioning blind faith and try to make things happen.

Suddenly a stroke of brilliance and science is rediscovered. Life will not be the same again. Everything which was belived to be the action of a mystic force is demystified and more questions are asked and more answers found. Every discovery and invention will lead to many more. World becomes an easier place to live in (?)

Generations later people will find books which their ancestors had and start trying to decode them and understand them. The level of understanding of this stage is higher and many things which were once considered ‘God’s grace’ become things of human brilliance thousands of years ago. Somewhere in this era is another group of people who find the same books, decode them and start finding faults with them. The genration W of the future.  But after all this science takes a violent turn. People will again get greedy and there will be destruction again.

(End of Story)

This is the story of the present, this is the story of the past and this will be the story of the future. We never learn from our mistakes. I know I am a bad story teller  and I tried to keep the story as short as possible but I hope I have conveyed the moral I wanted to. This story was inspired from an example my grandmother’s sister used to explain why the Great Indian epics(Mahabharatha and Ramayana), which may sound very unnatural now could be natural in those days. Things which sound magical today would have been trivial things in that time which we will understand only when we discover them. So asking questions is not wrong, you infact may find the right answers. But trying to find faults in something beyond our comprehension will surely not get us anywhere. I may be sounding very preachy here but I guess its my blog and I am allowed to do so.

RAFAEL NADAL beat ROGER FEDERER in a scintillating,nerve-wrecking,exhilarating(and all their synonyms!) and a roller-coaster of a wimbledon final. Roger has been beaten in his backyard and that too in his top form. Easily one of the best matches I have seen with both players trying to get better than the other’s best. The match exceeded even the highest of expectations. The guest list for the match included the rain,wind, the heartbeats of the world and a few Indians. The others were watching India being thrashed by Jayasuriya and Mendis in the Asia Cup final. I really pity them. Not the Indian team for losing but the spectators who missed the Wimbledon final. It couldn’t get bigger or better. There were so much in the match that it had its share of lessons:

• ‘Brilliance’ is a word thrown around to describe lesser mortals.
• 22 is a better age than 26-ANYDAY
• Breaking Sampras’ record is not an easy task.
• Federer is really lucky that Rafa was born 4 years after him.
• No one owns the Wimbledon( Whoever said Federer would win the next 10)
• Federer at his best is not ‘invincible’.
• And yes- Rafael Nadal is the MAN
• Sampras Vs Agassi was not the best rivalry ever. Rafa brings out the best in Federer and then betters him.
• Nerves are really strong entities. I would have caused myself great damage otherwise.
• Federer won’t be a part of players monday. YEAy. In your face Federer fans.
• It seems to be Spain’s year.

I couldn’t sleep last night with all the excitement. But it was every bit worth it. We have a new champion and Fedex has been derailed by the spanish bull!

What takes a country which is a bundle of contradictions to have an attitude shift??? Yes I am talking about my ‘mother’land India which surely is in a makeover phase. Other wise what would explain the most submissive country( don’t blame me for saying that- we respect our guests and invaders alike-All are invited!) to produce sportsmen who are being reprimanded for their arrogance,businessmen set out to acquire the global space, writers actually using their ‘freedom of speech’ and populations threatening to cause a global resource shortage( I am a bundle of contradictions when I say this)

I am just not making statements. We are a bundle of contradictions. We are a country where Gambling is illegal but every citizen gambles everyday. Let me explain before more eyebrows are raised. We gamble with time to reach ‘on time’ and hoping that fewer number of roadizens break the law, we gamble while electing our rulers hoping the next guy who comes to power would be of little use to the society, we gamble with quality, we gamble with integrity while offering a bribe to traffic police. But after all this gambling is considered a cardinal sin for the poor.( The rich can always always play ‘bridge’ in clubs and bet on the stallions in races). The country experienced the worst case of female feticide and dowry deaths when we had a shrewd woman at the helm of things in the prime minister’s office. This is a country which is swarmed with Hindus who worship Goddess Shakthi as the Goddess who provides strength( The same strength which is raised first in every sexist argument).

India,the mystic land which has been the birthplace of all sciences. But we have changed right?? We are too  busy serving the vested interests of the west and partying like the west that we just find enough time to rubbish off our great writings of the past. We just flinged them across for the eternal opportunistic country to actually research them,make sense of them and actually PATENT them. But kudos to them for their nationalistic pride- the dumbest of them takes their nation as seriously as probably their dumb president would. But why am I complaining, change is supposed to be good. Change is supposed to be healthy.

Too much cynicism in the post but there is always a bright side. Today we were lucky to attend a talk by Arvind Kejriwal. If you don’t know who he is then you better have the ‘right to information’ to know. He is all about change( in hindi though ) – Parivartan. And for people who think this system is never going to change- he has the answers. I know this is a horrible attempt to inspire with all my negativity. But as I said WE are a bundle of contradictions.