Goals

At 23 when you have freshly finished your post graduation you have a certain imagination for your future. Might be a person sitting in formals in front of a glass wall overlooking the cityscape. You imagine yourself calling the shots; sipping your coffee while nonchalantly passing dictats. Driving or maybe driven back home in your Saab. You imagine yourself walking into a showroom and being able to pick up any and every shoe/sweatshirt/top/tee/gadget/accessory of your choice. A life which makes every antagonist envious and which makes each friend/family member feels proud.

Stop. Now. Right where you are.

This approach is correct but its incomplete.

This mode of thinking and this dream universe becomes normative by virtue of the dreams elders dream for us. They imagine us to be the people they were or maybe weren't able to become. But we shouldn't blame our parents for that. By the time a couple/person plans to raise a child as their own, they end up experiencing many road-blocks of cynicism and doubts. The reason why they wish that you and I end up being those perfect beings is because their judgment and outlook of the future is built through the upheavals (sadly not by their high points) of their lives. Don’t blame them. They are just doing their job of trying to protect you from the forces of uncertainty.
No matter the pressure, ensure you don’t end your adolescent penchant for risks till the last second of our life.You can start by giving up the demands of a cynical albeit justified generation.

Do not stop dreaming. None of the aforementioned lines are written with the intent of undermining dreams. Please dream. But dream a 6 by 6 dream. We dream our futures hypermetropiacally (as opposed to myopically). We see the distant image clearly but the image right if oft blurred.
What we overlook in our dreams is the part of day-to-day lived reality.

What is the lived reality of the life we want?
What is the route one needs to take?
The destination is intangible but the path is tangible.

What will the company paying me a fat salary expect me to do in order to justify my paycheck?

How many sacrifices does it take to get a cabin overlooking the cityscape in a fancy corporate office?

What does it take to be respected by everyone near and far?
Dreams of a career, how do we achieve it and how do we affect people around us? These are questions which can be answered without touching upon money.
Then, are we right in judging our success based on how much we earn?

In a lived day to day reality, what would inspire me to wake up and work? (Salary comes in once a month but what about the lived reality of the remaining 29 days?)

Goals are personal like genitals. As long as the subjective purpose is solved the size does not matter.

currency of cool

Industries where remuneration are not high, “cool” becomes a currency and in 'creative' circles of a certain town by the 'bay “cool” is solid gold. It is akin to the social value of money in some places and akin to the ubiquitous ‘mera baap kaun’ in other cities. 

In this world coolness is equated with being able to make senseless small talks interspersed with “dooodes” and “insane” whipped out casually in a droning drawl.

and of course if you are cool you ought to be tech savvy. the mobile you own speaks about the maslowian hierarchical stage you exist in.

An atheist's apology for shiva

I love Shiva but I hate religion and the concept of God. This makes it tough to accommodate both ideas in the confines of my peremptory existence. Shiva as a God is polluted by the later texts and their representations of Shiva, which are ridden by the socio-cultural baggage of the writers and their patrons. Individual acts of Gods are the points of entry of each era. This also effects the collective idea of that god in that era.

Without the baggage of 'God'dom (a product of the collective conscience existing at a point in time), Shiva becomes a pure subjective idea. An idea which is subject to each independent thinking brain's intent and acumen.

In my head Shiva does not lay out ideals of behavior and ethics. He doesn't bother or care nor have the potential nor requirement to pay heed to the way you wish your life was micromanaged by forces allegedly greater than you. A man who chops his son's head off and replaces it with a phallus shouldn't even try.

He is someone who celebrates death and at the same meditates on 'bom' - the eternal void. Each one of us celebrates death in the guise of demise at least twice each year. Once on our birthdays when we are happy about the number of year we have 'put to rest'. The second time when we celebrate New Year. The numbers in both mark the days gone by, the distant demise of a past marked by the chronisms of our kind.

The inevitable halt aka death synthesizes with the absolute void aka eternity and forms a vivid picture of our insignificant microcosmic existence. I don't pray to Shiva, I don't bow my head when I pass by a portrait/statue of Shiva. But Shiva help me feel relieved. The resident godfather of the cemetery, Shiva helps relieve a lot of existential dilemmas. The ideas helps understand the inconsequence of losses as well as of victories. It encourages to not have any photographs and make no attempts to freeze the past. Don't fool yourself by your ability to change time in your wrist watch. You exist in time and not the other way round.

At a simpler level, the idea of Shiva makes it possible for many to smoke pot. Not that this stops the government from banning it. However, in a culture of bhang and thandai (all in the name of Shiva), everyone becomes aware of the effects of cannabis. Due to this people who 'discretely' get stoned are rarely bothered by anyone. The connect between the two goes beyond this. Under the effect of cannabis it becomes easier to think and accept the insignificantly small effect we have over eternity. It helps understand the futility of external judgment and opinion. Focus on the inevitability of the end and ulterior motives seem all so redundant.

So each time I think of Shiva (mine has a beard, matted hair and is stick-thin with ribs jutting out, the way I have seen mendicant all my life) before lighting my chillum I think of the pragmatic philosophy which Shiva gives us with his three biggest symbols #bom #death #weed

Worth

Two years are overs and the line has almost finished its journey to become a circle.It was a roller coaster ride sans seat belts. What strikes me most poignantly at this moment is the fickleness of emotions and how they mean so little in length though they are so deep in breadth.

Things which seemed important yesterday hardly have a chance once faced with the inevitable fluctuation, their intrinsic values are subject to. Things we feel we cannot do without, become objects of least desire. At other times something lying right under your nose goes unnoticed till you take off your blinkers.

So what is the innate objective value of things and do the objective values make any sense at all? Given the way it works in my world it seems every worth exists in subjectivity.

Just like an hour ago I wanted to write volumes on this topic but now I would prefer the following sign (viz full-stop).