इस मोड़ से जातें हैं

The magic that can be created by this Golden Pair of Gulzar and R. D. Burman is simply unbelievable! By the time you are still figuring out how can simple words make so profound expressions, the music will drag you to your heart touching memories! And the ultimate effect is that you just wait there, bask in those memories and thank them big time for making you realize that "Its always about those precious things you have that money can't buy!"

इस मोड़ से जातें हैं, कुछ सुस्त कदम रस्ते 

कुछ तेज कदम राहे

पत्थर की  हवेली को, शीशे के घरोंदो मैं 

तिनकों के नशेमन तक 

इस मोड़ से जातें हैं ...

आंधी की तरह उड़कर, एक राह गुजरती हैं 

शरमाती हुई कोई, कदमों से उतरती हैं 

इन रेशमी राहों में, एक राह तो वो होगी 

तुम तक जो पहुंचती हैं

इस मोड़ से जाती हैं ...

एक दूर से आती है, पास आके पलटती है 

एक राह अकेली सी, रुकती है न चलती हैं 

ये सोच के बैठी हूँ, एक राह तो वो होगी 

तुम तक जो पहुंचती हैं

इस मोड़ से जाती हैं ...

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

A very powerful poem I always quote to myself in the times of confusion. It always makes my opinion of conventions seldom lead to greatness! You have to be path breaking to make a difference! 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Who Moved My Cheese

p.s: One of the very few good renditions of books I have seen. A very inspiring story!

जन पळभर म्हणतिल हाय हाय

जन पळभर म्हणतिल हाय हाय !

मी जाता राहिल कार्य काय?

सूर्य तळपतिल, चंद्र झळकतिल, 

तारे आपुला क्रम आचरतिल, 

असेच वारे पुढे वहतिल

होईल काही का अंतराय?

मेघ वर्षतिल, शेते पिकतिल, 

गर्वाने या नदया वाहतिल,

पुन्हा कळजि की न उमटतिल,

पुन्हा तटावर हेच पाय?

सखेसोयरे डोले पुसतिल, 

पुन्हा आपुल्या कामी लगतिला,

उठतिल, बसतिल, हसुनी खिदळतिल,

मी जाता त्यांचे काय जाय?

अशा जगस्तव काय कुढावे,

मोही कुणाच्या का गुंतावे?

हरिदुता का विन्मुख व्हावे?

का जिरावुनाये शांतित काय?

Working Women

My mother worked for 40 years. My wife is the COO at an international bank. It makes me proud. She doesn't make phulkas for me. We outsource that work to our help, and it doesn't really bother me. If my wife had spent her life in the kitchen, it would have bothered me more.

One,

a man who marries a career woman gets a partner to discuss his own career with. A working woman may be able to relate better to organizational issues than a housewife. A spouse who understands office politics and can give you good advice can be an asset.

Two,

a working woman diversifies the family income streams. In the era of expensive apartments and frequent lay-offs, a working spouse can help you afford a decent house and feel more secure about finances.

Three,

a working woman is better exposed to the world. She brings back knowledge and information that can be useful to the family. Whether it's the latest deals or the best mutual fund to invest in, or even new holiday destinations, a working woman can add to the quality of life.

Four,

the children of a working woman learn to be more independent and will do better than mollycoddled children.

Five,

working women often find some fulfillment in their jobs, apart from home. Hence, they may have better life satisfaction, and feel less dependent on the man. This in turn can lead to more harmony.

Please choose your partner carefully.

Don't just tolerate, but accept and even celebrate our successful women. They take our homes ahead and our country forward. We may have less hot phulkas, but we will have a better nation. 

— Chetan Bhagat

ती गेली तेव्हा रिमझिम... - ग्रेस

माझ्या सर्वाधिक आवडत्या गाण्यांपैकी हे एक गाणं. कविता अणि चाल ह्या अश्या काही एकरूप झाल्या आहेत की आपण नेमक कश्यानी धुंद होतो, तेच कळेनासं होत.

ती गेली तेव्हा रिमझिम, पाउस निनादत होता

मेघांत अडकली किरणे, हा सूर्य सोडवित होता 

ती आई होती म्हणुनी, घन व्याकुळ मी ही रडलो 

त्या वेळी वारा सावध, पचोळा उडवित होता 

अंगणात गमले मजला, संपले बालपण माझे 

खिडकीवर धुरकट तेव्हा, कंदील एकटा होता 

Tea

This is one of my favorite posts from "The Salmon of Doubt" by "Douglas Adams". It is so brilliant that I do not wish to spoil its spontaneity by explaining why I like it... Go ahead and enjoy simple pure genius!! :-)

Tea

One or two Americans have asked me why the English like tea so much, which never seems to them to be a very good drink. To understand, you have to make it properly.
There is a very simple principle to the making of tea, and it’s this—to get the proper flavour of tea, the water has to be boilING (Not boilED) when it hits the tea leaves. If it’s merely hot, then the tea will be insipid. That’s why we English have these odd rituals, such as warming the teapot first (so as no to cause the boiling water to cool down too fast as it hits the pot). And that’s why American habit of bringing a teacup, a tea bag, and a pot of hot water to the table is merely the perfect way of making a tin, pale, watery cup of tea that nobody in their right mind would want to drink. The Americans are all mystified about why the English make such a big thing out of tea because most Americans HAVE NEVER HAD A GOOD CUP OF TEA. That’s why they don’t understand. In fact, the truth of the matter is that most English people don’t know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.
So the best advice I can give to an American arriving in England is this: Go to Marks and Spencer and buy a packet of Earl Grey tea. Go back to where you’re staying and boil a kettle of water. While it is coming to the boil, open the sealed packet and sniff. Careful---you may feel a bit dizzy, but this is in fact perfectly legal. When the kettle has boiled, pour a little of it into a teapot, swirl it around, and tip it out again. Put a couple (or three, depending on the size of the pot) of tea bags into the pot. (If I was really trying to lead you into the paths of righteousness, I would tell you to use free leaves rather than bags, but let’s just take this in easy stages.) Bring the kettle back up to the boil, and then pour the boiling water as quickly as you can into the pot. Let is stand for two or three minutes, and then pour it into a cup. Some people will tell you that you shouldn’t have milk with Earl Grey, just a slice of lemon. Screw them. I like it with milk. If you think you will like it with milk, then it’s probably best to put some milk into the bottom of the cup before you pour in the tea.* If you pour milk into a cup of hot tea, you will scald the milk. If you think you will prefer it with a slice of lemon, then, well, add a slice of lemon.
Drink it. After a few moments you will begin to think that the place you’ve come to isn’t maybe quite so strange and crazy after all.

* This is socially incorrect. The socially correct way of pouring tea is to put the milk in after the tea. Social correctness has traditionally had nothing whatever to do with reason, logic or physics. In fact, in England it is generally considered socially incorrect to know stuff or think about things. It's worth bearing this in mind when visiting.

Dexter - Creative

Dexter - A new series that is on air has captured my attention only because of this title track! An amazing creative that portrays the protagonist's deep rooted traits! Its awesome how his daily routine activities are  captured in a way that every move can be linked to murder methods! I just love the way you come to know everything this serial has to offer in less than 2 mins! That's what you call an original pure creation! :-)

जीव रंगला - जोगवा

One of the boldest songs Marathi Films has seen till date. I love everything about this song, its tune, lyrics, singers and yes, the video... Absolutely subtle and gives the perfect glimpse of the movie its featured in! For those of you who haven't seen the movie, its definitely a "must watch". 

p.s: It's sad to see inhibitions, superstitions and traditions disgrace human species even in the 21st century!

Steve Jobs at Stanford

The man who exemplified living up to what you love the most in this world, has been an idol for millions!  "I" has left the world! The generations that follow have lost a chance to witness how miracles are caused by passionate ideas. They have lost a chance to know how the beginning of a story becomes insignificant when you have your dream. And they have lost a chance to look up to a living legend who proved with his own example that life is not about the degrees you hold in your life, but about what you can do in spite of all odds. Another cut out lines that I admire from Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford University (12th June 2005). Such powerful lines even out of the complete speech's context make incredible sense! You can read the entire speech here.

...

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, it's 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.

...

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.

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Speech during the Dissolution of the Order of the Star of the

"Truth is a a pathless land". So dramatically glorified as "The Chosen One" by the Theosophists, dissolves the order he was predicted to lead from the tender age of 13 years. Such a huge organisation being dissolved by the Head of the Order, in front of more than 3000 members and aired on the radio by multiples of thousands, in the year 1929 accounts for a historic movement. Following are the lines I love the most in his speech. You can read the entire speech here.

... 

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organise it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others...

... 
If an organisation be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth. So that is another reason why I have decided, as I happen to be the Head of the Order, to dissolve it.

This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. Then you will naturally ask me why I go the world over, continually speaking. I will tell you for what reason I do this; not because I desire a following, not because I desire a special group of special disciples. (How men love to be different from their fellow-men, however ridiculous, absurd and trivial their distinctions, may be! I do not want to encourage that absurdity.) I have no disciples, no apostles, either on earth or in the realm of spirituality.

Nor is it the lure of money, nor the desire to live a comfortable life, which attracts me. If I wanted to lead a comfortable life I would not come to a Camp or live in a damp country! I am speaking frankly because I want this settled once and for all. I do not want these childish discussion year after year.


A newspaper reporter, who interviewed me, considered it a magnificent act to dissolve an organisation in which there were thousands and thousands of members. To him it was a great act because he said: "What will you do afterwards, how will you live? You will have no following, people will no longer listen to you." If there are only five people who will listen, who will live, who have their faces turned towards eternity, it will be sufficient. Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves?...


... 
You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else.... when I say look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few. So why have an organisation?...


No man from outside can make you free; nor can organised worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organisation, nor throwing yourselves into work, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an alter and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organisations become your chief concern. "How many members are there in it?" That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. "How many followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you say is true or false." I do not know how many there are. I am not concerned with that. If there were even one man who had been set free, that were enough....