LIFE, "LITERALLY"

Just two weeks back, at a similar time of the day/night (3:30 a.m.!!!) I was trying to introspect my Life. I have a wonderful family, ever-supportive friends, a lovely child (just a wee bit younger to me !!), a great job which i enjoy and very recently I found this perfect girl(Minakshi) who is going to be my life-partner. End of the story. What more can a person ask for? Picture perfect.

But somehow I realized that I wasn't eternally happy. I just felt like a machine who is programmed to work 12 hours a day, sleep another 6 and has no idea what he wants to do with the remaining 6. And I just couldn't figure out why? What should I do for my PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS?? I started finding all kinds of reasons for it. May be I was average at all things but exceptionally good at none. I mean I sing OK, I can create OK music, I write OK, I do my job OK, I can give OK solutions to people's problems, but in none of these fields was I the Best. May be I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in future. May be this, may be that. But again, of no use.

Then I talked about this to my child. And man, she did made me realize what a fool I was being. I was trying to find out reasons why I was not happy. Instead, I should have been busy focusing on the ways i should be happy. And all of a sudden it was like the doors of liberation had been swung open for me. I tried thinking hard what made me happy more than anything else?? And finally i reached the place where I wanted to....

I have always believed that to give birth to something out of nothingness is the most challenging as well as satisfying thing a human being could possibly accomplish. And I realized that I can do few such things myself. And the biggest happiness has always been seeing the end product. OK.. they might not be the best in the world. But they are mine. And even a single good compliment for them gives a satisfaction which can have no parallel with anything else.

So I replaced my provogues shoes with the Comfortable Slippers, the gucci handbag with the Familiar Jhola, the prada eye-wear with the Good Old Harry-Potterish glasses and went to listen to the writing greats of the world at the greatest literary show on the planet. The next three days I attended the Jaipur Literature Festival religiously, even though I wasn't well enough to do so.. But I sincerely believed that the solutions of my problems were definitely not with a Doc. So.. JLF.. there I was... AND GOD.. DID THAT GIVE ME MY LIFE ?? I mean I was just spellbound.. Listening to the literary greats of all times like Gulzaar Sahab, Javed Akhtar Sahab, seeing eminent personalities from all over the world talk about all kinds of issues ranging from political to economical to social to even sexual (Vatsayana)!!! Ohh.. It was an experience of a life time. The prominent Indian personalities present, excluding the above mentioned, were Om Puri, Girish Karnad, Shabana Azmi, Rahul Bose, Barkha Dutt, Krishna Baldev Baid, Namita Gokhale, Ashok Vajpeyi, Pawan Varma, Prasoon Joshi, Tarun Tejpal, Devdutt Patnaik, Navtej Sarna, Vir Sanghvi, Dileep Simeon, Nandini Sundar, Shobha De and even Chetan Bhagat (though a few people still don't like him to be invited to such an illustrious event!! :P .. miss RC !! ahem ahem !!)... From around the globe, we had Ashi Dorji, the Queen of Bhutan, Mark Tully, John Kampfner, Niall Ferguson, Steve Coll, Louis De Berneire, William Dalrymple, Tenzin Tsundue, Veronique Tadjo, Alain Mabanckou, Tina Brown, Ali Sethi, Shazia Omar and many more. They were a mix of writers, journalists, poets, social activists.

But for me what mattered was all the people around there THOUGHT. And their words made me THINK. I felt so so human!! I bought 7 books in there and have presently started IF I COULD TELL YOU by Soumya Bhattacharya and also, every night I read poetry of Gulzaar Sahab and Javed Akhtar Sahab before going to sleep. As about JLF, the complete package was a terrific one, including the poetry recitation by Javed Akhtar Sahab and Prasoon Joshi, the fantastic performance by the Band (which was a mix of a French singer, a Pakistani ektara player, an African saxophone player and rest Indians on dhol, nagara and dance... Ah.. Art does overlook all barriers!!!!), the heart-stopping poetry rendition of Faiz Ahmed Faiz by Ali Sethi (just made me fall in love all over once again!!).. But the few lines by Gulzar Sahab were just out of the world.. I really fall short of words to praise those lines.. I have uploaded its video on facebook.. Just watch and think for yourselves..

I just made a point to myself that from now on, everyday i would read something good and also I would write and compose whenever I feel like and not keep on postponing it for a future date as has happened with me since i joined my job.


But simply speaking it was a new Life for me, "Literally"!! I owe this to my child and miss RC.. Thanks Baccha... Thanks miss RC.. :-)
God Bless!!

Purani jeans!!

Hello everyone.. long time no see.. happy new year to everyone.. just wanted to share a couple of my poems.. just want everyone to know that these reflect nothing about my present mental condition coz these were written a long time back.. but at that time i didn't have the comforts of sharing these through blogs.. so here they are..



I WAS NEVER GIVEN MY DUES…..

Life always seemed so beautiful to me
It gave me a feeling of being aboard on a cruise
But no matter how optimistic I try to be
I strongly believe, I was never given my dues…..

I was always a good son; I was always a good friend
I tried to pluck happiness from the slightest of the clues
But now I think that my self-restraint is about to break
Because it’s true, I was never given my dues…..

I died every moment whenever I tried to love
Whenever I tried to inch forward I was kicked out of the queues
And I know that nothing would change even if I perish
But it really hurts to think, I was never given my dues…..

I fought like a gladiator; I never gave up hope,
I accepted defeat with grace even when I was forced to lose
And even when I die there’ll be a smile on my face
So that at least someone would realize, I was never given my dues...


POONAM DAMANI



AM I REALLY ALIVE??

I wake up every morning yearning for a nice day
But I don’t feel happy even if I achieve the goals which deep in my heart thrive
I am walking; I am breathing
But the voice inside me always questions, Am I really alive??

The cacophony around me hardly bothers my silence,
I feel completely isolated even if I am in a honey-filled bee-hive
The enigma surrounding me is a puzzle even for me
And so I can’t help but think, Am I really alive??

People may say that they have made my brains hallowed
But they don’t know that I move on only when my conscience gives me a drive
And therefore this day even my soul seems to be dead
The question echoes even louder, Am I really alive??

I fear the ocean of death no more;
And whenever it comes across me I’ll happily take a dive
My dead soul will wander in the vastness of the skies
And on this barren earth there’d be no one to ask, Am I really alive??

POONAM DAMANI

THE EQUATION OF LIFE !!

Its not that I am a philosopher or anything like that.. but in the last 3 months when i tried to go in the flashback and reviewed my life i found that it has always been centered around different people (read variables!!).. i have always lived by the philosophy that my happiness lies in seeing the people, who matter to me, happy!! now i have always said to others that centering your life on a single individual always makes you susceptible to misery and pain because your happiness becomes centered around that very person.. if we take our life as an equation its very similar to the equation being dependent on one single variable.. but i think the problem with people like me is that for us there are a lot of variables and each variable affects our equation.. some affect it less.. some affect it more.. and to some we give the power to even completely erase this very equation !! another aspect of this equation is that the variables that are affecting this equation are completely unaware of its fate.. they are a different entity and their personal equations are going independent of the central equation i was talking about.. its very easy for them to detach themselves from the central equation.. but the central equation is the one getting adversely affected.. so the moral of the story is that more the number of variables in your life the more problems.. and try not to go in the path of the central equation !!

THE HUMAN FIGHTING SPIRIT : UNDEFEATABLE

This is the first time that I’m writing a blog. So I’ll just say this to all the people who are going to read it that please do not expect any literary masterpiece from this simple man. I’ll just write about the simple, yet amazing, things that go around us. Just a few days back, on the 4^th of March at around 4 a.m. I was rolling all over on my bed as I wasn’t being able to sleep. And I had been trying to go to sleep since almost 4 hours. This wasn’t normal as generally I used to feel very sleepy after a tiring day of work. The reason was that for the last 2 months, my work hadn’t been going well. I am a trader. Losses and profits are a part of my job. But however hard I tried, nothing seemed to be going right for me. I even started going office 1 hour early from my normal time to analyze my trades. But even that didn’t help. I made some huge losses and till 4^th of March, I was down by quite a huge sum of money. My manager says that a trader should have a poker face. A poker face is that of a person about whose thought-process you cannot even guess. It has a constant expression all the times. I even tried doing that for a few days. My frustration got the better of me. But still, I did not give up. I went back and fought. The next day, i.e., 5^th March I started my trading a bit cautiously. But after about an hour I did a very good trade. THAT was the defining moment and I never looked back. That very day, I broke the company record for highest intra-day net profit in my product. And just 3 days after that I broke my own record again to make a new record. In the movie “Mai, Meri Patni aur Woh”, there is a line spoken by Mr. Naseeruddin Shah (who happens to be the narrator of the movie), which might seem a very cheesy Hindi movie line but I feel is really applicable in everyone’s life. “Ek pal me zindagi badalne ki taaqat hoti hai!!” I just couldn’t agree more. All I want to say is that you’ve got to keep on fighting till your last breath because there is no force that can resist the human fighting spirit forever. And also you have to fight, not thinking that you don’t have any other option but with a passion to excel. It’s the difference between being thrown into a ring and going there to fight with your head held high. It makes all the difference in the world. No tough times can last forever. We just have to keep fighting till things turn around. And when they turn around, they will turn around big time. As I write this, not only have I recovered my losses but have made almost 4 times that amount of profit till date. And this is just a simple example from a simple man’s life. Just imagine what fighting spirit the great human beings have. If we can imbibe even 50% of that, we would become undefeatable!!