Fantablous Life >>> The Prelude

It was a most ordinary day, and after a hectic day of work I returned home and straight away logged into my FB account, to see like all other stupids if any new notification has come or any new pic has been uploaded by some x-y-z friend of mine... Sorry to deviate from the topic but FB has deeply understood the human mind and designed it in such a way that even the most intelligent and logical ones can get trapped in its illusion!! (i meant me :P) Nevertheless, as usual some frustrated friends of mine were online and the "algorithm lord" - Mr Kushal came electronically to my desktop in the form of a green dot, which proclaimed that he was online followed by some text - "Aur kya nayi khabar?" I never knew this chat was gonna be the start of the best holiday of my life!!

As we text-ed over FB, sharing our frustrations and boring life, a sudden idea of holidaying creep-ed in our genius engineer minds! I was ever ready for an adventure holiday and gave my full support. So the search for the best place to visit began almost instantly. Sincere thanks to Google Lord for providing endless options. The places our galvanized mind considered are :
- Bike ride to Jog Falls (Shimoga) from Bangalore - a 5 day extreme biking holiday
- Trip to Ladakh and also a place where Sanjivani herbs could be found, which could arose the dead (we were highly inspired from Ramayana)
- Go Goa - again on bike

Suddenly the creepy idea of not ruling out a foreign country in our destination list, came in Mr. Kushal's algorithmic head. Yes, why not. We actually could go to Malaysia for an adventurous holiday. We instantly agreed to this plan and Malaysia was decided. As the "Project Holiday" deadline was by September end, we started our R&D on Malaysia and found that some changes were required in the SRS. Malaysia had to be ruled out as visa-on-arrival was stopped and we didn't have enough time (thanks to our project deadline) to apply for Visa in the time frame. Alternate search for an equally exciting location began and alas - Thailand - The extreme country was the winner!

In the next 2 days, the place was finalized to Bangkok-Pattaya (after seeing the location and distance explicitly on GMaps). Before we could find out about the place and enquire of package trips (as we thought it would be cheaper), Mr Kushal found that AirAsia was offering a mind blowing rate to fly to Bangkok. I tried to give my practical-ideal and stupendous suggestions but... 24 hours, and I get the news that our flight tickets are booked for Bangkok. Just 2 weeks and our trip would begin. For God's sake it was an international trip and we had no planning as to where all to go, budget required etc etc. We followed the thinking of "aam aadmi" - "Chalo ho jayega... abhi to 2 week hai"

Soon 2 weeks were over. We had planned nothing and had no itenerary to follow (Believe me guys that was the best part). So this was the day. We set out for BIA (Bangalore International Airport) at around 5:30PM to catch the 8:45PM Kingfisher to Kolkata. Our flight to Bangkok was from Kolkata the next day at around 12:30PM. We boarded the flight on time and had some great time in the flight practicing to talk in unique Thai accent - Khoppun Khaap :P We reached Kolkata late night- at around 2AM, had dinner at Kushal's place and dozed off for the day.

It was a bright day following and we got up before time (atleast Kushal got up!) We were out for the airport at 8 AM itself as Kolkata airport is the crappiest place on earth. We entered the airport to discover there weren't any ATM's inside the airport. Had to create some scene to come out and take out money and re-enter. Finally after a little "yaap" we were inside and waited in the dirty seating arrangement for about 2 hrs, before we were allowed to proceed for immigration. We had some bad luck as we exchanged currency at a higher rate in the airport. Anyways we cleared the immigration and got the green signal to board the flight.

Oops I forgot to mention some more drama that Mr.Kushal did during security check-in. Kushal is practically Ghajini Part 2 (forgets anything and everything). He kept my boarding pass in his pocket, and the moment I put my bag in the roller for security check, he proclaimed that my ticket was not with him. My bag was already inside the scanner and I was in a mess as to where my ticket had vanished. With an extremely low tone, I requested the security guard to pull back my bag as I must have kept the ticket in my bag (as I thought). The guard gave me an "Amrish Puri" look in bengali style and ordered the roller to rotate backwards, and my bag came back out like a proud peacock. I began searching my bag nervously for the ticket, when Kushal re-entered the scene like Shatimaan (fk fk fk fk) of DD1 fame... The moment he told me my ticket was with him, I felt like ###$$$*** - censored due to company policy! So finally Shaktimaan and me were near the boarding gate awaiting the boarding to begin, all excited about our first international adventure trip!


... to be continued

Relationships... a personal experience

Now that’s a very important and interesting topic for almost all of us. To start with, what exactly relationships mean or what they are meant for? Let me inform all of you, my dear friends, I’m no wise man (oops boy!) to answer that! I have just dotted down my experience and what I learned from it.

Very truly said, the grass on the other side always appears to be greener! Very often we find solace to see others in problem. Especially, when we ourselves are caught in some serious problem. Its natural human tendency to feel so. In this article you may find some parts to be boring filled with theoretical and impractical lecture-type-overtones. Please use your own discretion to ignore them. I’m narrating this experience only to make you all feel better about life – believe me IT IS! If not anything else, it’ll surely make you feel good when you learn you are NOT the only one screwed up! :P

So, here I am. My sweet school days are over and awesome college life has expired. To be true it was not the first time that I felt for a girl. School/college was interesting with lovable friends around who taught me change is the key to a happy life (the change philosophy). So to be happy changes were brought about and then I was re-introduced to this girl, and then I suddenly felt how dumb my friends were (about the “change” philosophy :P). It felt as if life could be changed for this gal but not vice-versa. I guess when feelings are true, you don’t need to express them. That’s what exactly happened with me. We never realized how we were in love with each other. But it was an awesome feeling... to love and to be loved.

Pardon me friends as due to company policy I’m not stating the name of the girl :P, but she was and will always be very special and close to me. All started when I was in final year of my college so it was quite a time now. As I got posted in B’lore, I used to call her up regularly and be in touch with her. Send her gifts occasionally and ours was a perfect love story (even Ram Gopal Varma could make a movie out of it :P). Everything was so perfect and I felt so lucky to have her in my life. But then the stupid “change” philosophy of my friends creeped in. People change, and its true. I experienced it.

“You cannot control what happens to you,
but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you,
and in that, you will be mastering change
rather than allowing it to master you.”
~ Sri Ram

The greatest mistake you can commit in a relationship is to be dependent on the other. We loose our individuality, self-respect and most importantly the love we have for our own self if we get dependent on someone emotionally to such an extent that we feel our world starts and ends with him/her. We fail to understand that love is something that dwells in our heart, our own self. No one can take it away from us by simply deciding not to love us/be with us. There’s the mistake we make. We think it’s the end when the person we love the most leaves us. Sometime back I had stumbled upon a very nice thought-

“Watching you walk away from my life doesn’t make me "cynical" about love. But rather makes me realize that if I wanted to be with person who never loved me so much, how beautiful it will be when the person who loves me comes along :)”

It’s true, the girl I loved the most at one point of my life, left me. I was very dependent on her and thought life’s nothing without her. Avoided all other friends, didn’t give importance to people who actually cared. That's another common mistake we often make i.e avoid all others and give all importance only to the person we “love”. Well, now is that love? Only to give all your importance to someone? I gave, but what happened. It’s very important to respect, love and give importance to everyone. Long time back I had seen a hindi movie which was based on the thought-

“Love is a part of life... not the heart of life”

How true these lines are, I realize now.

Talking again of dependency, I had to talk to her every single day, and it had become more like a habit. I was so dependent that I would not sleep all night to talk to her. Love should never become one’s weakness. Love's definitely not about losing your individuality and being dependent on the other person. Love cannot be blind as we commonly say. We can’t simply ignore and be indecisive when the question of the person we love comes. Love is being inter-dependent rather than being dependent. It’s like 2 vertical sticks. If one is straight and the other leans on it, both cannot move in the same direction. It has to be like 2 sticks tied together which moves together in the same direction, and also adds to the strength of the sticks being together. We tend to overlook these things and be totally dependent on the other person’s love, forgetting the fact that love is in our own heart. Its like trying to find something outside, which is already present within ourselves. Sounds stupid right? That’s what we always do and shout that we are in love! :P

When “bad” things happen, we have two choices, we can blame and prolong our victim identity, sinking deeper into our victim story, OR, we can choose to see the experience as a gift, an opportunity for personal growth, to expand our self-understanding, to expand our capacity to love ourselves, and to expand our capacity of compassion for others.

The girl I loved so much, left me for someone else – following my friend’s “change” philosophy. The time I spent brooding over her and sympathizing over my so-thought “finished” life was of great importance. I realized some very important truths of life. One more thing I understood was, no relationship is useless/unworthy. A relationship always teaches us something and if not anything else gives us experience from which we can learn a lot. The key to a successful relationship is learning to love our own selves first. I had a friend who tried to commit suicide because of a fight with her boy friend. Now is that love? Is it possible to love someone else if we can’t love our own selves? Definitely NOT!

The moment we learn to love ourselves, we’ll experience an inner peace and happiness that can’t be explained. Now a few tips to attain this “moksha” :P Starting with this famous saying by Buddha :

The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”
~ Buddha

- Learn to love yourself

• Take out yourself on a date, wear good clothes, spend money on your self – sounds crazy but it works big time!
• Respect and give yourself space
• Do things you like (for eg. I’m travelling like hell and getting the hell outta my life)
  

- Never hate anyone

• Feeling (whether love or hatred) are personal assets. If you love someone you feel good. If you hate, you feel bad. No one gives a damn. So don’t ever hate/have ill feelings against someone, especially when the person does not even deserve your feelings. It will only affect you and no-one else
  

- Give time

• Time heals all, give time to everything

- Life is ONE

• Please understand the fact that life is ONE! For every 1 minute of sadness, you loose 60 seconds of happiness!

I really feel great when I see myself now. The experiences I had and the life I have lived. I know I deserve the BEST, and so do all of you! So dear friends, start living your life...and more importantly start loving yourself!! All the best.

“When it comes to love,
you need not fall but rather surrender,
surrender to the idea that you must love yourself
before you can love another.
You must absolutely trust yourself
before you can absolutely trust another
and most importantly you must accept your flaws
before you can accept the flaws of another.”

Luv,
B2