It has been quite a while since I published my last post. Thanks to all of you who commented on my previous post, directly or indirectly and gave me your most valued feedback. Personally, I too enjoyed putting my thoughts in the form of a story. But I feel, there is a still lot of scope for improvement. Hopefully I will publish many short stories in the days to come.
The inspiration for the earlier story was a trip with my office friends to one of the popular hill stations in South India – Kodaikanal. It was a nice trip and we all had a lot of fun. We had planned the trip from so many days and taken care to ensure that it was complete in all respects. Still, at the end of the trip, there was some hollowness to it because we missed one of our close friends there.
After coming back, I got a comment on the last post from that very close friend of mine which translated roughly into something like this – it is the very thing which we desire very badly that will elude us all the time. It is a real irony but unfortunately it is the fact most of the times. The more I thought about this, the more dimensions I could get draw from it. Was it always the fact that we dint get what we want? Or maybe we don’t put in efforts to get what we truly want. Then, it occurred to me – it is mainly because we are never satisfied with what we get. Whenever we feel we have got all that we wanted, there will always be something else that will fill the list of “must-haves”
In the story that I wrote last, Seenu was lost in Shaila’s thoughts all the while when he was at the holiday destination. Now, imagine for a moment that Seenu is already married to Anita and still he wants to be with Shaila. Would the story be the same then? Would it be right on Seenu to think like that in the first place? This is exactly similar to the situation above. People are not always satisfied with what they have – some want more wealth, some want more love, some want everything and even more. The needs and wants just never seem to end. Particularly, the desire to own something increases a thousand fold when you know that thing can never be yours – be it the dress at the shop which you like so much and has just been bought by someone else or the delicious dish at the buffet which everyone has in their plates but is now closed at the counter. When I talk about this, a classic recent example that comes to my mind is the “Shiney Ahuja” episode. That sick bugger had everything with him – money, fame, a loving wife, nice kid and what not. And yet, he desired for something else which has put him into so much of trouble. Maybe some people are always like that.
There was one more comment from one of my office friend that the dreams and aspirations of people always keep increasing. And business survives only because of that. If everyone in the world was happy with whatever they had, there would be no demand for things. Smartphones and luxury cars would never come into the picture then. I could not agree with him more. There is no end to dreams and desires. But as long as they are kept under a certain limit, there is no harm in having them. Trouble begins only when people start exceeding the limits for the dreams and aspirations, For example, if buying a nice luxury car like Lamborghini is your dream, it is good to start saving money and dream of owning that car one day. But at the same time, it would be foolish to sell off everything that you have to own that one little piece of automobile marvel and end up penniless even to fill fuel for that car. That would be absolute madness then.
It is not wrong to have dreams, desires and aspirations in life. Those are the ones that motivate us and keep us going in the tough times. But we must be careful enough to draw the line clearly between controlled aspiration and hysterical yearning.
Today, I finish one more year of my working life. Nineteen of my batch mates had joined with me two years ago, fresh from college, aspiring to achieve great things in their career. This job was really a great thing to have then and everyone was happy with it. But, the aspirations of people kept changing over time. Some wanted to pursue higher studies, some wanted to get married and settle down in life, some wanted more challenging technical paths,etc. In all the cases the desire to achieve something great was paramount in them. I admire each one of them for their dedication to their goals and they way in which they went about achieving them. I wish them all the success in life.
As they say, change is the only constant in life. We keep developing new goals, new ambitions and dreams. Life gets exciting when we dream big. There might be challenges on the way, but we experience joy when we overcome the obstacles. The kannada poet Gopalakrishna Adiga summed it up very well when he said “ಇರುವುದೆಲ್ಲವ ಬಿಟ್ಟು ಇರದುದರೆಡೆಗೆ ತುಡಿವುದೇ ಜೀವನ” (life is nothing but leaving behind all the things you have and aspiring for better things). Isn’t it?
Thanks to all the people who have taken pains to read my posts and have given me valuable comments all these days. Keep visiting!
PS :
1. The title lines are taken from the song "yaava mohana murali" from the kannada poet Gopalakrishna Adiga. They also appear in the kannada movie "america america". You can watch the video here.
The inspiration for the earlier story was a trip with my office friends to one of the popular hill stations in South India – Kodaikanal. It was a nice trip and we all had a lot of fun. We had planned the trip from so many days and taken care to ensure that it was complete in all respects. Still, at the end of the trip, there was some hollowness to it because we missed one of our close friends there.
After coming back, I got a comment on the last post from that very close friend of mine which translated roughly into something like this – it is the very thing which we desire very badly that will elude us all the time. It is a real irony but unfortunately it is the fact most of the times. The more I thought about this, the more dimensions I could get draw from it. Was it always the fact that we dint get what we want? Or maybe we don’t put in efforts to get what we truly want. Then, it occurred to me – it is mainly because we are never satisfied with what we get. Whenever we feel we have got all that we wanted, there will always be something else that will fill the list of “must-haves”
In the story that I wrote last, Seenu was lost in Shaila’s thoughts all the while when he was at the holiday destination. Now, imagine for a moment that Seenu is already married to Anita and still he wants to be with Shaila. Would the story be the same then? Would it be right on Seenu to think like that in the first place? This is exactly similar to the situation above. People are not always satisfied with what they have – some want more wealth, some want more love, some want everything and even more. The needs and wants just never seem to end. Particularly, the desire to own something increases a thousand fold when you know that thing can never be yours – be it the dress at the shop which you like so much and has just been bought by someone else or the delicious dish at the buffet which everyone has in their plates but is now closed at the counter. When I talk about this, a classic recent example that comes to my mind is the “Shiney Ahuja” episode. That sick bugger had everything with him – money, fame, a loving wife, nice kid and what not. And yet, he desired for something else which has put him into so much of trouble. Maybe some people are always like that.
There was one more comment from one of my office friend that the dreams and aspirations of people always keep increasing. And business survives only because of that. If everyone in the world was happy with whatever they had, there would be no demand for things. Smartphones and luxury cars would never come into the picture then. I could not agree with him more. There is no end to dreams and desires. But as long as they are kept under a certain limit, there is no harm in having them. Trouble begins only when people start exceeding the limits for the dreams and aspirations, For example, if buying a nice luxury car like Lamborghini is your dream, it is good to start saving money and dream of owning that car one day. But at the same time, it would be foolish to sell off everything that you have to own that one little piece of automobile marvel and end up penniless even to fill fuel for that car. That would be absolute madness then.
It is not wrong to have dreams, desires and aspirations in life. Those are the ones that motivate us and keep us going in the tough times. But we must be careful enough to draw the line clearly between controlled aspiration and hysterical yearning.
Today, I finish one more year of my working life. Nineteen of my batch mates had joined with me two years ago, fresh from college, aspiring to achieve great things in their career. This job was really a great thing to have then and everyone was happy with it. But, the aspirations of people kept changing over time. Some wanted to pursue higher studies, some wanted to get married and settle down in life, some wanted more challenging technical paths,etc. In all the cases the desire to achieve something great was paramount in them. I admire each one of them for their dedication to their goals and they way in which they went about achieving them. I wish them all the success in life.
As they say, change is the only constant in life. We keep developing new goals, new ambitions and dreams. Life gets exciting when we dream big. There might be challenges on the way, but we experience joy when we overcome the obstacles. The kannada poet Gopalakrishna Adiga summed it up very well when he said “ಇರುವುದೆಲ್ಲವ ಬಿಟ್ಟು ಇರದುದರೆಡೆಗೆ ತುಡಿವುದೇ ಜೀವನ” (life is nothing but leaving behind all the things you have and aspiring for better things). Isn’t it?
Thanks to all the people who have taken pains to read my posts and have given me valuable comments all these days. Keep visiting!
PS :
1. The title lines are taken from the song "yaava mohana murali" from the kannada poet Gopalakrishna Adiga. They also appear in the kannada movie "america america". You can watch the video here.
5 comments:
Nice one bro..
Great guys are great just because they dreamt something which is possible for them and others thought it wont be possible. They made it happen. People laughed when Wright brothers said they have found a device which can fly this was possible only because Wright brothers dreamt of flying and thanks to them we are now traveling at the speed of sound. :)
Nice post :)
I liked the background which spurred into a short story...
But deriving 'iruvudellava biTTu' philosophy in the case of Seenu and Shaila [don't include Anitha :)] was out of context I felt. Well that's my personal opinion. Because, I would say love is not love if you haven't experienced the pain of missing that special person. Leave it to that.. why correlate that to 'iruvudellava biTTu'..??
@All
thanks for your comments
@Saravanan
This is vaguely related to the matter in the post. But essence is the same - people want more than what they can possibly want. Sometimes they turn into dreams and give us great inventions like you have mentioned. Some other times, they turn into obsessions and cause pain and misery to people around them.
@Ananth
I take your opinion anna. But the reason for linking the two are two fold -
a) the recent happenings - one in case of Shiney, a similar one in my locality made me feel so. They had all the things going for them. And yet, they wanted more and wanted it so badly that they went to such low levels to achieve them. Is it not natural in such case to feel "what more did they want?"
b) there is this philosophy of 'iruvudellava biTTu' and there is this philosophy of 'love'. And then there are so many others too. When we view all this together, we get the philosophy of 'life'. Maybe the case of Shaila and Seenu is a blunt example. But deriving that full philosophy of life is what I am ultimately aiming at :)
very nice post... keep up the good work!! :)
cant think of much else to say :)
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