A New Page

Nine months ago, I didn’t know half the people that today are a good part of my every day. Nine months ago, I was at cross roads. Nine months ago was when I last posted.

It has been quite a journey. I started a new job, I learned I will be a father, I moved to a new place, I bought my first car and today I learned of my new promotion. There would have been no way I would have guessed that my life nine months later would be anything like what it is today. For those who know me, that is almost unthinkable! I am the sort who spends eternity trying to identify possible parameters that would affect my future. Far back as I can remember, I have always fought to make certain all my uncertainties. However whenever in my life, I feel I have figured it out, life takes a different form and I have a new chapter to learn.

At many instances in my life, I have second guessed what the future will hold. As a result, I have been so obsessed with the unknown that I have forgotten to stop and observe the known and the visible. The more I travel through life, the more I understand that the design of my life is seldom sealed by my efforts. Don’t get me wrong it is often a powerful catalyst but not the final determinant.

Guess what I am trying to say is stretching to get a glimpse of what tomorrow holds is an eternal illusion. Look around you at the significant things that make you who you are today. Be thankful and ask if you are truly where you feel you should be. In the noisy alley of life over speeding is often what keeps us from listening to our inner voice. Life, at least in my experience, is one step ahead. So when you plan ahead, hope trust and pray!

Yesterday's tomorrow has to the most part turned out to be the today I aspired. I am content, hopeful and looking forward for the new experiences that are to come. Hoping, Trusting and Praying!!

MASKED

Masks are fascinating. PERIOD!! I was hooked when I was a kid, growing up to Batman and other masked Heroes on TV or comic books. It was probably too much for my feeble mind then to comprehend the “MASK” that transformed a seemingly ordinary individual in to a super hero. Growing up, I grew out of it involuntarily I might add. That is why I want to grow ‘young’ as opposed to this other mundane thing we do!! In any case I believed that the Magic of the Mask was over for me till when my uncle reestablished its existence. It was on a taxi going to school. I was telling him how I get bored with small talk or people pulling my cheeks on the commute. He recommended that I always take the seat by the window and look at the passers by. He said if I look closely I can see the mask that people had on from the various interactions. That was it….. I still can’t get myself to stop!

At 25, I am still amazed at the way each one of us has different masks and how effortlessly we transform. Take an average day from the time we wake up, the face we put on to our family, the paperboy, the milk man, the watchman, colleagues and friends. It can be simple facial gestures, personal gazes, change in tone or out right pronounced change in body language. Which ever one of these it is, it has been done perfectly for so long that one almost forgets that it was arrived at consciously. We didn’t just decide that we will smile more among our friends than we will when among strangers. Somewhere along the line we have categorized the people around us and our reaction to them is hence dictated by this categorization. More often than not; being individualistic, we structure our reactions depending on how we want to be perceived. Once this is achieved the journey is downhill. We pick and choose the traits which we believe acceptable to a category and muffle the rest with our masks.

We realize the importance of these masks all too well. Can you imagine the catastrophe of being caught with a mask that doesn’t fit the category? This would be worse than stepping out of the shower in to the middle of a crowded Mambalam railway station at peak hour. Imagine being the way you are with your drinking buddies at your mom’s prayer group meet; worse yet imagine showing your true face to a ‘HIGHER UP’ while trying to sell something that you have lost all faith in, knowing your life depended on it. The numbers of times we have found ourselves in similar fix or the fear of the disaster that happened to those who have experienced the same teach us to pick our masks wisely.

I have witnessed at times when the masked ones are totally compromised unknowingly by their audience, mostly brought about by a drastic change in circumstance like grief, illness and surprise. We juggle so many masks these days that we have forgotten that we even choose. Some people wear a mask when feeling restricted to be who they really are; some wear it to fit in, some for protection. Whatever the case most people have worn it for so long that they have become the mask. We have gone so far as to assume that the mask we are shown is the entirety of a person’s character. I am of the belief that we are so lost in what we show to others that we have quit asking why we show it.

So I end this post asking all the readers to go out of your categories and ask yourself why and if you are showing the people around you the face you want to show. To mask or unmask, you choose but at least this way you will know why.

2010

Plan + Less

December is here again. It is that time of the year where we sit and try to make some sense of the happenings of the last year of our lives. We tally the success against the failure, the happy moments against the bad, friends made to friends lost, money spent to money saved, time saved to time wasted. We try to cumulate all aspects of the past year to learn and better steer our lives for the coming 365 days. We don’t just introspect in December. Based on our sentiments of the past year; we make resolutions- WE PLAN!

Conventionally “PLANNING” is a good thing. After all most of our life is spent trying to know more about what we do not know. Planning gives us the edge and removes our fear of the unknown. It is our way of saying ‘look here life, I have a plan and you had better act accordingly’. In retrospect however do these plans and resolutions actually move us closer to what we want to achieve or does it restrict us from being flexible to appreciate what is outside of our plans.

If there is one thing that this year has taught me, it is the importance of accommodating the unknown and allowing for variable change. I have always been the guy who draws energy from the known. I like to be informed and I plan meticulously to the point where a deviation is almost impossibility. Fortunately for me my experience thus far had never exposed me to sit and ponder over the feasibility of my approach. This year did exactly that.

We live in a world where we have developed our forecasting ability to the extent where its failure is a controlled occurrence. We train ourselves regressively and choose our environments wisely so as to not move out of our comfort zone. Everything around us is planned and so we mould our expectations and desires around things where we are certain of our success. Our institutions, be it educational or otherwise are built on the principle of maximization, maximizing the probability of attaining our desires. The repetition of such an exercise over the years has led to a gradual decline of our ability to adjust, adopt and pull down our inborn resilience to stand up after a fall.

If there is one characteristic of life that can’t be denied, it is its spontaneity. Some consider this very nature frightening and try to plan their way around it, while others embrace it and try to dance along to its tune. So this January when you ponder over your resolution ask yourself which one you would like to be. If you ever plan, plan to be surprised. Plan to just have a sense of direction. It is wise to ask questions of your plans when conceptualizing but never refrain from grasping all the opportunity that life throws your way. Opportunity is a rough tide; while debating the potential risk from a wrong entry, it passes on to those daring enough to challenge. Here is wishing that we challenge the coming year head on. Though we can’t be “Planless”, I hope we do plan less and be more open to embrace surprises that define our lives.