Weekend Afternoons

Afternoons during this season, share many a quality of an ideal lady. Fickle breeze, soft sun, shade on the road was comforting but not continual etc. I felt as if that was the definition of a joyful, cool and playful afternoon. Lovely, memorable and best were the days on this weekend. Specially, weekend afternoons. Monday-ed Republic day added a day more to the usual turtley 2 days. Then for all the afternoons in this season, why are on earth I'm talking about this:

Point one: On 25th, Sunday, I ran seven and half kilometers without a break, at one go, at the (almost) constant speed of 10.1Km/hour. And I finished the last lap (free lap) of one more kilometer at variable speeds. In total, I covered eight and half kilometers at an average speed of 9.7 Km/hr. To be candid, i had aimed for 5 kilometers to break my earlier record of 4 km, before i took the first sprint. But my trainer cum best acquaintance, Srini, didn’t consider my plan at all. He grinned and told "We can do it". But I was already tired because of resistance training at the gym by then.
Lol! Neither Prashanth nor his trainer entertains excuses. I started, and reached my limits [I had set it for myself (5km)] and pushed them all. It was 56 minutes, my legs had become wild horse and I guess passion replaced blood and "will do it" replaced breath. Since 1983, I never ran this distance at a stretch. Before 1983, i was not born! It was an amazing run of my life. I DID IT. I SHATTERED MY LIMITS! I EXPERIENCE SOMETHING INEFFABLE. Running is one of my many passions. I had fun. If you have never tried it, you are missing the simplest form of FLOW. I cannot write more as I'm tired.

Point two: I had started three personal projects: Project Green Patch, Project Lucre and Project Diamond. This week I had enough time to assess, track, measure and contemplate on three of them.
Project Green Patch has progressed 60% and is on track. And some important parameters were missing in our strategy and fresh and significant insights slightly modified our strategy. I am happy that in the process, I have progressed a lot along the project. The rest 40% is getting more exciting. I'm all sport for it.
Project Lucre: Taxing and pestering was the nature but I reined it well. "At last" is the word that came out with a sigh as I did it. Everything is done. Last 5% important percent is pending. I will accomplish it next 4 days. Four days is due to some legal stuff or else effort wise, it requires just a click.
Project Diamond: It is the most useful, painful but excellent odyssey. Incipient stages faced lot of
boos from financial aspect. As the project saw many mornings, gains and impact justified the hesitant pelf. I am too happy for it. It is right on track with full speed. It is life-transforming strategy on all energy planes. Analyzing, assessing, brain storming, stirring and stilling, thinking and playing with ideas: All this was blessed by Weekend afternoons.

Point three: Joyful walk, delightful talk, patient ears, n bla bla, I don’t want to tell. Courtesy: Afternoon again.

Snoogy Woogy

Auld Lang Syne, when i was a notorious rebel and a menace to my neighbourhood and school, i was indeed happy. It doesn't mean that I’m unhappy now but more than that: euphoric!! Just that I visited to one of our most frequented and lovely places again: "memories". The delights of nostalgia, which i indulged in, rekindled all those naughty and mischievous sparks within.One pastime that I proudly (silly) recall was heading my own club. It was a silly club. It had a head (me) but no mane (name) though. Activities of the club were even wackier than the unstoppable Head. Don’t know why? How? And what? I ran it. We, the Knights of neighbourhood, discussed building wax castles on the sands heaped up for construction, conspired to take revengeon complaining aunties with scary tummies and uncles, who fed those tummies. Once we had also planned to teach some bear-like man of the construction house a lesson or two! His acts, just like his hair, were bear-like, thick, dense and daaark. That idiot had taken our ball (cricket ball) and had cut it. So that evening we, the club, had watered set of bricks kept for construction, thinking that would soften, dissolve and make bricks useless but no use.........Yes, the most exciting and prestigious activities of the club were bullying, getting bullied, teasing, mocking, fighting over totally nonsense and crazy topics, name calling, & of course playing and many more Back to reality: Each one of us would have had such countless events. Most of the times, we realize that words are insufficient to translate our emotions and experiences into communication. You just wish to re-live them or experience them again. But a very few lucky ones of us ever get a chance (theory of natural selection or selective elimination!!). I hereby declare that I am the chosen one, hahaha. With all dues paid to reality, maturity and our stature in this point of life, I still have a chance to vent out that little devil everyday. Courtesy: 3 things: My team, an acquaintance and more significantly my Friend!!. Alike me, my Friend chari boksi is funnier, nastier, naughtier and wiser too. We, dangerous duo, play pranks, scare and irritate others, discuss alpha to omega, yes... tickling funny bones and bursting out bellies and mind out, all the way through. I feel most happy, comfortable, euphoric, creative and craziest...simply put: imp feels at his home. Our unending amusing peak performances are live wire and sane people in the vicinity (peeping toms, eavesdroppers, and victims) have out of body or near death experiences!! Calvin, Dennis, Tom, Jerry, Dilbert or Cal-loose, Terry, Jom, Jill, Obelisk...all of them gave up and are put to shame. Roles are interchanged too. We live thousand lives in a single convos...most unstoppable fun and creativity happens everyday in my office. Thanks for lambdas and Hertz for they sync so easily, Thanks chari boksi and U know u should also thank me twice for this. Club came to life again! Minds just fart out with ideas...Some honourable names on this occasion are Ricci and Calendar "Nut"ya. Let there be this background music of laughter through out your life. Amen! Insha Allah.

Scene from a Calvin & Hobbes:
Part 0:

Calvin: Our top-secret club, G.R.O.S.S.-- Get Rid Of Slimy girlS!

Susie: Slimy girls?!

Calvin: I know that's redundant, but otherwise it doesn't spell anything

Part 1:"Hello Susie, this is Calvin. I lost our homework assignment. Can you tell me what we were supposed to read for tomorrow?"

"Are you sure you're not calling for some other reason?"

"Why else would I call you?"

"Maybe you missed the melodious sound of my voice?"

"WHAT? Are you crazy? All I want is the STUPID assignment!"

"First say you missed the melodious sound of my voice."

"THIS IS BLACKMAIL!"

Happy New Year

Hi Friend,
As we turn the last page of our calendar, as we reckon its short-lived importance, our memories of the past are converged with the dreams of the future. Mails and sms could have already startedpouring in from friends, relatives, acquaintances and icici, pantaloon,and the ilk. Before there is a digital jam, i would like to share a few thoughts on this "wrinkle on the face of time". Right from the time of the emergence of self-reflectiveconscious in man, I'm sure, he has been pondering over "purpose of life""happiness" and "success" with appended erotemes. There has beenincomprehensible and unimaginable evolution from the moment that clumsyand understandably-naked hero asked those questions till the moment youare reading this electronic mail. Yet erotemes are not completelyexcalaimated. Times have come and gone, civilizations rose and ruined,cultures were born and died, many a zeitgeist bloomed yet we our basicentities of life are the same. Genes and much required memes are at ourmercy. I believed that we have hair weaving and nail rubbing therapies,but man(un)kind's experience is still a comb to the bald. We still havefundamental entities keep buzzing in our minds. Oriental philosophies(India,China and Japan) have enough answers but i would like to explainthe same through occidental methods:
In 1943, a psychologist Abraham Maslow came up with this five-layeredhierarchical pyramid to explain these. With material needs at the bottom and self-actualization at thetop. Material gains offer happiness up to the point that ensuressurvival and provides some social status. After that comes security, anability to feel sure that you can defend what is yours. After that comesa desire to love and be loved, to belong to a community or group that isgreater than oneself. Many stop here and lead supposedly happy lives (Do you really think that you think about your fellow people andcommunity?). Others keep climbing to the next level of self-esteem, and finally self-actualization. What is this elusive self-actualization? It comes from recognizing that you are exercising 100% of your mental and physical facilities in your own unique way, towards a goal that isgreater than the needs of your own self. This is fueled by an individualpurpose, i believe, which has dynamic assimilation of psychological integration and differentiation of your all energies. It is when one becomes magnanimous, achieving the purpose of life, tasting the highest happiness and experiencing the ultimate success.
Yet there is another revelation on the same questions by my favorite author, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. In his phenomenal book "Flow", heclinically explains the state of one's life's optimal experience what hecalls as "Flow". What we call ecstasy or highest bliss is flow. It isthe ultimate happiness. It is the state where all your energies are manifested at their best, it is when the action and the actor are merged, it is when there is seamless fusion of time and space, it is when you are merged with the highest entity or consciousness. Let me join the dots for you by mathematically explaining it. On a higher note, when your energies and capabilities are almost equal to the challenges or when challenges challenge you, there is high probability of experiencing "Flow". But if you look at the graph, area of flow region keeps increasing as you move higher. It implies to taste higher success and experience higher happiness, you must consciously invest lot of time to upgrade your energies, skills and capabilities (mental, physical,emotional and spiritual). And now, if you integrate the two approaches, one by Maslow and the other by Mihalyi, I'm sure you would exclaim and beam a smile to lead a richer, purposeful, thoughtful, progressive and indeed, a happy life. And at the third layer, we have been talking a lot of corruption, terrorism, defunct policy making, and the system. Lets stop talking and start doing, cause they are tied to our happiness directly, isn't it. At least this New Year post should drive home the point!! For success is:
To laugh often and much;

to win the respect of the wise

and the affection of children;

to earn the appreciation of honest critics

and endure the betrayal of false friends;

to appreciate beauty;

to find the best in others;

to leave the world a bit better,

whether by a healthy child,

a garden patchor a redeemed social condition;

to know even one life has breathed easier

because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded

Well the summum bonum and joi de vivre depends on shared collective systems. So as Gandhiji puts it "You must be change you wish to see inthe world" or as Martin Luther King echoes " The greatest tragedy of a society is not because of the acts of the wicked people but the appalling silence of the good and educated" Time is the unique capital and its progressively diminishing in its quantity but appreciating in its value. So in this new times, let all of us channelize our energies and "capital"for the greater, better, richer and joyful life. Alto and nike!!
May you have a wonderful time ahead. Happy New Year. Enoy the video: http://www.findingjoymovie.com/

Adios amigo:)