Are we living in times where helping others has become foolish?

I would choose to believe not. Whatever the doomsday prophets may say, the world, even today, is not such a bad and scary place as it is made out to be. Undoubtedly, there are bad apples – as there have been since the time of Cain and Abel – but the number of god apples exceeds the bad apples by a huge number.

Every December, Raj, like many other people, starts to wonder what his New Year resolutions are going to be, and more importantly, how long is he going to be able to keep them. In 2010, he was able to keep them for a total of 22 days. So much for all the talk about a new habit taking 21 days to form. This year, however, Raj is determined to hold on to his New Year resolutions, and he is determined to do whatever it takes to do that. Luckily for him, it is really not that hard to hold on to New Year Resolutions – all it takes is a little planning and some determination.

Have you ever noticed a fly caught in a spider’s web. The harder it tries to free itself from the sticky mesh, the deeper it gets entangled in the web. Most of us face similar situations at some point or the other of our lives. If you haven’t then either you are too young, or you have surrendered to the situation without even realizing you have. One time that most of us go through such an experience is when we have completed our studies, and are a couple of years into our job, and we have just had our first promotion.

A few days ago I read an interesting and thought-provoking blog on, in the author’s own words, ‘writing, music, painting or any area of expression’. His advice to any aspiring artist is, ‘Do it daily’. Though it is a fact we know very well, yet it pays to read, hear, and feel it often so that it carves itself into our brain, and emanates out of our fingertips. Whether the inspiration is in the air or not, one has to take up his pen, write, sketch, do whatever it takes to do it. Every day. One of the first hurdles that an artist has to cross is one that he himself creates.

Hindu mythology says that there are only three major events in a person’s lifetime: Birth, marriage and death. And it also says that since you are fully conscious only during one of these three events, you better celebrate it with all possible grandeur and make it memorable.

But in the life of an Indian ‘ex-teen but yet-to-be-called-uncle’ youth, there’s one other event that’s as eventful and memorable as the other three, and this one occurs when that person is fully conscious too. Wondering what I’m talking about ? Yes, its the first trip abroad/overseas for ‘higher’ studies.

There is a unique quality in human beings, which gives them an edge over all the other creations of God -the ability to express their feelings. Expressing feelings or emotions is a simple way to understand information for, and about, us. The art of expressing a ‘feeling’ is nothing but the creative de-coding of how exactly the ‘feeling’ wants to come out, so that you can avoid ‘feeling’ the worse for it.
Sadly, in today’s materialistic and fast paced world, expressing one’s feelings or emotions is often considered weak, or foolish.

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance… We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.”
These are the impressive words of the speech titled, “Tryst with Destiny” given by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on August 15, 1947. The real struggle for independence of India had begun almost 90 years before in 1857, when a group of sepoys mutinied against the East India Company.

There was this story I read a number of years ago, wherein two gentlemen wait for a third to join them at eight o’clock in the evening for a meeting that would become the crux of the story. A few minutes before eight, one looks out the window, sees no carriage stopping at their door and says, “I don’t think he’ll turn up.” Of course he had valid reasons for doubting the man’s word.
The other says, “He will. He is an Englishman. He will be here on the dot, at eight.”
Sure enough, midway into the clock’s chime, there is a knock at the door and the landlady announces his arrival.

Somebody has said that we choose our friends, while relatives come in pre-made packages. How right that somebody was! It is true that we try to select for ourselves that which we think is best for us, but, often and again, we make errors in our judgements. As Shakespeare has said, it’s better to have an enemy who tells you – on your face – your weaknesses, rather than a friend who hides them from you. With this idea in mind, I have always sought to find a friend who would be a friend in need, and thus become a friend in deed.

Life, in general, may have been difficult for our forefathers, but they were lucky in at least one way. They had very few, if any, dates to remember. These days every day of the year has been marked as something or other, and that is in addition to the birthdays, anniversaries, and the special days that we have to remember. All hell breaks loose if we forget the birthday, or an anniversary of someone very close to us.