Self Motivation

Double century by Tendulkar in ODI, records and Sachin goes hand in hand.Watching him now a days breaking records is routine, he uses his skills and expertise in a such a perfection that everything he does on ground looks easy and can anybody can do it with minimum risk.

How he manage to do that for last 20 years? He has achieved everything which anybody can just dream of.

He is famous, rich and young. I know so many rich trying to be famous or other way round. Being in top of world in cricketing world he never felt that he has conquered everything in cricket. Skills apart, how is mind gets ready to repeatedly achieve what he does.

I think reason is, he is very self motivated and supreme confidence about ability of his craft. We lack

most of the time in both areas. One can have little shaky confidence but if he not able to self motivate himself

then he is doomed to fail. No wonder we see people like Tendulkar rising again and again in their defeat and

we marvel how they managed to come out of lean patch or injuries.

Identity Crisis

Toughest question to answer is "what is our identity?" How do we define our identity? We do possess historical identity based on family background, social environment. We do try to change our identity based on what type of education we get and what career path we follow. There is no doubt about career shapes our identity but at the same time our character shapes career. I mean confident person will be always seen successfully achieving goals set by himself. But it is not true with unsuccessful person. He struggle to find his own identity based on setback he received and time he needs to get out that situation.

These life altering scenarios causes tremendous impact on person's "identity". Same person with some kind of success will assure some assuring identity while string of unsuccessful activities will make split his identity into number of doubtful identities he/she will hold.

Apparently this war of identity will increase as we grow older or relatively in middle ages since path to bridge crisis narrows. While we are young we still feel like we have time in hand to amend.

Also many times scenario changes around us world we know has changed.. more buildings, more people but most of them are new.. old known people are left place or perished. Now a days when I visit ancestral place, it is more distinct, since with people gone their old culture, cloths, businesses also vanished. We do start feeling that we lost our identity with combination of our life path + align places, we feel like we are out of sync in this world.

Loosing Our Identity

Weekend got chance to visit, Rajastani Restaurant which is built on theme of typical Rajastani village. I was wondering if it is worth to go there since commute itself was more than 2 hrs journey. But after entering there, 2 hrs travel was worth especially with family.

Away from city chaos, you get greeted with drum beats, impersonated  horse. He guide us to the main entrance, you just feel like a VVIP!

Inside atmosphere is just fun filled, people eating, tattooing, playing ball/gun games. For kids they have many attractions like riding horse ( this time real one!),   camel, bullock card. They also have train, ship ride. I noticed in most of rides grown up were enjoying more than kids! Other section kids enjoyed was pot making, they were able to play in mud at the same time do some creative out of it.


As usual I lost in food sections. It is very embarrassing especially people with you noticing  you visiting eating stall. I liked bhakri (bread) with butter and garlic chutani. It tested great since bread was from fire oven.

Ladies were busy in shopping section along with mehndi and fortune teller section. I envied fortune teller since he was mostly surrounded by women ( just kidding). But I liked his job, he used to tell all sort of things about their husband and ladies will be awed about him since it will be correct. For married man he will tell wait for few months and things will be sorted out in his life. Any husband knows it is never going to be!

There was head and body massage as well. I noticed many husband err.. guys enjoying it. We also had good time with massage.

Most fascinating part was folk dance, folk puppet show, folk songs and music. You just wonder how diverse Indian folk culture is. You can notice family of dancers just around there. On backdrop of glittering performer seeing malnourished  kids is heart wrenching. Even performer were from remote place of Rajastan  just for living.

You just leave place contented feeling witnessed some thing indigenous in nature. While coming back I wonder how many indigenous culture we might have in India. Almost each district has its own identity. But we never bothered to look around since it is not well marketed and as well as our apathy to our own culture. It is not our fault though, for almost century we were influenced by west and before that various attacks by other invaders.

I just hope we will preserve some of our cultural folk heritage like songs, music, animist nature of our religion.

      

Pictures : Courtesy Abhinay Labade.

Uncertainty of Life

Bomb explosion in German Bakery in Pune! I never believed anything like this can happen to my city. Lately worried about explosive development of real estate projects and its stress on natural resources but never thought about bomb explosion. Although choice of location is for foreigners but it was a place anybody can go around  for snacks. In short, terrirism is at our door steps. I used to feel like accident, terrorism will never touch our lives since we try to drive safe or live in place which is secured because of location, society etc. But now you feel very uncertain, uncertain about crossing street, visiting public places.

Once you start feeling about uncertainty, insecurity about life, you start also cheerishing life as well. Even little event of happiness gives you extreme joy and memories last for many days. When I was in US, when I used to ask friends "how is life" and answer will be "life sucks". I some how never liked this term. How life can suck where bare minimum necessities of life are well fulfilled?

In India, we always live in some kind of uncertainty so that we are always preoccupied about some of uncertainties and take life as it comes?

Card Game

On Paud road there are many small trucks and many drivers would be playing cards in back of it, when I go around I get so tempted to ask for playing one or two round. Some how I managed to resist my urge to gamble in public! We used to gamble for snack in college days. We used to waste our whole afternoon just for tea and pohe. But it is used to be so much fun, 15-20 friends sitting around having fun. Who were loose will be thinking hard what strategy he should adopt to win next snack. I used to like these setting for number of reason ...
1. Number of topics will come for discussion and it used to be such a learning experience since everybody will share their experience and knowledge.
2. We will avoid afternoon heat, not playing cricket during that time. Evening it used to be fun after refreshment.
3. During PL (preparation leave) it will also relax us from morning study and tensions associated with it.

Similar to playing with friends playing at home is also fun. It brings every family members together and can have some meaningful discussion when everybody is around. If family guest/relatives are also present it will be much more fun.

Root to this hobby might be in my school vacations. We used to visit  ancestral hilly village for every summer vacation. Apart from swimming in river and  occasionally roaming around fields to get mango and jambul there was nothing to do. So non busy Patils will gather for game of cards .. myself, 2 cousins and my grand father where regular members! We will never realized how time will go while playing with them.

How much time  we waste playing card game and how much motivation we get is point to ponder, since my father never used to play with us saying it's just waste of time.

Clean Up

Name itself makes me feel physically active and lighter in weight. How many unnecessary things we stack up? From paper garbage like bills, notes, grocery list to cloths/vehicle parts. We just keep accumulating things and later forget to get rid of it. Sometimes it takes years to clean pile of accumulated stuff which is spread across house.  I love this task of cleaning up, physical exhaustion caused by lifting and throwing things and organizing things again gives immense mental satisfaction.

 

I guess clean up is inversely proportional to organized person. If person is organized he/she doesn't have to do much of cleaning because at first place they will get rid of what is not necessary. Clean up of other people or actions of other people is very demotivating act. We generally don't like to do it but because of friendship/relation we do. I remember, once one of my friend left her apartment. Myself and one of our common friends spent day to just clean up her house, so pathetic and she didn't had any remorse for mess she accumulated over years.

 

But best part of cleaning up is once in while you will find very old paper clipping, old shirt or photograph which you preserve and forgot to keep it safe and later lost in piles of others things. Once I found my college day diary which had all day to day activities which included daily exercise, study, sport activities and daily expenses (avg. less than 50 Rs excluding rent and mess. Also don’t forget inflation/year 88-89). My organized activities in diary especially sporting activities welled up my eyes.

 

Same is true with our memory, how nice it will be if we can clean up some of memories which are not useful but harmful. No wonder great religious philosophers always tell to clean up mind to reach enlightenment.

 

addiction of speed

I really don't enjoy driving, reason is obvious going through traffic, avoiding pedestrians, motorbikes which can come across anytime and from any direction. Keeping 360 degree eye coordination is tough, at least in Pune. But once in a while when you get a empty road out side city ,late night driving or  rickshaws strike,  it's fun to drive in high speed.

You get same experience while driving to Baramati, once you get out of city and timing is not rush hour,  you can enjoy high speed driving. Yesterday I was luck  to drive fast since nobody was with me especially family members who reduces speed by half. When you hit near mark  your vehicle's upper speed limit. At that limit (120 kmph), engine makes serene smooth humming sound. Steering goes into vibration mode and with these vibration,  your brain gets into trance.. it just gets connected to machine, you loose existence of other body part and you get same ecstasy when you  have uncluttered mind or may be being in heaven (if it does exist). Once in while you encounter sharp turn of 90 degrees and your feet and hand scramble to adjust speed and direction. Rush of adrenaline caused by corner, incoming traffic is beyond imagination. Nobody likes to get in to this situation, but realistic world it happens.  Precaution while driving is only answer but still we do take a risk. I try to be very safe driver  but sometimes you just can't resist hitting accelerator!

Why do we take a risk once in while in driving apart from thrill of speed, knowing all consequences of high speed driving? Is it because of physical activities we are lacking or physical limitation we need to overcome using machine?

Back To School

I don't enjoy going to any school. It just brings lot of unwanted memories back in mind. Today I had to visit to meet Adwait's teacher since he was not ready to go to school. Generally he is very happy to go to school since he gets his complete freedom from rest of family. But today his mood was different and he was not happy with his teacher since she scolds him lot for playing  and also asks him to do lot of writing.  Obviously any school kid feels same way.

When I discussed with teacher about issue, she started telling me list of complaints she has with Adwait. While discussing  I remembered my 2nd standard teacher. She was nightmare for me. Her memories were haunting me till end of my school days and I never enjoyed my days in schools.. My main problem was reciting number table. How on earth anybody can remember number table for 19, 23,27? I hated odd numbers for the same reason!

Since I will never able to tell these tables, her punishment included standing on bench , bending and holding foot fingers, keeping ruler on back and sometimes standing outside class. I used to like punishment rather than saying those dreaded numbers. Only frightening  punishment was getting beaten up by cane.

Why do teacher has to go extreme extend to teach student lesson? In Adwait's case she has asked him not to go out of class for recesses. Its obvious teacher has to control whatever 40-60 student class, day in day out and routine  work itself and is boring for teacher (sometimes for parents as well). Teacher prefers discipline than thinking about child psychology.

Perfectionist Or God

Another Grand slam final finished and yet again  Federer is winner. He has won 16 grand slams by now and being in semifinal for 23 times in a row. So almost for last 5 years he is in semifinal of Grand Slam tournament.  Statistics itself tells how great he is. Same is true with Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan.

Day after day they are able to produce greatest performance in their lives?  They are not machine so obviously they have all shortcomings of any human being like mood swing, aging, physical fitness, injuries. Physical fitness can be little bit managed but not a straining your body. It is very tough avoiding injuries especially level at they play. One has to get out of skin to overcome competition. So physically stress is unavoidable. Same is true with mental stress, these guys are in constant pressure for performing, so inside their brain their is always pressure to perform but we don't see much of outburst from these guys. Even if they fail they get back successfully, more prepared to counter their failure.

These people's rare quality of defying nature laws, makes me feel like they are God. It's very difficult to discipline your body and most importantly mind to perform consistently  no matter what is environ around them. In last 5 years Federer faced almost 11 equally brilliant opponent but he survived. I really wonder if its destiny or their passion for their work and if it is passion what parameters causes them to inspire to such high level.