Pursuing our dreams

Movies as a means for mass communication, I think, was never as strong or more impactful as it is these days. Am just back from the last show of 3 Idiots, it is a simple movie with a simple very predictable story, right to the end with no surprises. Yet, it makes a strong point and drives it strongly, it almost rubs it in; it talks about how Indian families stress on taking a main stream course like an Engineer or a Doctor and ignores the likes and dislikes of an individual. How our education system stresses on getting the highest marks, on running a race and not on the importance of learning nor on pursuing our dreams.

I am guilty of this same sin, and somewhere most of us are, but we need to wake up and realize our dreams and enable the dreams of others who we can help. I dont know how one finds the true love or how does one help someone else to find his or her true love. I dont know how a parent will find what the kid truly wants to do. But I am sure that I wont ask someone else to fulfill my dreams. I dont think anyone should.

Letting go of the burden

Sometime back I was talking with CK about how carrying a burden stops us from seeing the beauty of life. We all do things that we don't want to do, we aren't proud of doing and we feel bad about them. Sometimes we just don't forgive ourselves, I remembered this very good story about an old monk and a young monk. They were walking through a forest when they came to a river bank and saw a beautiful young woman standing at the edge of the bank and was afraid to cross the river.

The old monk, seeing that she needed help offered to help by carrying her across the river on his back. She accepted the offer and thanked him for helping her cross the river.

The 2 monks continued on their journey, but the young monk was shocked and disturbed at having seen his older companion break his vow of not touching a female so nonchalantly. Finally, after 3 hours of walking and thinking, he could contain himself no longer and he burst out in anger, "Why did you break your vow? Why did you let her beauty tempt you?"

The older monk remained silent for several steps and then said, "It is you who should tell me what it is like to carry such a beautiful young woman. You see I put her down 3 hours ago at the river, but you are still carrying her."

It is a simple story, but sometimes we forget simple things and we carry too much load on our back. Let go off the load and we will be a happier person

Mail Notification

One of the problems of using Unix based OS is that it becomes damn difficult to check office mails. Outlook still doesnt have an equivalent on Linux. Neither Thunderbird nor Evolution support Exchange 2007. I am left with using Outlook Webaccess that sucks. I have been living with this for almost a year now hoping that Thunderbird or Evolution will support Exchange 2007 sooner than later but to no avail.

So, this weekend I wrote this small Mail notifier that checks my Outlook & GMail account and pops up a notifier when there is a new mail. I find it extremely useful. Hope you find it too.

http://code.google.com/p/newmail-notify/

Socialism for Dummies!

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor
and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on
socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same
grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had
studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that
socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the
effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

Perspectives

Recently I read a post from a dear one, which talked about how he was ill-treated by life and how he learnt a few of his most important lessons the hard way. We all learn our lessons, life is a tough teacher, every baby falls and hurts itself only to learn how to run (a marathon!). We are betrayed by our trusted friends to learn how to judge a person a better and not to learn never to trust again. Love fails, we loose the most precious, and learn how to value them before they are lost, for loss is inevitable.

Sometime back I was talking to a friend, and we happened to talk about the movie Crash. I rate it amongst the top 5 movies I have seen; this friend says, "Yes, this is the movie where everyone is screwed by each other"; I was amazed, this very same movie, I remember as the movie where everyone in the end attains salvation, where justice is meted out to everyone. There is realization and forgiveness. There is this particular mini story where, to console his daughter when she was scared, he wraps her with an invisible scarf that has protected him from all the dangers and which his mom gave him and she should hand over to her daughter when she is five. Few days later, this guy is at gunpoint outside his house, by someone who wants to take revenge. The girl comes running to protect her dad - the man shoots - the girl clings on to her dad - the man who had shot realizes his mistake - the girl holds tight, says, "Daddy, my scarf will protect you!" - nobody dies, but in that moment everybody realize their mistakes. Everybody, somewhere in some crude way sees justice and salvation.