Living on the edge...

The time is really flying, the workload is increasing by the day and so is the fun and I am enjoying every minute of this hectic life!

Last weekend I had a blast with my virtual friends. Well, I used the word virtual because I went out on a trip to Nagaon with my “Facebook Friends”. For a change, the virtual world suddenly became a reality! Excluding one or two of them, I was meeting everyone for the first time. But when we actually met at Alibaug, we greeted each other as if we were schoolmates meeting after ages. The main attraction of the trip was the Banana Ride. I had never enjoyed water sports before, but the banana ride was the best experience! The trip was a great success and we all left with a promise that such trips would be arranged more often in future.

From Monday, it was back to work, but then again I took some time out, this time to watch “Balgandharva”. After watching the movie, I came out of the cinema hall with a big smile on my face. I was really in love with this movie. So much hard work put in by everyone in the film. The best part of the movie is the Music. I would choose this music album as the best in the decade.

Taking time out from a busy schedule has its own consequences. I learnt it the hard way! After enjoying the movie on Monday evening, I got buried in work, so much so that I didn’t even sleep for almost 2 days. But the hard work paid off as we managed to get a new client on board. I was very happy at that moment. Although it means more sleepless nights, who cares! This is the time to put in all the hard work to enjoy the benefits later in life.

No more gossiping with friends, no more waiting for someone to join me and importantly no more wasting of time, coz I don’t have time! That’s precisely what I wanted in my professional life and I’m enjoying every moment of it! 

Busy… Hectic… Stressful, Yet Enjoyable… That’s My Life These Days!

It’s been days now that I haven’t posted anything here. Plenty of things have happened and I’m not sure where to begin this post. In virtually no time, life has become so stressful that thinking has taken a back seat. Professional life, personal life and social life everything is moving really fast!

My professional life has become very busy. After I started working on my own (self-employed as they say), I am getting good experience in every field of the business, like marketing, management, meetings with clients etc. Interacting with new people, which I was so nervous about in my early professional life, is becoming so easy these days.

On personal front, my younger brother is getting married this June. It’s a big occasion in our family after so many years. The relatives have already planned their vacations to celebrate the marriage. Things like shopping, renovating the house, etc, have already begun back home.

The biggest moment of my life came on 2^nd April 2011, when India won the Cricket World Cup. I enjoyed the post-match celebrations with my friends. The atmosphere was just amazing after the victory that night. While the youngsters led the celebrations, age was not a barrier for celebrations that night!

Just a fortnight or so after the World Cup win, there’s another “win” the common man can be proud of. The win against corruption, led by Anna Hazare. After a couple of days’ deliberations, the government finally bowed to the demands of the common man. It was fascinating to see the response Anna Hazare got on internet and social media, an indication that young India was with him to eradicate corruption.

I have promised myself to update the blog at least once a week. Let’s see how it goes. It’s almost 3am… Need to get some sleep now. Plenty of work tomorrow…. See you soon!

Social “Not”working

After having a hectic day at the office, I decided to take the long route to home to avoid traffic. Though this route didn’t have much traffic, I was driving slowly, as if I had nowhere to go. Some of the street lights were off and it gave the road a feel of a dark alley.

After a few minutes of drive, I saw a man waving for lift. I couldn’t see him clearly from the distance. As I stopped at him, I could figure out more details. He was around 22-25, well dressed and looked of a decent background. But then I was startled to see that he was all drunk; so much so that he couldn’t stand still. He requested me to drop him at a place which was on my way home. I was intrigued by him so much that I decided to offer him a lift.

While I was driving, he asked me if I had some time for a coffee. As I was stressed out as well, the idea of a coffee felt good to me; so, I accepted the invitation. While I drove to the nearby hotel, I sensed that he was terribly upset with something. We went inside the hotel and ordered coffee. He didn’t speak and was continually looking down until the waiter arrived with coffee.

The silence was getting a bit frustrating, so I started with introducing myself, to which he replied with his own introduction. His name was Rajesh and he was working with an IT company. After some more time in silence and a few coffee sips later, I asked him why he was drunk. The conversation that ensued made me think and drastically changed my perspective of looking towards life.

“Are relationships changing these days?” I was a bit confused by his question. I just answered, “May be.” He kept looking at me for a few seconds and continued, “Friends are changing. Relatives are changing. Even parents are changing. Every relationship around us is changing by the day. But sadly, it’s not changing for the better.”

“My friends have changed. Everyone has become so selfish. They were with me when they needed me and when the work was done, they behaved as we have never known each other.”

I was beginning to associate myself with Rajesh’s thoughts when he continued, “I needed them in this phase of my life. Not for financial reasons, but as a support to fall back on, the mental support. I just wanted someone to be there with whom I could share my feelings unconditionally. Am I asking for too much here Umesh?” His question brought me back to the conversation, “No, not at all”, I fumbled. It was amazing to see how much he had observed people around him when he was going through a rough time. We all do that, don’t we? It’s in these rough times that we come to know who our real friends are.

Rajesh continued, “These days we are living in a virtual world. I have “250 friends on Facebook, 100 followers on Twitter”, but no one to share my feelings in reality. It’s a complete void, which can’t be filled by social networks. In fact these social networks are taking the reality away from the relationships. It’s all artificial.” “Aren’t you missing those days when the time we spent with our friends, the fun we had with them was all real, and not just “likes” and “dislikes” on a web page?”

As he stared at me hoping that I could provide some answers, I was already deep in my thoughts, a tear rolling off my cheek as this conversation took me to those days, not too far in the past, where the friends and their feelings used to be real.

Before finding the answers to his questions, some more questions popped up in my mind. Have I hurt any of my friends unknowingly like this? What they would be doing right now if I did so?

So many questions… But not too many answers… Do you have any?

To Be or Not To Be...

I wish I had a power to peek into my future. Just to know where I am heading, what lies ahead and where will I eventually be. You may say knowing everything beforehand may take away the thrill out of the life, but my point is, not knowing the future is adding too much “thrill” and that’s becoming unbearable.

It amazes me when I look back at my life and see how my dreams, my ambitions and my priorities changed with time.

As a schoolboy, I wanted to be a cricketer, when I went to college, I wanted to be a CA and as the graduation neared, I wanted to do graphics and animation.

Well, it would have been great had I been able to accomplish all these things, but then in that case I wouldn’t have been writing this post.

But here I am, a bit unsure about the future, a bit afraid of looking back and a bit confused.

I would say I have ended up in this situation because of not taking decisions at the right time. Either avoiding them completely or postponing them to some other day.

Had I been prompt in taking some of these decisions, I would have been much better off than what I am today, but then again thinking too much of the “ifs” and “buts” of the past is not going to help my future either.

That’s the most important lesson I have learnt from this period of my life. Be prompt in taking your decisions. You can take some time to do your homework on what to choose when you are facing a few options, but once you select an option, do stick to it until you get the final result that you aimed for when you chose that option. You may achieve the goal in a short time or you have to struggle through it, but whatever the case, stick to your task and follow your dream, the success will follow.

As they say, better late than never, I have started following my dream and I believe that success will soon accompany me in my lone journey.

The Starting Point...

For a long time I was thinking of expressing myself somewhere, just to dump the thoughts and be free of them, so that I could be ready for whatever the life had to offer the next day.

Thinking of the most common way of doing it, I bought a diary on New Year’s Eve. As it’s often a case, I was pretty enthusiastic about writing the diary for about 3 months. Then either because of lack of interest or lack of time (mostly the later), I couldn’t update it.

Soon enough the burden of thoughts within started troubling me again. With no one to share it with, I started becoming restless again. This time I thought of writing a blog, as I felt this will be much easier than maintaining a diary, as I spend most of my time on internet. Plus I can share the blog with all my friends, which isn’t possible with a diary, and so it’ll be a true sharing of my thoughts.

So, here I am, with “A Lone Journey”. The title pretty much signifies what my life has been in recent years. Not that I’m sad about it or something, but that’s how it has been… A lone journey.

I’ll be sharing my experiences and thoughts with you through this blog. I hope I’ll be able to make it interesting for all of you to read it. Sometimes I’ll be posting my thoughts in Marathi as well, because I feel, certain things can be better explained in one’s mother tongue!

Hopefully with this blog I’ll get company in my lone journey…