When you have already been at the lowest point in your life..

1826th BLOG POST -->>

There was a time in life when I had lost everything. I can’t say that someone else had looted or betrayed me but life took such turns that I landed up in a situation from where coming out seemed to be an impossible task. At that point of time, I wasn’t studying at all. I wasn’t meeting anyone. I wasn’t socializing. I wasn’t talking with anyone through my mobile phone. I was just an isolated soul always thinking about what has just happened with me. I never thought about the future- what it would be. I never thought about past- about what things led me to the place I have got trapped in. I was just clueless- living in the moment with no vision, mission, goal, target, ambition- or whatever you call it.

I just had one basic requirement and that was- I am unable to study and I don’t want to study. Just imagine how scary and horrible those days must be! Today, when I look back to that person in his late teens struggling to make decisions and take ones which would take myself ahead- I feel so vulnerable thinking about it even now- when I believe that I am in my best frame of mind. There is always comparison with myself so I always know where I am standing and is this enough to lead or say, in the worst scenario, survive. If I feel I can, I just take everything at ease and do the things required to do to ensure that I am not regretful later on that if I could have or I should have done that then the things would have been better today. I just don’t want to question my decisions anymore.

I only know that my vulnerable self those 12-14 years back was the state where I had nothing more to lose. I have carried myself from there and did 8 years of education after that which can be easily termed as above average student life considering my extra-curricular activities and achievements outside of college through this medium of Blog too. What a motivating phase that was! A person who was been isolated was rubbing his shoulders with the celebrities whom he watched on television, movies etc. and idolized. Wow! And now when someone tries to pull me down, I don’t care at all. For me relationships matter but not as much as I give value to myself. I know, people will change once they are on their ego trip or I am not at the status I am.

God forbids, but suppose if I am unemployed for 6 months, will the people around me see me with the same respect or excitement they show today while meeting me or when my name pops up in any of their discussions? Not at all! I would be given as an example of how useless or foolish a person can be to take such decisions in life which transformed successful factors into the failure one. Today, I know that you can’t pull me down at the lowest because I have already seen that. Now, the strings are in my control. I know when to pull them, relax them, stretch them or cut all ties with them. I have become a person who just doesn’t get betrayed by anyone. I am the one who is betraying myself day in and day out. That’s another tale. Let’s not touch it today.

All I want to say is that when you have seen your lowest, just ensure that things are now being decided by you for your life and no one else. You know how weak you were in those situations when you felt nothing good happened with you – just don’t let that phase revisit you again. No one can take decisions on your behalf. No one can make you fall down. It should always be your call. Take your calls and be proud of them. Never abuse yourself for being wrong. Remember – too many wrongs make you understand what actual Right is. Be proud of making mistakes. You are doing it to yourself- at least that’s great. If someone else does and goes away, that is too frustrating. Love life and lead your life.

Thanks.

WRITING BUDDHA 

Movie Review: Dabangg 3: Salman Khan seems to be himself bored of doing the same thing! *

1825th BLOG POST -->>

Salman Khan’s string of flops ended with the movie- Wanted which was directed by Prabhudeva and people got to see a new version of Salman in a new kind of cinema which had fast action and portrayed our favorite hero of 90s in an extremely macho avatar. I, unfortunately, couldn’t watch that movie in theatre but I ensured I watch Mr. Khan in his next movie- Dabangg which got released in 2010. It was Eid and only I know how hard it was for me to get the movie ticket for myself and my parents. Instantly, I liked the movie and enjoyed the character of Chulbul Pandey like anything and wished to see Salman Khan back in the same avatar in the franchisee. Dabangg 2 came just after 2 years in 2012 and I saw it with my friends and got so bored that I really wanted to meet Arbaaz Khan and rebuke him for his direction skills.

And now in 2019 came the part 3 of the franchisee after 7 years and this time, if there wasn’t any involvement of Arbaaz Khan in the making of the film, it had Salman Khan himself writing the script of the movie. Now, we know what happens when Salman Khan writes a movie- we get Tumko Na Bhool Payenge, Veer etc. This movie is a tragedy for people who love Chulbul Pandey because Salman Khan himself couldn’t do justice to him and made the memorable character’s mockery in this 3^rd instalment. The movie has no smooth screenplay to follow and you will find the switch between scenes so abrupt that it becomes hard to ignore after sometime. The songs come when least expected. The action scenes begin when you want to hear some dialogues. Even D2 had dialogues If not as amazing as D1 but D3 lacks any such thing which could make audience whistle or clap.

Even the songs and hook-steps done by Salman Khan in those songs shows how tired he is himself to do it again and again. I don’t know if the makers felt it or not, but our favorite actor has started looking aged and it’s time for him to realize that he can’t romance an actress of 22 years old in any movie such as Saiee Manjrekar in this movie. Sonakshi Sinha does the same thing she has done in the 1^st two movies hence not much complaints with her- she also has very less screen share in this movie.

The 1^st half of the movie is very silly with Salman trying to make unwanted expressions between action and fighting sequences. The movie only gets little better in the 2^nd half when the revenge saga begins. Still, it is so traditional that we saw this happening in the movies made in 80s and 90s. In 2019 and 2020, making something like this is very shameful. I liked some writing of the movie how the prequel is tried to be justified with few sensible scenarios but still it doesn’t impress enough.

Overall, this movie is below average and completely avoidable. Even Sudeep as villain couldn’t do much. Sonu Sood in 1^st installment was rock-solid and no one has been able to overtake him yet. It’s time for Salman Khan to re-invent himself or else, the end is already here. One thing I liked in the movie is the song in the voice of Salman Ali- the Indian Idol 10 winner whom I rooted for.

I give this movie 1 star out of 5. Avoid! I watched it on Amazon Prime. Thanks for saving my money, OTTs. I am glad people made Good Newwz hit and not this movie as both released on the same time.

Thanks.

WRITING BUDDHA  

Love is an Art which has no Artist... Happy Valentine's Day!!!

1824th BLOG POST -->>

Quest! What a word, isn’t it? Love! Another word that brings sensation to anyone’s mind if one has ever fallen in true love with someone. What when both these words come together. Questing for love is such a painful journey that it makes you very lonely and each day you lose your self-respect. Valentine’s Day is known to be the day of love but I don’t think that many of us actually feel happy about this day. The people who are committed surely go out for a date whereas few have to go because of the social pressure that your partner would think you didn’t do enough for him/her. But for people who aren’t committed or dating someone are made to feel as if they are no worth living on this day.

I must say that celebrating love is completely acceptable but if you are not in relationship, just to ensure that you are also celebrating this day no matter what - is an unnecessary challenge given to people who are single. Such relationships should happen dynamically out of sudden emotions or gradual process and not done purposely. This makes people go ahead and approach someone just for the sake of Valentine’s Day. This, either if someone was not so serious till date, ends up being serious about the person he or she approached and starts ruining his/her life which was still happier with its singlehood before the proposal was made.

It is very necessary to understand that love is an art which has no artist. Sometimes after staying with someone for 10 years as just friends one starts feeling something special which was never felt in a decade. Sometimes someone you just hated all life starts seeming out to be bearable and all lovely. Sometimes you just see someone for the first time like many others but this one person becomes your eye’s candy whom you want to just keep looking at and you know you shall never be able to get rid of this habit. This is how the emotion- feeling -sensation – whatever love is- happens. Without any control of yours, the magic starts happening and you don’t have any practical answer for it to explain to others.

All of this is natural and should stay natural. And this is why feeling loved and making someone else feel loved is such a joyful, blissful, peaceful and out-of-the-world experience. If you have been with someone special, you must have experienced that even though two people are part of this process but you still feel that it’s your own journey. Why? Because all the vibrations that you feel for a person is because of the eruptions within you that happens just with a thought of the special one you are in love with. It is all being contributed from your end. Even if the other person stops loving you or say, doesn’t love you, still you feel the same. That is the power of love which is undefinable. No one knows how it is such an involuntary activity that it just happens without your choice.

You can never choose a person out of the crowd and say – He/She is whom I shall love from here on wards. It just doesn’t happen like that. If it was so easy, you could have bribed anyone in loving you back, got married with the person and stayed happily ever after. But Love causes more pain than pleasure. Most of the people only have tears or bad memories attached with it because it just happened without their control and the person for which it got generated didn’t and couldn’t feel the same about you even after your multiple attempts of ensuring that you don’t lose him/her.

Hence, the people who are lucky where the Love happened – co-incidentally, luckily, magically between the two people and if you are together – celebrate this Valentine’s Day like every other day of yours because I am sure when you are in a Love Relationship, you can’t live any day without being in 100% love. Hence, on this day, you can’t do anything different than what you usually do except gifting your partner with some materialistic thing which I believe isn’t the right way of displaying love just for the sake of it. Secondly, the people who had been waiting for proposing their friend on this particular day itself even after knowing that they also felt the same for them, Best of Luck! It is a nice way to make this Valentine’s Day memorable for yourself.

But in case, you are single and you don’t feel love for someone or you are sure that the person you love doesn’t feel the same about you, please be cautious and don’t do anything in hurry and jest. After that moment of proposal, you shall feel guilty about yourself and your immaturity for all your life which I must tell you is not a good feeling at all. You will start hating love which is the most unfortunate thing to happen with anyone. Because when you start hating this thing called Love itself, there is nothing left in you which shall make you feel ecstatic when you think about connecting with people intimately. Understand, social media is just a show-off. People are showing off their love. Displaying it as a commodity for others to judge and comment is such a cheap thing to do. But what can we say- except ensuring that we are conscious about how controlled we are from taking a wrong step this Valentine’s.

That is all I wanted to say today on the day which seems to be a great opportunity but is not always the way we pretend it to be. For the people in love, a very Happy Valentine’s Day to you..

Thanks.

WRITING BUDDHA 

Believe to Succeed like Azim Premji by Rajiv Agarwal (Book Review: 4.5*/5) !!!

1823rd BLOG POST -->>

4th Book of 2020!

I have been regularly in touch with the book series initiative by Rupa Publications which is called as “Management Lessons From The Masters” where the author discusses about one of the most celebrated and authentic personality who is popular for his management and leadership skills. This time, I got my hands on the latest book, “Management Lessons From The Masters: Believe to Succeed Like Azim Premji”. Now who among us in India or even in world is not aware of this phenomenon known as Azim Premji! He has been one of my greatest inspirations and hence reading about him was a different experience altogether as much about him is not available in the online and offline world. Author discusses the same concern in the beginning of the book but still the way author has been able to write around 114 pages on him, his management and leadership skills is commendable.

The book is divided into 10 different chapters where each of them speaks about his characteristics and what made him what he is today. Each chapter begins with some testimonial spoken by some renowned personality or closest one of Azim Premji and then speaks about the topic in discussion and then ends with the Learning section where author discusses what he learnt from the actions of Mr. Azim Premji discussed in that particular chapter.

There are many great things to learn from this book as Premji’s attitude towards work has been very definitive and disruptive. From his family business being into vegetable oil and how it is totally transformed into an IT company where Wipro is identified as one of the major IT companies of India tells us about the challenges and risks Mr. Premji took. His frugality is widely discussed as to how he liked living as a minimalistic and took updates even of tissue papers in his organization. How he took actions against his employees in case people tried to manipulate expenditures and submitted vouchers with incorrect amount even if he/she was allowed to spend the amount mentioned in it. He believed in having a rule generalized for everyone as if 100 bucks are avoided in a junior-most position then a person at Top level shall make goof-ups of 10,00,000 bucks without any guilt.

Similarly, his philanthropic activities are shared with us which tells us how big-heart Mr. Azim Premji carries with him. He pledged to donate more than 50% of the revenues for charity purposes and right from the start of his career, he believed in sharing with the section of the society who were really needy of it. Along with this, I also loved how Azim Premji was the man of character where he didn’t allow his son to stay in the company’s guest-house when he went abroad to study as he believed that he wasn’t the employee of Wipro and hence didn’t have rights to use the Company’s guest-house.

There are many such incidents in the book which shall make you introspect on your behaviour and the organization you are working for and how you can bring the change being at whatever position you are. I really liked this short book which speaks volume and is definitely inspiring and motivating. I give this book 4.5* out of 5. Please do read if you are working in a Corporate structure or even in a Start-up. Recommended!

Thanks.

WRITING BUDDHA 

The Chronicler by Jvalant Nalin Sampat (Book Review: 4*/5) !!!

1822nd BLOG POST -->>

3^rd Book of 2020!

There are very few Indian authors who write thrillers in a way that makes you feel excited throughout your reading experience and therefore, someone like me, who loves reading Indian authors, find it very difficult to choose good thriller-genre books written by an Indian. But sometimes taking risk capitalizes which is what happened with me on my decision of buying “The Chronicler” from Amazon. The book is written by the second-time author- Jvalant Nalin Sampat in around 150 pages.

To start with, I will say a very wonderfully designed cover page which goes so perfectly with the theme of the story that after completing the book, I feel that I could have guessed the 40% of the story just through its cover graphics itself. Now talking about the author, I must say Jvalant is a very capable writer who knows what he is writing on and how much depth should he go in - in order to ensure the interest of a reader stays high rather than making him confused with the small detailing on the subjects. Jvalant keeps it very simple with this book regarding the concepts and geo-political scenario that he keeps discussing in the form of fiction. It becomes very easy to read the novel even when its subject allows complete liberty to the author to make it complicated and too intellectual to not be understood.

The way the current state of International relationships and politics is used as a base to create a fiction around it and how a Chronicler becomes a catalyst in ensuring that everything goes well for the innocent people makes the book interesting. The multiple characters in the book does make it difficult to read in pieces hence I completed It in two sittings itself which ensured that I am with the pace of the novel without getting riddled in the name of the characters. But still, the way author has handled multiple locations and sets/scenes running simultaneously to each other which keeps us thrilled is commendable. The last few pages are really a very good closure to this great fast-paced book.

Now talking about the drawbacks, I feel author should have used less characters in the book or given their references initially in a page itself for the readers to remember them. Secondly, though the book is fast paced but in the middle of the story, the things get slowed down which makes you wonder why things are not moving ahead. Author could have explored few scenes more which I believe in order to keep the story crisp, author kept it to the point rather than dragging it. I wished this book was 100 more pages with more stuffs happening among countries for power.

Overall, this is a good read and I give this book 4* out of 5.

Thanks.

WRITING BUDDHA 

Age of the Imperfect Leader by Pawan Verma (4.25*/5) !!!

1821st BLOG POST -->>

2^nd Book of 2020!

There are many books that are published on the nature of leadership and what can be done at an individual level to become a successful leader. Most of these books talk about the pointers or diagrammatic representation of the specified points where it is expected for all of us to follow the same rule. This becomes quite boring to read- one and the same thing repeatedly as no one is able to offer anything different than what is already discussed in our management books. Thankfully, I got my hands on a book which talks little differently than other books on leadership named “Age of the Imperfect Leader” written by the author, Pawan Verma. The book also carries the tagline which says “Leading from strength”.

The book is written in a very simple language which can be read by anyone in industry or even in college as along with leadership, the messages it conveys can be implemented in any work that you do and not only if you are a leader. In around 240 pages, the book is nicely sectioned into different categories and chapters within the same. I liked how author speaks practicality in each and every sentence. I am in an IT industry in a mid-managerial designation where I get a chance to observe the new guys stepping into the industry expecting things to be customized as per them rather than having a generalized rule for everyone. And this is exactly with what author starts talking about leadership in the book which grabbed my attention.

Author talks about how we should keep utilizing our strength to ensure that our leadership benefits everyone with it rather than us struggling with empowering our weaknesses- a state in which a leader is himself in a confused state post which any positive result can’t be expected out from him. This is a little non-conventional idea as everyone talks about working on your weaknesses but it is something which shall really be beneficial as I have myself tested it since sometime. Author also talks about how imperfect leaders have been able to conquer their vision even with their imperfections only by using their strengths and skills they were good in. Majorly, author discusses what successful leaders have actually done rather than what ideally a leader is supposed to be for achieving success.

I liked how author talks about the benefits on collaborating and co-creating along with the concept of agile jugglers. How having a diversity in your workplace can bring perspective to the goal towards which your organization is working is also very nicely explained. The word “inclusion” is generally used in the books based on spirituality but it’s great to find how author talks about including the people of our community who are not as much blessed as us and grab their specializations too as they have the same skill sets or even better than the people we assume to be the best. I liked how lastly, in the last 2-3 chapters author gives great hope on leadership with new people.

I enjoyed reading the real-life examples that author has given. There are even excerpts and directly statements taken from the speeches or statements from the leaders whom we know due to their popularity but author helps us in understanding their style of leadership deeply. There could be controversies on few perceptions author gave on popular leaders but still, author went ahead and talked about it which I loved experiencing.

Overall, the book is a great-read specially if you are in higher studies or in a job profile. I give this book 4.25* out of 5.

Thanks.

WRITING BUDDHA 

13 Years Back.... on 6th Feb, 2007..

1820th BLOG POST -->>

Some people ask how in this worst do you survive… How do you live the way you do.. Do I ever answer to back my lifestyle? Do I have arguments to make? I do but do I have time to explain? If I even explain it to them, will they understand me? Is my past of any relevance to anyone? Does anyone else’s past affects me? Temporarily, it does. But permanently, it is only our life that matters. A soul protected within these muscles, bones, skins with blood flowing all around with a cycle of air coming in and going out. This is all that we are and this is all we should be believing in. Some days in your life remain with you no matter how many years pass. They just don’t leave you at all. They want you to be reminded of your vulnerable self. They tell you where you were and what you are and what you can be.

Should these days be kept with yourself or left behind to be forgotten as many small moments of your life? I think not. 6^th February, 2007 – The day I was been called back home from hostel as I was portrayed by the nature of events as someone who is cheating onto everyone on the name of studies but doing everything apart studies. People see the prima facie and judge you. I was considered to be a bad son – a bad student – a bad individual. No one ever tried to get into what made me go to that level which took away my identity of a student and left me with unclear future. When you don’t know or you can’t comprehend what your next step would be or what you would like to become in life, it is such a dangerous event. No one should ever face it. I say it now because I faced it.

The city Pune from where I was brought back still remains to be a city where I wish like proving myself again and again. I am just not satisfied with whatever I have. I wish to do more. I wish to show it to the city that it deserved me. I deserved it. Life deserved me there. The world could have happened there. The city could have fallen in love with me. I could have fallen in love with the city. Alas! All that went into vain because I was termed to be someone who liked sleeping in hostel or surfing Internet in cyber café but not attend college. No one bothered to ask why I did what I did. There was just perception. The perception that took another 2-3 years for me to come out of the day that changed my life for worst.

But now on 6^th February, 2020- after 13 years, when I look back, I find that some days are meant to be bad to churn out good out of you. Some days are meant to be life-changing to make you realize what being a failure is. Some days are needed to be the days that turns out to be page-turners in the book of your life. These days needs to be kept cherished in your heart always. No one needs to be blamed for it. Because that’s how life unfolds itself. Some good! Some bad! But in the end, it leaves you more educated out of the decisions you yourself make- out of knowledge or out of ignorance. But it’s you. People can take away from me the days of success but I shall never give away the days of these kinds which have made me less vulnerable today and more educated of myself. I cannot guide someone else’s life but surely, I can manage myself with more maturity than before. This day and date shall always stay special in my heart no matter whatever I achieve and howsoever high I climb the ladder of success. That’s all I have to say on this day after 1.3 decade.

Thanks.

WRITING BUDDHA