What really is ambition?

Today it happened again. A previous post has had many hits from the Google search. I know there is nothing surprising about this part. But what follows is.

The query type was usually like “My ambition in life” or “My ambition” or “What are my ambitions” or “My plans and ambitions”. One query was also of the sort saying “Why have i lost my ambition”. Instant reaction was like, ok, i know Google does answer your query. But i dearly wish it does not move to this personal level. I dearly wish a day would never come when i would google for “Where have i forgotten my underwear”. I dearly wish i don’t.

But after some time, I thought fare enough. Someone must have searched for an essay with this topic. Afterall even i remember how, during the 2nd -5th standard, my ambition changed with changing teachers and essay books. It mutated from a nation serving politician or soldier to a hard-working-son-of-soil farmer to a life saving doctor. Frankly speaking, considering the level of english i could blabber on my own, the essay that was not lengthy enough not to be mugged up, at the same time sounded good and earned marks had content for “My ambition”. But i don’t remember myself ever scribbling about being a “gibberish-speaking” sleepy bug dwelling in virtual reality, being a computer engineering, i.e., to be specific.

Anyways this fact urged me to think what really is an ambition. I thought of mining the precise definition for the word and to my surprise what it really means is “an ardent desire to achieve something”. An ardent desire? That is it? Boss, i have been ceaselessly told my ambition has to foretell a long time down the future. All those “cheek-bursting” aunts and grandmas and uncles danced on my head for ages to know what i would be when i grow old, what is my ambition. I always doubted if they wanted to boggle the million rupees estate i would have. To such extent was my fear that i started publishing “social service” as my ambition just to push the demons away.

But now i feel pity that i was wandering along without really answering that question in the best way. If an ardent desire is what ambition is all about, then yes i would have had hundreds of ambitions. And the list has grown to a thousands now with passing age. With each ambition i achieved, i feel i have installed few more in the list. I know and still remember the whole gyan about a life lived without ambition is like an arrow fired without an aim. But then if i have to talk practically I feel it is highly impossible to lay the path for whole life right at the birth. Nah one can’t.

And that does not mean as a child i spent my life without an aim. I still had an aim to complete my homework just to rush out to play hide n seek or help mom out with an aim to go out for a walk in some mela or finish every possible household exercises even on a foggy Sunday with an aim just to use that as an excuse while am watching a cricket match. Now i know these were my ambitions. Far more practical than being a politician or a doctor.

Yes i know there are still these whole lot of concepts of long term goal and short term goals and art of living and blah. So I feel skeptic to use ambition as a word. I feel i better call it a simple desire.  I have decided to pursue my billions of small but practical desires under the hood of long term, impractical or rather unverifiable ambition of being a respected and followed both professionally and personally. I have already mentioned how my ambitions faded away with time. I know my desires won’t. I would be happy if the list grows to some tens of thousands, that would imply that i atleast completed 100 such desires. 100 such ambitionsi will call them.

A passage I long to live…

Just finished watching the most wondrous poem on love and life, “Before Sunrise”. I am so damn impressed. Its pretty amazing how the author’s, the director’s view can change a dragging chitchatting of a “just-met” couple into such awesome a journey for the viewer too. I mean, even i kind of get surprised that i thoroughly enjoyed a normal passage of some hours of two-people’s life, their passage from strangers to lovers.

Everything about this movie left me impressed. The sweet time it takes to unfold itself, the locales of Vienna crawling beautifully behind the leads, the gentle music in the background. All these small little things just heaved my experience of what lied at the core, the subtle talks of the couple in lead. I relished everything the author was trying to say. It made me think, made me revisit my thoughts about many things. I mean not just about love, about life too. All it had to say about death, god etc. Small little gems like the one when the actress, Celine, talks about the old man who spent his whole life thinking about his career and his work. That was just a spectacularly well written scene.

And about love, well its better experienced in the movie itself. I am speechless, out of word to spell out my experience. Its not just for the one’s in love, but also for the others to relish.  All those  pretty words, the moist  eyed stares, those mushy silences, the tender touches. Everything. The poem in particular written with so plain a word, milkshake, as its base. Man, spectacular is the word.

Yes, I want to wend one such passage before sunrise in my life, if possible in Vienna. And yes, if so beautiful is love crafted on the moving canvas, am sure i won’t be alone feeling that way.

Dawn of a new Era…

Finally i have managed to stablize the “new entity” i was working on for quite a long time now. Today it comes out of the testing phase and open out. I have been working on a “blogsite” trying to design and fill it up with contents. And finally it is up… And here is the first look.

The site can be accessed here. Please do visit and provide the feedback.

PS: I plan not to depart from here. I will surely be blogging here sometimes. Have some fond memories with this buddy too. But still the activity will surely be reduced.

Mysterious Me…

The title does sound, atleast for me, a bit self-boasting one. I dunno about others for whom ‘being mysterious’ may quite well turn out to be ‘yuck’ish. (I know even my use of words sometimes is mysterious. You would surely have, if you have roamed round this blogosphere enough, come across many.)

Anyway mysteries has always kept on the edge of my seat. I have cherished even the worst of the mystery movies ever made. I even have a darn respect (!!!) for the makers of few of the movies, whose reason for existence itself was a mystery. Same goes for books or for TV shows. But more than anything else, what turn me on are the mysterious real life experiences. I have spend lots of my network bandwidth digging through the news stories about however foolish but mysterious incidences that happen around us. And it was this interest of mine that led to the existence of another blog of mine. Realm of Mysteries

Along the journey there, I will keep on jotting few mysteries i, over the net, bump into. The stories may not be fully inclusive of all details as I have no intention to ‘wikipedia’ize the blog. Though they surely will provide required links for fully understanding them.

Let the journey begin …

I am breaking….

Truly i am. Work is really not effort-worth. I am unable to do the tasks worth effort. Those interest me are not around me. Mind seems to be blogged with unknown demons. Eyes occupied by elephantine tiredness. It seems each and every body part is trying to move in altogether different direction. Trying to tear me apart. Each help offered just seems helpless. I want to run away. I want to hide from every minutest thing. Wish i could do that so simply. Wish i could hide that simply…

My experiment with "Yahoo!! Pipes"

RSS feeds has wildly captured my imagination recently, which was bound to happen thanks to my new born hobby of wwilfying. I started to spend my airtel broadband completely to subscribe and unsubscribe from various different feeds. Now that i feel i have quite an interesting collection of RSS feeds from various sources, i thought lets share the same. But the problem that raised its all time jumping head as to how i should do that. Sharing my feed XML was too kinky a process with another shortcoming of limited reach. So started my experiments on web …

In came Yahoo Pipes. Quite a nice way to ’single’fy feeds from various different sources. A simple and intuitive user interface with various interesting options to merge/filter the feeds. This post is not to explain why and how i did this experiment with Yahoo pipes. But is to provide with two output feeds i created using it.

• Weird and Funny Posts
• Technology Information

Both the feeds do provide quite an interesting collection. Do give it a try. By the way enough of this infoblogging. Should quickly get into my ‘funonomics’ version of my blog.

Speechless……

Speechless …. Thats how today’s incident caught me. Really felt am i missing something? Am i really enjoying my life? Corporate world has indeed made me dry. Juiceless. Deprived of whatever fun element I had in my life. Saw the wetted earth today and there loomed the childhood days in front of me.

Those hours I spent sitting on a sofa employing my eyes out at rain beaten roads. “Chai-Bhajji” or “Pohe” that i relished. Slightest sound of a rain drop that made me run towards the porch. Spellbound eyes of mine that tried to gulp up a sight of lush green fields. An enchanting effect that even a midget breeze created. The restlessness that a sight of river or even a small stream gave me. The dew-laden grass plates that endorsed the mesmerizing capacity of the nature. “Aai” who always dabbed me forcefully in the sweater and monkey-cap. Soothing effect that the cooler-chilled room created after returning from burning heat. Glasses of Rasna i gobbled. Waits for the “Chachaji-Sabu-Raka” Combo. Exchanges of comics and greedily moving through the pages, just to make sure we read the most. Carrom Games, Cards, Cricket matches that we played, ignorant of screeching sun, blowing winter or pouring rains. Dirty clothes that i washed so as to keep “aai” unaware of mud-ridden football matches. And the list just goes on, endless. I never knew what really allured me so strongly. But I do was.

And today, here I am looking at the rain-hit porch from my AC cubical. Without a sofa, “Pohe”or “Chai Bhajji”. Drops kept pouring, waiting for me to run into the porch. Lush-green lawn’s spread out there, just to make me spellbound again. Gone are the rivers/streams and am in the middle of bulk of fountains. But these don’t make me restless. “Aai Daddy” are there, always at the other end of phone line. Mirinda can’t take the place rasna holds. Dan Brown or Sidney Sheldon can’t surrogate “Raj or Diamond”. “Batman-Superman” can easily be kneeled down by “Druv-Nagraj”. Gone are the games. Gone are the friends. Gone are the fun-filled days. Nature’s still out there. Calling me. Waiting to mesmerize me. With me completely oblivious.

Thanks a lot, corporate world. Thanks a lot!!!