RULE NUMBER FIVE: THE MIND IS AN ASSHOLE

I think everyone knows this, but I felt like talking about it anyway. 

We have all experienced this over and over: the mind has the power to throw your entire life out of balance in just a few seconds. I can actually list out 20 things our minds do to us that annoy the living daylights out of ourselves.

The mind... 

1.       Keeps you awake when you’re sleepy

2.       Makes you sleepy when you should be awake (like at every client meeting)

3.       Makes you stupid when you should be smart (with the "love of your life", meeting the CEO of the company you work for, or when you're at your University interview)

4.       Makes you act smart when you should shut up

5.       Makes you lie

6.       Makes you tell the truth when you should lie (personally hate this one, I've become a terrible liar and I just don't try anymore) 

7.       Tells you that you should be doing one thing instead of the other but will make you do that one thing anyway

8.       Makes you complain in points on a blogpost

9.       Makes you retardedly uncoordinated when your extremely graceful significant other is sipping wine and staring at you

10.   Makes you want to get absolutely wasted the night before a meeting because it knows you actually really just want to be late and sleep through the whole thing anyway

Okay 20 is a bit much and I really believe you’ll stop reading if I go on, so I’m going to make my point now:

Even though the mind fucks around so much, it is the only part of you that has the strength to rectify whatever is going wrong. It is powerful enough to sleep when it should, eat when it should, understand what’s healthy and what’s not (physically, emotionally and psychologically), and it’s also the part of you that’s behind all the good and positive decisions you’ve made. And the best part is, if you just get to know your own mind, you'll be a lot happier speaking it!

So is it really an asshole? Um. YES. I think we can all be assholes sometimes, and our minds are behind that for sure, so it is very capable of messing with you. But is it an unbeatable asshole? No. No asshole is unbeatable and that's something I've learnt from comic books and video games - the good may get stupidly fucked up, but the villains get pretty mauled and desecrated eventually too. I mean, even in Mortal Kombat, the makers of the game allow you to perform Babalities/Fatalities/Brutalities on the boss characters Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung, Goro, Kintaro (and sometimes Motaro depending on the version you’re playing) mostly for fun, but I think it lends a parallel to beating something that seems really big and huge and difficult (or just spammy and irritating). So pick your end game combo, and when your brain acts up or is just being totally not cool, I say to you…

Okay no, don’t go to war with yourself. Just trust yourself - trust your knowledge of what’s good for you, and you’ll be fine.

RULE NUMBER SEVENTEEN: YOU FIRST

No, I don't mean letting someone else go first. In fact, I mean exactly the opposite, and in this post I've used a little gamer-behavior and a lot of spilling-my-heart-out to explain the importance of RULE NUMBER SEVENTEEN: YOU FIRST.

After much introspection and a lot of guidance, I've found that feelings and emotions don't always stem from anything anyone else has said or done, but the things that I say to myself. It's what I think about their words or actions that makes me react, and in turn makes an impact on the way I behave in similar situations. I do think we all are this way.

I'm not going to get into how to understand it or how the mind works - that's one journey we must take individually, because it's always beautiful to discover yourself as a person.
But my post is about this one thing we all must do - PUT YOURSELF FIRST.

It's not just about big, life changing situations. It's also about the smaller things - do you really want to go to that party? Are you too tired to be on the phone? Friend not letting you leave even though you're feeling unwell or just out of it? Sometimes we give in to make our family and friends smile. But sometimes we're hurting ourselves by not admitting what we really want/need/are not getting. I've found that it's not easy to tell others exactly how you feel and how strongly you feel it, but there's always somewhere to start!

1. Be honest with yourself - it is the key to keeping your mind at peace. Once you can share with yourself what you need and want, you will care for yourself and trust yourself more.
2. Trust yourself, and you will be honest with others because only you know what you need and only you can tell someone else so they understand. Honesty will allow others to trust you and care about you as well (they will know you can handle yourself), or at least show how they think and feel too. This is important so you can accept the way you are, the way someone else is and the fact that you may be very different from each other.
3. This acceptance and understanding will make the bonds in any relationship stronger, or show you that a person may not be the best companion for you. Most of all, it will strengthen the bond you share with yourself and then only happiness can follow.

It is a lifelong journey to be in touch with yourself, because things are always changing. It makes positivity a very important part of the process (and no, not the "Oh everything is fine and I'll just keep smiling and looking at unicorns and cats on the internet to fool myself and ignore my problems" kind of positivity) because we don't always enjoy change and ignoring it can make things worse with time. Change means not knowing what's next, and the mind doesn't enjoy the unknown very much no matter how equipped we are to deal with it.
Well, here's one way to understand and tap into a consistent kind of positivity - the kind that drives us to keep playing our favourite games!

It's pretty much like playing a new version of an old game series - you're not really super-pro at it first because you're used to a certan set of controls and they've changed a few things around. But that doesn't stop you. You keep playing till you learn the controls, beat the bosses, win online multiplayer challenges and then eventually move on to the next version, or even another game where the controls are completely different and zombies are attacking you while you're in the middle of war, instead of unlocking that Lambo after 5 egoistic guys in vests challenged you to the next race.

So yes, life is but a game, and we are merely its players... using our own consoles upon this massive network set to permanent multipayer mode with occasional boss battles and constant Level Ups till it's Game Over. Or something like that!

Now that I have written all this out, my mind wants to change the whole thing and explain this to you with a better, more "relevant" example that everyone will understand. But I trust myself, and I have been honest with you, so I will keep it this way and trust you to tell me what you think!

Hope you've had a good read. I've definitely had a good write!

RULE NUMBER EIGHTY-NI... WAIT WHAT WAS IT?

Rule #89: NEVER GO UNPREPARED.

I'm sure I'm talking to an audience here who understands the need to be prepared.

We've all gone for that one exam completely blank, lost and confused because we were playing for way too long the night before.

We've also been rather unprepared for other things since - first dates, college presentations, client meetings, and so on - and they've all been unpleasant experiences.

But here's a company that truly understands this. So much so that, to make sure you're always informed, prepared and have less awkward moments (I've actually heard one guy go "Shit dude, where did I put my thing?!"), Promethean Audio has taken the trouble to put together a guide to all the things you need to do, as a musician, artist or a band, before you come in and record with them! 

Good stuff, Team Promethean.

It's a concise and intense guide, a combination that's very hard to find in a book that says "guide" anywhere on it, especially if it's one for your Hindi text books.

So here, I present to you one way to always be prepared:

"COME TO THE STUDIO PREPARED DUDE" - in pdf format.

I hope you're prepared with a PDF reader.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2pVCaSbAj6pdlhOOFZWdGswOFE/edit?pli=1

RULE NUMBER FIFTY TWO

Rule #52: Enough is just not enough.

So I've been doing some shopping lately.
And instead of shopping and waiting in line, I shopped online.

Okay sorry.

But it's true! I've bought phone covers, shoes, computer accessories, etc. all online.
Those items are not what lead me to writing this post though.
It was the bag shopping I did a while ago that's reinforced an old realisation - the more you have, the more you want.

DISCLAIMER FOR ALL MEN READING: Don't worry, I've tried to keep the (awesome) bags talk to a bare minimum. (Did I mention they're awesome?)

There's more to this feeling than these materialistic desires, of course.
There's a driving force. If I'm at a certain level, I'll always want to be higher. I want to gain more, win more, achieve more, know more, see more, and DO more. We all do. Where's the fun and charm to life otherwise? Where's the thrill? How can we not look forward to progress that we have brought about ourselves?

For the entrepreneur,  "How can my business be better?", for the writer "How can my words make greater impact?", and even for the cat "How much more fur can I shed and how much more furniture can I destroy today?"
Those questions are what keep us going.

Right?
Right.

And why do we do it? That's probably the simplest one of them all: we want something greater than we have because we know it exists, we know we're not there yet, and so being content is just not an option. 'Enough' is just not enough!
Everything in your life can be, in the words of Daft Punk, Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.
How we progress is up to us, and I'm not even going to dare get into the ethics of it. That's epic writing for another post on another day.

So that's just it - aiming higher. That's why humans are where we are. We aimed higher a long time ago, we're still pushing our abilities everyday and this is where we've reached.
There's a bunch of people who will argue and say things like it's a curse, that it's greed, and that it's "not good".
But really, how can anyone be satisfied with their position or knowledge when they know they can get better at it or that there's so much more?
I also know that somewhere through this, you've started thinking about money, and money is a really narrow way to look at the feeling I'm playing upon. This more than all the money in the world. This is YOU. This is your knowledge, your talent, your skill, and eventually your happiness when you think of yourself.

This is your desire to achieve as much as you can in all the time that you have to work your ass off.

Before signing off and leaving you with my heavy thoughts, I'll lighten the load with a list of sites that I stay in tune with when these desires (and hormones) kick in!

NOTE: These are just sites I like to browse through to keep up with trends, prices, etc. I'm not ALWAYS shopping online or otherwise, even though my mother may not agree with this statement.

• eBay - Phones and Phone Accessories
• Flipkart - Computer Accessories and Stationery *big wide OCD-filled smile*
• The Rummage - Bags and Fashion Accessories (THE BEST)
• Jabong - Shoes and Sports Stuff

And my all-time favourite place to check out everything everyday - Pinterest.

So thank you for reading, and remember, every day that you have, PUSH YOURSELF.

'ENOUGH' shouldn't be enough.

Carpe diem and all that.

Here, laugh before you leave.

RULE NUMBER NINE

Rule #9: You Probably Don't Know Anything.

...or even half of anything. Yet.

If you’ve read enough, you probably know that this is extremely true, and you'll give me a high-five for my title, say you love my blog, and be done with it.

If you don't, and just lurk on the internet like all of us, and don't believe me, you might have to read on for my maybe-insignificant little life-experience to understand why I'm saying this.
Okay, either that, or attempt to read up on the Higgs Boson.

Good luck, either way.

As for myself, I feel like a "Universal Idiot" - someone who's a "big picture" person, knows about the extent of the universe and our insignificance, but may never gain even 0.1% of its entire knowledge.

You see, every time I stumble across something new, or even just explore the history behind each Google Doodle, I find something I thought I knew but really didn’t, 

OR 

something that I actually just didn’t know at all. 

For the same knowledge-gaining reasons, I also follow all the fact-/event-sharing handles on Twitter (like @UberFacts, @OMGFacts, @LaughingSquid and so on).

I’ve even taken the trouble to write a post somewhere on this blog about how science just amazes me and we can never really know the entirety of this universe or even a fraction of it for that matter.

The pictures from the Mars Curiosity rover should help put this in perspective!

What just recently blew my mind and moved me enough to write this was the Social@Ogilvy Training Workshop on the 20^th and 21^st September, 2012. i.e. last Thursday and Friday, that I attended.

Because I’m now part of the Social@Ogilvy team in Mumbai, and possibly the first in India.

As a writer.

To do great things on social platforms.

So much WIN.

So much I-should-stop-now-before-I-sound-like-an-over-enthusiastic-squirrel.

Okay, back to the workshop –

Up until Thursday morning, I believed that if there was anything I was good at and understood well enough to say I can offer beneficial services to, it was the world of Social Media Marketing and “the stuff” that goes into managing or portraying brand presence on a Social network. I won’t get into it because I’m sure you know, or kind of know, what that entails. This also means you think you know, but probably don’t. 

Yeah, that thought blew my mind too.

It took the introductory speech, the first 20 minutes of talk, from the eye-openingly intelligent and knowledgeable Social@Ogilvy Training team of three to make me realize that I knew absolutely nothing about what I have been doing for the last 2 years. The stupendous training team: Hastie Afkhami, Jenna Boller and Scott McBride.

Social media is not just something that allows you to have a facebook page or twitter account, or both. It’s not just something that “takes your brand to millions of people”. It’s MORE than that. Yes, the ICanHazCheezburger MOOOAAAR kind of MORE.

Imagine the life of every mother on the planet, her love for her baby, her need to make sure the baby gets the right kind of care and the right kind of love. Then imagine connecting an insight like that to a social network. No, putting up a post saying “Hit the random buttons below to show how much you LOVE a mother’s LOVE for their BABIES!” with a picture of a baby, which really just doesn’t cut it, even though it’s the first thing you want to do on mother’s day. And no, adding a cat in there is not a solution.

Here’s what cuts it:

A campaign for Huggies Hong Kong that became a facebook success story in July 2011:

Link 1:
http://www.ogilvy.com/News/Press-Releases/July-2011-Ogilvy-Hong-Kong-Gives-New-Moms-Attention-in-New-Huggies-Campaign.aspx

Link 2:
http://www.facebook-successstories.com/huggies-hk/

This was just one of the many case studies we were taken through, and this was just a small taste of what one can do on Social Media. I’m beginning to see this as a whole new frontier, where the already-infinite possibilities are more limitless than before.

It’s not just about giving people the importance or the power that they crave to have, but giving them a whole new experience in their lives that they could never have before. Who wouldn't love something that makes you happy?

Burberry just did something that changes the way I look at advertising – 

You’re not just taking an experience to an audience.

You’re not just taking the audience to the experience.

But you’re understanding both, you’re understanding what they’ve already seen and you’re giving them a new way of doing everything they want to do.

And here's the bomb: EVERYONE'S BENEFITING, WHILE STAYING TRUE TO YOUR COMPANY, BRAND AND PRODUCT.

That's in caps because I've noticed it's something people don't seem to care about anymore, and that randomness is so careless.

Here's the 'Burberry Blows Your Mind' Link:
http://mashable.com/2012/09/24/burberry-regent-street-christopher-bailey/ 

By this point you’re probably asking yourself why I don’t summarise the campaigns, in my own words, since I'm a writer, instead of pasting links for you. Let me answer that, in my own words: I’d rather have you see and read for yourself, instead of listening to my very overwhelmed nonsense. I’ll be honest: I’m so much in awe of the world/the universe that the simplest thing could amaze, appall or surprise me. Why? Because I didn’t know it three seconds ago. And you didn’t know this about me five seconds ago.

Isn’t all this knowledge just awesome?

Yes?

Well, you still probably don’t know anything.

And neither do I.

Also, here's one final link I want to share with you just because it's so much fun:

Old Spice Muscle Music: http://vimeo.com/47875656

Don't leave that page till you've pushed every button!

So the point here is (as cliché as it sounds): The more you know, the less you realize you actually know.

Try it. Start reading about music, history, science… you’ll find about a 100 things on every page that you had no idea existed. Hastie, Jenna and Scott took us through an intense and vast amount of things in just two days. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it so well. From planning, to strategies, to that extra boost social media can give a brand – they showed us so many paths in the maze of Social@Ogilvy and what we can achieve through the magnitude of Social Media (and trust me, ‘magnitude’ is just not magnitudinous enough). Everyone who attended has left with about ten times more information, education and sense than what they walked in with. Not to mention smiles, and very handy guidebooks!

Me? I’m still just appreciating how much more I know, and how much is left to still learn and do!

A statistic I read about a few years ago said that three species go extinct every hour on Planet Earth. Yes, I can see all your faces going :O and WTF, right?!
Here's some tweets from @UberFacts:

1.  If the entire population of China walked past you in single file, the line would take close to 100 years to pass you.
2.  Most men immediately exhibit a decline in mental performance when interacting with women - Women do not have this problem.
3. There are about 1,400 species of bacteria living in your belly button.

…and so on. Yeah, this is the kind of interesting-to-weird stuff that keeps my mental clock ticking.

Another go-to site for me for all things tech, mobile app and entertainment related is @mashable. And you've probably guessed that the one social networking site I’m on the most is Twitter.

Twitter is the next best place for knowledge hungry people like me (the best being Wikipedia of course). Its constant scroll of information, packed into 140 characters or less, is the perfect amount of “controlled” bombardment (since you can follow who you like) on my cognitive self. Now THAT'S what I signed up to the internet for!

A few other sites that work the same way, or can be just as knowledge- and awesomeness-friendly:

1. Pinterest
2. StumbleUpon
3. Flipboard – for all you app-happy, iphone/ipad/android owning buggers like me

I think I’ve said enough, and honestly, this rule is more for you to figure out than for me to extrapolate, or even pretend to explain really. There's so many more effective and interactive uses of social platforms, great ideas, videos and live events that I've seen and love to share, but I think this should do for now.

Here’s a list of sites that started me off on this "Education My Universal Idiot" trip. I hope these help you too!

1. Nikon’s Universcale
2. NatGeo and LonelyPlanet
3. NASA
4. Mashable
5. StumbleUpon
6. Neave.com
7. AdsOfTheWorld (you need to filter the ads here well, otherwise you’ll also end up seeing pretty crappy ads!)
8. IMDb top 250 movies (Movies, TV shows and a few documentaries have been very big eye-openers)
9. Afaqs
10. The Economist (more the magazines and ipad app than the site)
11. Last.fm and Grooveshark
12. deviantArt

There you go. Don’t hesitate to take one word out of somewhere and paste it in a wiki search. You may never come out of that wormhole of learning and education that it gives you, but that’s the point of this.

Enjoy, and I hope I’ve made at least a quark-sized amount of sense today!

*Thanks to everyone at the Mumbai SOCIAl@OGILVY TRAINING on 20th and 21st September, 2012. This post is for the super people at OgilvyOne Worldwide, in Mumbai and everywhere else, and for the awesome people who took us through it all!*

Mumbai Social@Ogilvy Training Workshop

RULE NUMBER SEVENTY TWO

Rule #72: You don't have to be right to write.


I was shuffling through all my college assignments and paper submissions, essays, et cetera, and stumbled upon my Popular Culture essay "The World of Weblogs". The point of my essay was that the Internet has given such power to people that the decision of what counts as literature, or what is published, is no longer in the hands of some patron and his printing-press, or any self-proclaimed editing guru. It doesn't belong to any governing power except your own mind and those buttons on your keyboard or phone.
So what's stopping you?

This "filterlessness" (as I like to call it) results in two things:
1. People who have great talent gone unnoticed are finally allowed to showcase their work or at least create an online portfolio of it. This can be shared amongst readers who like the genre in which they write, or for professional purposes. Beneficial? Very much!
2. A whole bunch of completely unreadable junk is now all over the Internet. Why unreadable? Because everything is written in SMS language, filled with a whole bunch of unrecognisable colloquial terms, an O.D. of slang, and I'm not even going to bother telling you what I think of the punctuation.
Let me rephrase: bcoz evrythng iz writtn lyk dis 4 all da ppls 2 reed if dey like small wrds n talk abt sum shit LOLZZZZ!!!111

From the point of view of a Literature student, to me even this overwhelming swarm of incomprehensible text is ground-breaking. This is today's de-canonisation of Literature, where all the norms and purposes of the establishment of the Literary Canon is completely broken. Now, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot and the other elites are definitely rolling in their graves, but I highly doubt anyone outside the world of Literary Academics knows that or cares anymore! If you want to delve more into the canon, here you go: Western Canon.

I'm writing this because I know that I'm a part and product of this process, or rather this lack-of-process when it comes to publishing and publicising my work. Also, as an extension to my paper on weblogs and the deconstruction of everything the Canon stood for, the next part is the horde of social networking sites that are a big part of our lives. If blogs challenge language as we know it, then Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Pinterest, and all other networking sites challenge every a priori form of human communication.

I think this advancement and freedom is a gift. Of course, with freedom comes a flood of stupidity, but we all learnt that in college and should be quite accustomed to it by now, right?
So write.
And read.
And share.
And feel free from constraint of expression.
The choice is yours, and so is a big part of the Internet!

To add fuel to any fire I might have sparked, here's a list of catalysts and enablers I've found in my time of creativity:
1. Blog hosting websites: Blogger, Wordpress, Posterous - highest rated in my books

2. The Rag: They have seasonal issues and will publish your work in their digests and issues. They're very approachable and always ready to have a read.

3. NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month: Even though it's November, you can sign up any time, write a novel and clock your progress on the site. They hold live chats and online seminars that you can attend where writers and novelists from all over the world are ready to help you with your work.

4. About.me: It's got nothing to do with writing really, but if you're on a lot of social networking sites, you have a lot of blogs and online portfolios, it allows you to create a page with a simple http://about.me/xxxxxxx URL that makes it easy to recommend and even looks very professional and personal when shared. If you catch their running offer, they send home a free bunch of Moo visiting cards with your name and contact details. If you're outside the UK, you might have to pay for shipping, but that's about it. How cool is that?!

5. Some blogs that caught my eye, and that I now follow:
http://thecrackdmirror.blogspot.com/
http://tectonicshifts.blogspot.com/         These two belong to my mother, and she's one of the best.
http://magnoliadesigns.blogspot.com/    A personal favourite because of the craftiness of it all
http://fromaleftwing.blogspot.com/        An open-eyed eye-opener on sports, women, and women in sport
http://thesassyfork.blogspot.com/         Food and a good read about making it = heaven
http://scherezadeshroff.blogspot.in/       Le blog a la mode, with real fashion from a real person

I've chosen to write about writing because that's my biggest passion. I also paint, photograph, sing and play football, and there's so much more out there to give impetus to all that we can do. So I wish I could list other sites and spaces I've discovered, but in all honesty, I CAN'T!

RULE NUMBER SEVEN BY EIGHT

Rule #7/8: Musicians Can Have Anything.


A bored 20 minutes ago, I was going through a bunch of the world's worst pick-up lines just to have a laugh and find something terrible and interesting to share, when I stumbled across a blog that shares 33 pick-up lines for Musicians.
I got through reading three when I realised that musicians don't need pick-up lines. They need just two things: 1. The ability to speak, and 2. The G chord

Here's how the situation works:
Musician: Hi I'm a musician
Unsuspecting Male/Female Recipient: Really?! Cool. Can you play something?
Musician: Sure. *Plays G chord, slowly, and then again, and then maybe strums for another 2 seconds*
Unsuspecting Male/Female Recipient: OHMYGOD YOU'RE SO GOOD LET'S JAM I CAN SING OR I'LL LEARN JUST TO HANG OUT WITH YOU OHMYGOD

Some musicians don't even need that. They just need to carry their guitar/ guitar case (yes, even an empty case works) or a pair of drumsticks.
Here's how situation #2 works:
Suspecting Mediocre Male/Female/Person: Oh, so you're a musician?
Musician: Yeah.
Suspecting Mediocre Male/Female/Person: OHMYGOD YOU MUST BE SO GOOD LET'S JAM I CAN SING OR I'LL LEARN JUST TO HANG OUT WITH YOU OHMYGOD

Now, you're probably wondering what happens if the musician is a singer/ songwriter/ composer/ producer/ mic boy. Well, that's simple.
Here's how situation Don't-Got-No-Instruments works:
Musician: Hi I'm a musician.
Insignificant Other: What? Where's your equipment?
Musician: Oh I'm a singer/composer/producer/assistant music producer (mic boys usually use [see how I did that] the last one)
Insignificant Other: OHMYGOD YOU'RE SO DEEP AND MEANINGFUL AND MUST BE SO GOOD I CAN SING I LIKE MUSIC I JUST WANT TO okay you get the point.

So if you were wondering why the life of a Rockstar is all "Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll", it's because no one's ever said no to a musician (except his mother, of course, and maybe a few loan officers).
Hence proved.
(Not really, but you get what I mean.)

Finally, to conclude all this, I'd just like to say MUSICIANS ARE AWESOME.
Ok. Goodbye.

#1 band-song-video on my list.

RULE NUMBER FIFTEEN

Rule #15: It is NOT a small world.

Remember, at that party last week you met this one person who knew your friend's friend really well and you found out that two other friends are actually related? Remember reacting to all this information by saying "Wow, what a small world!" and then thinking about the other time this happened? Well, I'm sorry to break your bubble, but the world isn't small at all. It's humongous, with a thousand billion things you still have never seen before, homosapiens included!

The world's largest jellyfish is longer than the tallest man alive, and the tallest sunflower gives it close competition. I read about it today, and thought that if a specie of jellyfish can be so large, and a specie of ants or a kind of amoeba can be so small, where the hell does everything else stand?! Then I remembered a beautiful site I discovered created by the guys at Nikon - The Universcale.

Nikon basically said, "Here you go. We took the universe (and all the universes that could possibly be there), we took everything inside this universe, this galaxy, this solar system and this world, and we put it on a scale. We put it all behind a lens - we either minimised so you could see it, or we maximised so YOU can SEE it!"
Then I said, "WOW" and didn't stop saying it for 2 weeks. Yes, my face definitely hurt.
On one single scale in one single interactive page, they charted everything measurable in lightyears to everything measurable in femtometres, i.e. literally everything from the universe to a single proton.
Sometimes, the loud booming voice in my head still says "WOW".

Ruled and over-run by people, people without which we would never have known that half of these things existed, important people and impoverished people, all living on this same planet - that's our world.
An entire planet, a massive "terra-sphere"if I may call it one, with a surface area of 510,072,000 square kilometres and a million times that number (this might be slightly inaccurate) of living things upon it - that's The Earth.

It's not the best place for all of us, and I'm not glorifying it (at least I know I'm not trying to). I'm not even saying "Oh we're nothing in the 'big picture' but it's so cool and bourgeois to talk about it like this." All I'm saying is that it's FUCKING MASSIVE (sorry Mom), and unfathomably so. I'm sure, somewhere in his grave, Christopher Columbus is giving me a "hellyeah".

I live in Mumbai. On a good day (which I have most of the time), I refuse to travel from my humble abode to any place more than an hour away, unless I'm going on a road-trip, or it's 2am and there's barely anyone on the streets, or both. My city itself is big enough (Wikitravel agrees - see first line of the article). There's parts of it I have never even been to in my meagre 21 years of breathing. As I sit and watch the sunset turn into the night sky - this tiny, insignificant, little me that wanders aimlessly on this speck of a planet in the universe - I'm overwhelmed by the breadth of the world and the kilometres of it I still have not crossed, and may not ever cross. I'm not going to thank anyone for this world, or for this revelation/epiphany/life. It is here, I am grateful, I have written about it and it will always stay with me.

I have no advice for you today. I have nothing else to say. I'm not high.

The Sunset I'm Seeing.

Other Interesting Links:
1. Blue Sea Snail
2. The World's Highest Peaks
3. Neave.com

RULE NUMBER ONE FORTY THREE

Rule #143: If you're in love and you know it, let music set it free.

Feelings don't need to become words 

when they can become music.

So open your eyes, your heart, your soul

and LISTEN.

You don't have to celebrate love only on Valentine's Day, or your anniversary.
I like to celebrate it every day.

Here's a list of songs that celebrate with me.

1. I Follow Rivers - Lykke Li

2. Turn and Turn Again - All Thieves

3. You Are Mine - Mute Math

Other songs by MuteMath that fit this list: Picture, Noticed, Control, Plan B, Goodbye, Electrify

4. Stellar - Incubus

Other Incubus songs that fit: Echo, Here In My Room, I Miss You, Dig

5. Your Loving Arms - Karen Overton

There's a sweet ISOS remix by Tiesto too.

6. Somewhere Only We Know - Keane

7. Falling In Love Again (OST The Spirit) - Christina Aguilera

I only love this because of the movie, and it's the one based on the comic.
Not the one about the horses.

8. Cinema (Skrillex Remix) - Benny Benassi ft. Gary Go

Also check out his mix of iSquare's Hey Sexy Lady. This guy is brilliant!

Please, feel free to comment and add your own.

Stay healthy, and stay in love.

I know I will.

(Posted in dedication to someone who truly deserves more than this.)

RULE NUMBER FORTY THREE

Rule # 43: Seek and You Shall Find.

*WARNING: I wrote this two years ago, in January 2010, so please excuse the bits of melodrama. I think I was going through a phase. Thank you.

What you’re looking for could manifest in the form of absolutely anything. A kind of person you’d like to be with, an event you want to be part of, or just a simple piece of solid matter you would like to acquire. It tends to be unique, different, something that interests us, something unconventional.

We have a picture of it in our minds and might know where to look for it, but the moment we set our goals and make our plans, a billion obstacles suddenly emerge in your path and your precious goal dips and disappears into the horizon.

On the train one day in August 2009, while I was on my way for football practice, I met another sportswoman. She sailed for India and said I should come join them as a guest for a sailing lesson. Absolutely random and just what I needed at the time – something new to learn. We exchanged numbers and schedules, and decided to meet the following weekend for some sailing. I cancelled all my plans for this buoyant event, and then, yes right then, (well, not really right then in the train, but two days later) I fell ill.

Malaria.

Plasmoduim Vivax if you please.

2 weeks recovery, right? Okay. Tolerable, I thought.

So I called, cancelled, did the dance, and scheduled it for the weekend after my recovery period was over.

The Friday before the aforementioned weekend, life decided to knock me off my feet again, this time with bad shoes and water. I slipped on the stairs outside my house and sprained my right ankle. So this means... NO SAILING FOR ANOTHER WEEK. I emotionally imploded.

Eventually, it took me a good 3 months to find a day where I could fix up a lesson. Ridiculous, I say, but we managed, and I now I know the fundamental basics of sailing!

I’m sure you’ve gone through a whole bunch of obstacles to get where you are today, or where you want to be in the future. We all have, right?

Indian Independence, anti-racism/anti-corruption movements, the fight for gender equality – these are battles countered with either ferocity or complete negligence from people with social and political power. Everyone that struggled must have felt at some point that the more they tried, the harder it became to reach their goals. The key is to stay strong, to stay focussed, to stay in the game.

This is where Rule # 21 comes in: TRY AND TRY UNTIL YOU DIE. For those agonising months, I really, desperately wanted to sail even though I knew I couldn’t. But I persisted, made calls, skipped classes and did end up going. It’s a small, trivial example to give you for such a hard-bound rule, but an experience I’ll never forget, and seemed larger than life after the wait.

So what would life be without the chase? What would life be without that passionate yearning or the will to fight for what you believe?

If you could have everything you wanted at the snap of a finger, how long would you want it for and how much would you value it?

Life always has a flipside, an up for every down. There will always be many reasons as to why these rules unanimously exist. True, not all of them apply to all situations. Sometimes, by pure fluke/good luck/chance, you’re served what you want on a silver platter (never happened to me, but I hear it’s possible).

So don’t give up yet. There’s so much more to know. You just need the will to look!

*Happy new year and have a brilliant 2012*

CLEAR SKIES OVER A FORSAKEN CITY

RULE NUMBER ONE ZERO FIVE

Rule #105: Games of Destruction - a better way to kill people.

Let's not fool ourselves. We all have abundant little frustrations in our daily lives that encourage in us uncharacteristic homicidal tendencies (that are actually fitting of MY nature, but I am not speaking merely for myself). If you live where I live, auto-rickshaws, trucks, buses and their respective drivers are just a few of the imbiciles you encounter while travelling to work. Then, of course, there's the imbiciles at work, which is a more universal issue.

Anyway, my point here is that if you've managed to keep your hands deep inside your pockets all day (to keep you from strangling those people and yourself), your first desire when you reach home is to destroy something. Some of us choose to channel it onto our sibling's belongings, the general happiness of our families, or our soon-to-fall-anyway strands of hair.

The solution? Instead of making your whole house a battlefield, try your TV or computer.
I own the PlayStation 3. It is man's gift to man. It is also man's gift to the police, the damned-idiot drivers and all the others that have survived the wrath of angry, belligerent teenagers.

My favourite genre of stress-buster games are FPS (First Person Shooter) or TPS (Third Person Shooter) games. Some fantasy games don't actually have any shooting, but definitely make the cut with some supremely mind-blowing weaponry. The God of War trilogy and Assassin's Creed series are the cream of the crop. My quick fix: An arcade game like Mortal Kombat or Super Street Fighter 4 really does the job when you just want to button-mash!

For avid gamers reading this, remember the GTA frenzy and how disturbingly relaxing it was to just run over people on the sidewalk with a stolen car till you reached Level 5 heat and then shoot down the helicopters? This is the evolution of that feeling!

Why is this the solution? Because games like these allow you to sit in the comfort of your own home and still climb Mount Olympus to destroy every Greek God that mythology spoke of. If you're more of a reality-gaming person, I'd recommend Call Of Duty: Black Ops or Modern Warfare 3 - they're the best games of their respective years. Who wouldn't want to pick up an AK 47 and blow a zombie's brains out? Or better still, who wouldn't want to control a tank turret gun or helicopter turret?
Oh, but here's the best part. The worst thing, and I mean the most horribly devastating thing, that could possibly happen to you is have your Mom or Dad walk into the room and yell because you had played 8 hours straight. Yes, that's right. NO REAL COPS, NO REAL GUILT, NO REAL BLOOD.
I see you finally get my point.

I've done a little research, asked around, and definitely played A LOT of games, just to put together a list of 10 highly recommended Games of Destruction and their trailers.

1. God Of War I, II, III
The PS3 had a special God of War III edition (which is the one I have). Here's the Official Chaos Launch trailer of the game.

2. Call of Duty: Black Ops, Modern Warfare 3
Here's the 2011 trailer for MW3. It's available for the Xbox360 too.

3. Assassin's Creed: Revelations
I loved this one the most; it's just genius. The then-Constantinople looks beautiful, and WHAT A STORY. Mind = blown.

4. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
One of the top 10 most anticipated games of 2011. I've heard a whole bunch of my friends talk about it with girlish fever in their voices. Also, the next game that I plan to experience for myself.

5. Batman: Arkham Asylum, Arkham City
I didn't get enough time with Asylum, sadly, but dissected as much as I could of Arkham City. With every swoop, thug-kill and villain destruction, the game just gets better and better.

6. Mortal Kombat 9

It's the NINTH game. I'm not giving you a description. All I'm saying is that Kratos is a playable character. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!

7. Super Street Fighter IV

One of the best arcade games to ever exist. Definitely more technical that MK9 and Tekken, but that's what's so addictive about it.

8. Red Dead Redemption

GTA on a horse, with a lasso and old-time shotguns and pistols. The tagline says "Outlaws to the End." I have one word for the game: Yeehaw!

There's a whole bunch of some very very epic games that I haven't listed. I've heard Saint's Row 3 and Battlefield 3 are forces to be reckoned with. I'll update this once I've played them!

To conclude, I'd say buy these games, slowly but surely. If not merely abate your road-rage (which reminds me, RoadRage was a fantastic game back then), they'll give you something better to do instead of drinking yourself silly to deal with a dull weekend.

I apologise for the ridiculous amounts of brackets and wish you a world of destruction in your near future!

RULE NUMBER TWENTY TWO

Rule #22: Cats are AWESOME.

I have a cat.
His name is Caesar, he's Persian by breed and he is awesome.

When I was born, we already had a cat, my mother's, in the house. That was the beginning of this abundant conviction that I now have.
He lived 18 years of his stray-tom-cat life as a perfect gentle-cat (I can't really say gentleman because he, fortunately, wasn't human).

Now, Caesar is exactly the opposite, though it doesn't make him any less loveable! He's what Captain Haddock would call a bungling baffoon. Contrary to belief, he is not graceful. He eats, sleeps, chases dust particles, is petrified of anything bigger than a fly that is not a fly or cockroach, and talks to crows every morning from the window sill. When he kills something, it goes SPLAT.
He also eats hot chapattis with us, loves egg yolk, and mews loudly for five minutes before taking his evening dump.

Most people don't believe animals are capable of anything beyond instincts, and that their instincts are pretty much the same within a species. With cats, and dogs too, I've found that this isn't true at all. Every cat is different, just like different people from different parts of the world. Strays are more territorial, house cat breeds (like the Persian or Scottish Fold) are fussy about where you can and can't pet them, who they're living with and who's visiting the people they're living with, and then each cat is different depending on their environment. My cat? He thinks he's a dog and follows one of us around all day.

So after all this, why are cats awesome? I've compiled a bunch of links that might help you understand this rule.

Number One: OMGSOCUTE: Please scroll to the end, and please also click on all the pictures and videos that aren't featured in this list.
http://attackofthecute.com/search.php?f=cat

In case that hasn't already convinced you...

Number Two: Ninja Kitty: I've tried this with a friend's cat. It's legit. They ALL do it. (Except mine because he thinks he's a dog)

Ninja Cat

Return Of the Ninja Cat: Bad Short Term Memory = WIN

Number Three: Cat Wrestling

Kitty Wrestling

CatBoxing Fail

Number Four: Something we've all grown up watching (or grown up and watched):

Cat Concerto

Number Five: My Tribute, My Eulogy: I've written a tribute to my other cat we had, who we got home with Caesar. She passed away in 2006 and her name was Cleo.
Here's the link: To The Dearest - http://pastthe90s.blogspot.com/2007/08/to-dearest.html

And finally...
Number Six: My Cat and I.

To end, I'd just like to say that I love animals - from cats and dogs to iguanas and snakes - even though my heart goes out to "the divine feline".
So far, most animals have liked me too.

A big thanks to my mother for never ever saying, "If you misbehave, then the cat/dog/other animal-in-the-vicinity will bite you" and for being the animal lover that she is.
Another big bunch of warmth and thanks to Arjun Kanungo, Abhishek Kamdar, Nisha Vasudevan and Alfred Lee, and for accepting me for the kitty-freak that I am, being kitty-freaks with me and sharing every cute cat video and picture they come across. They always make my day!
Cheers!

RULE NUMBER TWELVE

RULE #12: IT CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE.

How many times have you found yourself sitting outside your college or workplace and thinking “Good Lord. This day just CANNOT get any worse!” and then had crowshit fall either in the centre of your head on your bald spot or on the front of your new shirt? Or how many times have you been so depressed that you’ve thought “Okay this is the worst day of my life” and then woken up the next day only to find that you’re sick and cannot go to pay off your bills or submit your project, which now means that there are 10 more bills overdue or 10 more teachers breathing down your neck?

Precisement, mon ami.

Your first reaction to any of this is to completely break down and just give up because you’ve realised that you’ve lost control of everything.

But that’s just it.

Life will never let you have control over everything. In fact, life gives you very little to control and thus control is the one thing every human would strive to gain.

What none of us realise early enough is that the struggle for control is futile. The only way to actually deal with a day, week, month or even year that just seems to go downhill is to live your best and expect the worst. Prepare yourself for everything.

That’s just how life is. That’s just how the entire universe has made it. Anything can happen.

We need to understand the beauty of it. The fact that nothing sits in your hands but continuously changes around you in the most unexpected ways can sometimes create the most magnificent things or the most shocking. What each of these events teaches us is another rule that the universe has created.

Yes. Life can always get worse. But don’t give up hope. Remember rule #5: EVERYTHING COMES TOGETHER WITH TIME.

RULES OF THE UNIVERSE: RULE NUMBER ONE

Welcome to the beginning of 'Rules of the Universe'.
No, this is not a parallel to the Big Bang Theory and/or anything that followed it. This is (almost) everything I’ve ever learnt about life and/or in life so far. They’re just some simple rules and principles that apply to daily functioning of the life of an average, or not so average, individual.
You may say “Oh! But how much could she have learnt in life?! She’s just 18!” (and 5/6ths). I guarantee that by the time I’m in the groove with explaining most of these rules, I shall surprise you.

The rules are in no particular order, but I shall begin with #1 because it is about that heavenly being that has encouraged and procreated life on this planet and (I’m guessing) in the entire universe.


Rule #1: YOUR MOTHER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

The person who, through his/her life, abided by this rule was probably the most sincere and diligent person the world ever saw. Well, at least according to his mom. The other people of the world (i.e. us) would prefer use other descriptive words for such an individual, e.g. “geek” or “dork” or “goody two-shoes”. We would also gladly and greedily raid his/her lunch box. Ah! Good times!

I think I speak for everyone when I say that all of us normal folk realized this the hard way… EVERY SINGLE TIME. Every day that passes, we are reminded of the fact that this is, without a hint of a doubt, RULE #1, even though we never really end up living by it. I’ve heard of women 3 times my age who still do not (or cannot) listen to their mothers. So what if it’s PMS?! So what if it’s menopause?! (both of which they will never admit) YOU’RE STILL SUPPOSED TO BLOODY LISTEN! Especially when they’re trying to teach you another rule: CHOCOLATE IS ALWAYS GOOD.

Normally when I write about such things I like to cite examples from my life, as most writers do, and I’m really not the kind to deviate from literary norms, so here’s one that just hit me: It is 4 30 a.m. and instead of listening to my mother, I’m running up the electricity bill and writing all of this. So there!

We refuse to believe it in that short span of time during which we’re carrying out the daft act, but every species in the entire universe survives because of this one rule! If bird didn’t listen to its mother, I doubt it would ever learn how to fly properly. Fathers aren’t too good at teaching and that’s another universal rule by itself. They know it too! That’s mostly why the lioness cares for the cubs 24x7 for 2 years, while Mr. I-have-some-killer-hair sleeps and hunts. If life exists in another solar system, I’m sure they’ve figured this out too.

I just realized that everything else I have to say you probably already know, so it’s pointless saying it and I think it would be better for my future if I turned off the computer now. In any case, the first week of July doesn’t look too good from here. I’m sure my mother would agree with me on that!