Identity - We All Have Millions Of Them

This event happened a couple of months ago in my living room in England. I can never forget that incident, which sort of redefined a few crucial things, altogether. I am being woke up by Martyn, my land-lord, who had come down from his bed-room (next door) to clean up the sink ("mess" is other word for sink that could be put in use here) in our kitchen. I was writing up [that is how we call a dissertation / thesis in England or just because we paraphrase others findings in similar research and just WRITE them UP together] the whole of previous night. Now the bracketed text above wasn't certainly true to me because I knew I wasn't trying to be hard or at least lame to my conscience. Conscience. What this word has to do in this context ?. Previous night, I came back from Varsity (a small diner off the road on campus) after having a catch up session with a couple of friends. I had to rush up soon to power up my laptop for one reason that is just so good enough to happen in every one's life. Fulfillment or Complete Surrendering to the self. I am not necessarily becoming spiritual here. What I mean is you have been using all your energy onto something you love, without looking at your wrist watch all night, only to fall asleep, because your body cannot cope up with the somatic surge to sleep. Well I am human so, I had to succumb. Are you planning to press ALT + F4 ?. Please don't do that. Trust me. I admit that this is not a classic piece of fiction writing that I am attempting here. Hang on. I was an Undergraduate Engineer, then, like trillions on this planet. But I was writing up a thesis in Social Science majors, under a module named Program Evaluation. An undergraduate mechanical engineer writing up a thesis on "Evaluation of Information Dissemination in World Bank Development Projects". This isn't making sense right ? Information or bank or development ?. All these words would have rendered me nervous a few years back. But not after I saw the fact that I could be more than what I know about myself right now. It is just foolish to call myself as someone.Well, I got the project from the bank allowing me to contribute to the research. It wasn't an sense of achievement then, after submission and rewards. Am I boasting here ? May be because, I am getting fresh and thrilled. Four  curious things happen when you do every thing you can to participate in a competition for which you are ready almost any time of the day.

1) You Get Stupid     (You Don't Know when this happens, so leave it.)

2) You Get Empty    (You Know when this happens, so fill it.)

3) You Get Filled      (You Don't Know when this happens, so leave it.)

4) You Get It.           (You Can Never feel this.)

Try your best to stay awake amidst the prettiest things, when you cannot sleep. Wander every where as if you could be there in every frame, every instant and pretty much an entity in every thing, you would want yourself to be seen in a short period in future.

"The beauty of this feeling is you can only get better if you are prepared to tear your identity every now and then, to get one for yourself."

FYI: I still don't have an ID but I have access to all places in this chain of self-revival.

It is 4.00 Hrs in the morning. I am off to a mile run along the coast of Chennai. 

   

Stranger It Becomes With Time

What I wanted to do before a few months is no more relevant. Exceptions are there with the "wants" in life. Progressive it gets, as I turn back to look at a few things that have been accomplished. I am able to take shelter amidst a list of achievements. I did love the company of people around and that now appears to be an abstention leading to sudden detour of solitude. Waiting was an option, a break was always a retreat from work and a holiday was an event to be planned and relished. But waiting is now an annoying pain in the ass. A break sounds ominous. Holiday has to be  tight-fisted vacation, for a neighbouring country side. Events, that once were capable of transition in personal growth appears to be out of the way, only because every thing boils down to dollars and pounds. 

Somehow, I have to submit to the extremities of boredom as they battle against conviction. Dreams and aspirations dominated the ill-savoured pessimisms. Now they are hiding somewhere, waiting for me to grab them again. I could be diagnosed with Masochism. But, I don't see pleasure in pain either. As I seek a change to these rough layers of conscience, I have to demand my own personal focus on things, thus tearing the labyrinth of adventurousness. Everything was a moment that gravitated on their own, now they seem to lose their forces of creation. Seeking to break the avalanche, I am now preparing to revisit the context of reality. Definitely, reality creeps the hell out of what I thought to be a sustainable alternative. But, If the prejudices are able to change the scheme of things, then comes the spurring moment, where I can boast about my resilience. 

Regardless, this moment is being captured in writing when I am digging the depths of near future that is apparently naked. When I start to realize that I am writing all this because the weather is depressive, I feel I am becoming sensitive to variables that are insignificant. If say for 24 hours, I am expressing things in this landscape of scepticism, I might launch and rebound with exuberance. But why did I come up with this so called philosophical rant about myself ? Only because I need an evidence and a pleasing reminder to know that I am awake and square with truths of time. It is strange. It could only be strange if I am unwilling to penetrate and accept the facts till now.

Strange..Strrrange..Strrrrrrange              

To do things prior to back-packing.

I am starting to write this blog after a long gap since I returned from the trip. By which, I condemned the basic rule of not procrastinating your blog when your mind is right there at what you want to write. But still I find that I am fresh to pour out my experience. Individually, all the listed things (read further below) provided a sense of comfort, oneness and energy to all of us who traveled together. My emphasis is mostly on smaller but interesting things that people neglect or forget and end up compromising a unique feature during the journey. As far as I consider, the art of travel, itself is an education with pleasure at the brim of the bottle. All that a traveler need to do is to open yourself to it.

Plan your travel

Show commitment starting from scratch to give ideas.

1) How Can you do that?

Browse, e - mail everyone whom you know might be of some help to give you directions/advice or share their experience. The last time we did our planning, we did it two weeks prior to the submission of dissertation. I am stressing on the fact that what ever commitments you might have in a fortnight, you have to push yourself to sit and plan. Honestly, it is not about one person showing the interest. The best way I bring all of my co-travelers together to plan is by talking about the extra cost/time that they would have to invest, if they delay the plan any further. You got to look at the reaction after you complete the discussion. They will eventually buckle-up with laptops in our dorm rooms in the hostel.

2) What can you do to kick-start the plan?

The start-up activity is to draw a silhouette for the plan. This would mean a hand-drawn sketch indicating the intended places of visit with distances, time and mode of transport between all cities or towns. I had attached a similar silhouette for one of the trips we did. 

Travel Silhouette

This basic sketch acts also as a precursor to highlight your approximate costs for the trip. With this sketch in hand, you could start to attract more attention from your co-packers. With the data from the above sketch and with an excel sheet, it is easy to compute the cost per person, number of days and most importantly the total expenditure for the trip. To understand how it works, I am attaching a snap-shot of picture as below.

Excel Sheet - Plan your Costs, Time & Journey 

The  above sheet is self-explanatory and often can be modified every now and then to suit the individual needs. The benefit of preparing this sheet is to start booking the rail/road/air tickets and hotel rooms. Until this stage we work together to get a bird's eye view on the trip. The next stage is crucial to ensure the fact that the places we visit are of significant interest to the majority in the group. We call it the Travel Research and Review.

Work with the plan

Share information that is relevant to the places that are planned in the basic plan.

The last time we did this activity, we divided the cities amongst all of us and each one of us started to collect information on that city/place/town. Some of the sources were from the internet, local tourist information center of that city and city maps from stationers. This helped a lot in filtering out the cities that weren't aligning with our expectations and anticipation for having fun. Later, all the individual research conducted is concocted into a single document / folder and the hard copies of the document were circulated to each of us while we started the journey. During the idle time in train or a noisy bus segment, we would skim through this document  to look out for other places that might be of our interests. I am sharing a snapshot of a travel research brochure that we prepared for a recent trip. The quality of our travel research is such that we gave our undeterred attention and energy to find out every fascinating detail about the city or town or a mountain range that we allot for ourselves. Just to cite, one of my friends went on to find out a concert planned  (in one of the cities that we wanted to visit) by U2, a rock band associated with Irish republican movement. We considered and fragmented every aspect of that particular place that we wanted to visit with a clear objective to maximize fun and become as exuberant as possible to be able to live in that moment. Once we are done with the TR (Travel Research), we schedule a meeting at a room to proceed to the next stage, which is financing your plan.

Financing your plan

If you are traveling with your close friends or relatives, it is easier to ask some one to cash out money for bookings. Later, accounts can be tallied. This helps in easier transaction and exchange of money. The only thing is to record the expenses in an expense tracker or any such means as shown in the picture in the previous sections. We generally ask one amongst us to do the bookings online and generally the one that pays first for the trip, end up preparing a Preliminary Expense Sheet, which accounts for the costs that are incurred before we actually start on the road. This includes rail/road/air and accommodation expenses for the whole lot of us. Often he is ridiculed as a funding authority who has had control over our wallets. At the end of this stage, we would be ready waiting for that day to start exploring new frontiers. Also ,we all would have got the hard copies of documents/brochures which we hope, would guide us when we start to move the bags.

Summarizing the finances

After we are back from a trip, we would meet up at a common place to discuss the cash transfers. Generally, this takes an hour to tally, which is quiet less owing to the use of excel which speeds up the tallying process. A sample final statement is attached as below,

Summarizing the finances

Outcome

This blog is intended to be useful to people who are new to the world of planning an adventurous trip or travel. Also the views expressed are unique to the creators of these plans. It might sound boring and tiring to do the aforementioned activities in this fashion. But the results are rewarding and there were at least a good bunch of 30 + people who had copied these formats in an USB or laptops to use the tools for their pleasure. I am attaching a few templates that you would find useful when you plan similar trips in future.

   

   





 

      

Mad After Mentos And Coins

It was around 9.30 in the morning. My room mate, whom I am acquainted for only about two weeks now, gave me a wake up call. I said I will shower and get ready in ten minutes. We had a plan to visit a few properties around Coventry to hunt a house for him on a temporary basis. A short visit to the recent past. Sep 18th 2010. He was homeless, after he returned from his brief vacation to Indian subcontinent. My land lord has always lent his helping hands to people looking out for a short stay. He allowed my acquaintance to share the bed room with mine, bearing in mind the temporary contract. Normally in England, the land lords are pretty stringent with accommodating guests for a night in single bed room apartments. I was even given a A4 sheet to read and agree to the terms and conditions listed on that printed contract paper. Erstwhile before, I had only witnessed "Terms and conditions" on applications in online portfolios and web-sites. I was surprised to evince the professionalism displayed by owners in renting a house to a tenant. I thought, should all this be so formal and directive?. No more, as I am now typing this blog, about which you will figure out when you proceed further. The charge for a night is 10£ per person, even the person with whom you intend to share a night is your friend or family or whatever name you could associate under the tree of relationships. As I compromised my half-room space already to one of my course mates, I had to let this room mate as a third one into my room, thus I could only use 1/3 rd of my total bed room area, which is about 200 Sq.ft. Fine as he had no other choice other than a pot bench in a park, I let him into my room. I spoke with my owner and updated him about the rental amount, after he agreed to the fact that three of us share the bed - room, thus reducing my original rent to roughly a third of what I used to pay him for a single tenant accommodation. He agreed, keeping in mind that I am helping my friends in times of despair. He is a genuine, rational land lord for someone of his education and financial background. I still remember, when he used to ask me very often "Sud, you look a bit stressed?..Are you doing alright?..!! ". I would say "yes" and move on, as we had a lot of things to move, shift, dispose and ward-off. Now the fact is that even though I have guests in my room, who should pay 10£ per night (around 200£ for 20 nights) daily as per contractual terms, my land lord offered a stay to my room mate, having him to spend about 40 £ for a week, including bills and other charges. Now after all this talks I had with my owner, I had put everything in picturesque shape for my lately moved room mate as a friendly obligation. Honestly, I didn't charge him for Toilet tissues, Washing liquids, room-cleaning expenses and allied costs. (This sentence might sound lame, but you will have to wait and read till the end) It was all laid out smooth. As with friends, I love to go that extra mile to sought out the best for them as every one else in my position would do. Fine. Present time. Sep 28th 2010. We both were casually chatting up about the day that we went to look around properties for him. He owed me some money, about 6£, which I asked only because, to me any thing above 5£ is good money to stay cautious in collecting back. I follow the same discipline when I owe some one anything above 5£. Now out of the blue, he asked me a question, which was a shocking embarrassment and a brief lesson for people, whom, I consider as being treated like a swat. He asked "OK. I WILL GIVE YOU BACK THAT 6£, BUT CAN YOU REMEMBER THAT 45p (This is like a 45 paise in India) THAT YOU OWE ME FOR THAT MENTOS PACK I GOT YOU ? COULD YOU SUBTRACT IT AND TELL ME HOW MUCH I OWE YOU?". I felt petrified and collapsed after that subtly inconsiderate question. I thought to myself, I really have to learn to be weary like my preacher turned room mate. I was disturbed to an extent that I started to open an excel sheet to record and maintain almost every penny of money I spend for these people, who break your routine with candid brain-storming questions, which are sometimes not even closer to being answered. But then I thought, there are people like the one here, who just forget to cost their expense on others, but stay awkwardly shrewd to remind others on their expenses. I became Mad after that Mentos question. The next time, when I go to a candy shop, I cannot get a mentos pack, only because now 45p sounds like a colossal expenditure to me. I had been so rich to spend hefty, when I forgot to pay back 45p and remained a credit-payer.             

The Inner Voice

I am new to this blogging world and I had written blogs that could be certainly boring. But unlike a book or a movie, blogging doesn't appeal to the extent that you are engrossed in the content or the experience. So I started to read blogs written by people who span their writings across variety of topics including travel, business and sex and have developed the virtue to captivate the reader. I realized a factor that made the difference to the readers and neo-bloggers. It is how they translate their mental disposition into a meaningful voice that appeals to the reader. Well, if that sounds complex, I shall explain it in simple words. The bloggers take charge of the reader's voice and read their own phrase to critique on the value and meaning of the writings. While it is supposedly to difficult to cultivate such a simulation, it is worthwhile to try out and figure out the possibilities of adding value to your writings. The hitch here is to isolate yourself, pushing into a corner, wherein you will have to judge your own thoughts. Challenging and intuitive. Often fresh eyes spot more mistakes in your work than your own. 

Similarly, there is the degree of integrity that you would afford to push yourself to explain or narrate. There is that conscious that takes the role play and the fact that you are listening to someone's voice that reflect your thoughts, give you scarce opportunities to stay dishonest. After this mind-doping, a threshold limit arises. The flow and integrity of your writings synchronize well to produce a thoughtful message to the reader and the association of your writings with the rationale of the general consensus increases in terms of value. All that I seek to practice is to talk and conjure the essence through a non-existing listener. And he is my own "Inner voice". He always gives me a tough fight. But the outcome is several folds of harmony and laser-focus onto the theme of the blog.       

The Inverse of Experience

How often do you think that people around you have been an inspiration?. How often have they allowed or stopped you from being a follower of their habits, activities and interests?. Have you ever felt that you love to follow the paths taken by these influential people ?. Here, by the word influential, I mean someone who almost live every moment in your thoughts, that you tend to get lost or fight to strike a balance between your interests and prejudice. It is this craving that I have, which takes me to them, even though they aren't the badged influential personalities. There are always situations, when the person sitting next to you doesn't always show the rigor to express themselves. A muted, malnourished neighbor, indeed. Don't hesitate to invite or offer. Take a call at any place and you would have already crossed the stage of a neo-experimentalist. Obviously to start valuable sharing, each one of us take time depending upon the degree of comfort that builds over a period of time in a relationship. But nevertheless, these influential people are those who have never felt themselves lonely, even though, they pretty much live by themselves, alone in a room all their life. They don't expect others to allocate a space for them selves. Ironically, they often dwell & ebb out an immediate predisposition to open the chatter box.  Unimaginably straight forward and sensibly modest, they embody their own soul. But inertly cautious, they don't just talk, but also listen and propel others who are supposedly reticent. Certainly, they bring about a change in the way the conversation unfolds. I have spoken with a lot of people who claim that they have shared things with me that they haven't with any one else. I was curious to understand these triggering responses that arouse or push people to go to the next level of revealing their identity for their own good and will. So what exactly are these questions that crack the egg and give way for exploring the unknown lands?. A thought provoking context that draws insight into personal exploration and development indeed. Sometimes I feel too enervated to talk about the past of people. So I start the ignition with a few starters like what do you do? What are your plans? Do you miss home? and etc. A few of them sound very excited and say they are a consultant or a dentist or a chuba player. Whilst, a few sound normal and start to think of the answers that they might probably shoot before, even trying to figure out the level of intensity of the question. And by the time they think with a bleak eye followed by a shattered response patterns in their answers, I would be able to figure out that there is a connection to the past, which they wouldn't want to think or talk about. Time flies. Now they are sitting in my living room having a cup of black coffee with cream bun and say they were tore apart a few years back. Honestly, if you ever bother or show sincerity in knowing about people's life, you probably have more chances of sharing their best and worst parts in a very short span of time. Now the interesting phenomenon in this context is how you squeeze the time to know someone better, than when you had met them during your first glances. If they ever had a past which was quiet disturbing or remorseful, they would probably start expressing themselves at a rapid pace than you expected them to do so. Which means they aren't bothered about who you are or what is the relationship that you have in current-time with them and so on. "Identity becomes less important and unnecessary, if you want to add value to your relationships." In a way, disclosing isn't that bad, when you have absolutely no means for expressing yourself. The point here is you expressed and you feel relieved about that, no matter with whom you shared it, even though it could be someone whom you have met a week back in a CD shop or a library. Realistic as it sounds, grieved people don't really bother about sharing things with an acquaintance. It is because it is a safe venting opportunity. Also from the perspective of the acquainted, it doesn't matter whether you are happy or sad or lost, all that matters is you have got someone who listened to you in first place and especially true if you haven't had a chance to share a particular thing with others whom you might consider as friends or family. Well, they also don't expect you to offer some advise and all that they seek is to get an attention. When you reach mid-twenties, you obviously would have got the resistance and immunity towards handling your own psyche with ease. Partly because of the experience you have had with the people in your past. So how does this experience translate your actions in a relationship? is a trickiest thing to handle. With my observation on people, often they would show interest in talking about the past, if they were successful in all the areas of life such as profession, love and money etc. And now I dig deeper into these areas and find out that almost everyone gets a 2 out of 3 meaning that either profession and love was fine, but they haven't created financial freedom or they had a severe break-up which ate two years of their teens, whilst they managed to become a physician or an engineer or they hated the job but they had a wonderful family and had a lucrative bank account at the end of the day. So when I think about the fact that I wish to meet someone who says "You screwed up bloke!, I got a 3 on 3 in your questionnaire and why the hell are you even writing this blog?", I  can only say that I haven't met someone who really said thing anything close to that. Well, many of us would have had a 3, but probably didn't want to talk about it because we are contented with what is available in our hands or the mark of 3 wasn't consistent enough all through our life. "I wonder the interesting lesson that experience has to teach you is to show how others fight for and against their own experience." Often you don't need to fight for an experience, because it has to happen and even if you are still, it would show up one day, but there are times when you have to fight against them, when you supposedly landed on a hideous one. Nevertheless, life would be boring without making you sit back on a chair to talk about the factor of experiences. It is through the similar life stories, life patterns and grave feelings of others that you make your experience seem a little weak and fainted. There is a need to replenish your focus on experience. Many of these things that you hear are not random,  because they happen around you, to every one, because they somehow happen to you at a time, when you felt a need for an auditive consolation, they bring meaning to your vision about life. The more people you meet, the more conscious you become. The more you look at them, you prove to become strong. "The more you  talk to them, you are becoming an unique experience to yourself, which is a wonderful virtue that you would love to cultivate." Keep listening and meeting.                 

The Lost Links

This is one of the blogs that I had been longing to write for a week now. Somehow I couldn't afford to sleep over it. I would like to start it from the dream that we all pledged when we were young and in school .Every one has a dream that they chase along to find a meaning for life. This dream is so fragile that many of us deviate from our plans as we move along the various walks of life. Fine. That is the way life brings intricacies as a form of battle to be fought for a win-win result. Now, if at all we chase our bubbly dreams, how well we position ourselves to shape the dream is a toughest question that we need to answer. For example, in school many of us had a dream to get into a good graduate school or a University. I assume, if we had this dream,we should probably think about the future of that dream in terms of longevity that we extend to that particular choice of career. At college, you would have probably wanted to escalate to a salaried position.  And when you hit job, you would seek and work towards a hike in salary or grade. Not of all of us had the courage to even dream of what we want to be in five years at school. The question is why didn't we dare to dream?. Answer is simple, at least in my case. Home. We weren't taught to dream. This might sound less pragmatic, but that was the truth. Fine. At school, we were asked to share our dreams with every one in the class, perhaps the question came from our teacher. But for what?. Nothing other than to wake the students from boredom of lecturing. Is this acceptable?. Can the power of dream be underestimated or overlooked?.Can a school in India, obviously the burgeoning super power, especially in education sector afford to engage in trivial questioning sessions when they are otherwise ought to produce valuable inquiries. Honestly, this isn't a toy story. This is serious business. And I am sure, not every one of us stand by the first dream ever, until the end. Fair enough. Always I had a feeling as a child that dreams don't drive you towards the life that you could accept and hug forever. Meaning, they pose many constraints. Three are the most influential things that I have understood and tried to quantify, when you dare to dream. Time, Money and love. You have to believe me, I am writing this through the product of my own experience in the past. And I am sure I was a loser when it came to execution of my own conscience. I didn't have a dream in first place. Fine. If I had able to propose a sincere dream plan, I would have said "I want to become a Cricketer, a batsman". This wasn't a silly dream. This dream penetrated in me, as a product of my passion I had for cricket, when I was in school.  A lot of Indians know the world of cricket. The first question I would like to ask myself is that "Do you have time to practice the sport?". Yes. I had lot of time, once I was back from school. A small story. My parents are a hard-working couple and they always wanted to see me as a well-taught individual with a career floating with a few degrees. They too liked cricket, but they wouldn't want their son to choose sport as a profession. Reasons. My father didn't want to spend 500 Rupees a month for coaching and nets. They thought they weren't able to see their son, reflecting through a sporty glass. Parent's love for me, spoiled my dream of being a batsman. But I knew in the bottom of my heart that this passion can never die. So when my mom said "Cricket is not a career for you, you should dream something that we could afford", I thought money also stifle one's dream. Love, obviously give challenges during the decision making times and not to forget it's ability to make things complicated on a broader sense as well. Now after a few years, I know that I had to succumb to the twists and turns. Eventually, every one will. But these underlying passions are significant residues in everyone's life. They are always there, staying at the bottom, staring at you. And you know that you are capable enough to ensconce these subtle indications of life. "I believe the beauty of love and aggression is that they make us tolerant and prudent. Most important, they strive to inculcate an ability to deal with them.They welcome you anytime with an invitation. Accessible and a cover against a rain of dilemmas". I would say if you feel that you have traveled faraway from the road, that you wanted or the one you should have taken, for good,  don't feel separated at any point of time. "There is always a chance to love, cry and fight for your own life". If you are reluctant to fight for your own dreams, you shall be forced by life itself. Terrible as it might sound, without passion you almost succeed to embrace faint-acceptance and self-denial. But this coercion can be painful. Rather create a battle field of your own. There are more opportunities to catch up with your own interests at a soothing level. The dynamics of pursuing these interests bestow us a new vision, a new dream and a new life ahead. "This moment always, is as good as it sounded a few hours ago. Time becomes a destitute of your thoughts, when you listen to your inner voice."  Keep listening to them until you become less freaky.