Ninety Six

I went to my native place. When you go back to your village after a year, you will observe many new things. The most striking observation about our generation who moved from village to city is no social connection in either of the places. You come to a city with your own culture and customs and find it difficult to assimilate and make social connections. But my daughter who is born in the city is in perfect sync with social fabric here. Twenty-six years ago I have left my village. I know people from my generation, but not the new one. A sea of change has taken place in the village during this period and I found it difficult to connect. So neither I belong in the city nor in the village.  

Ninety five

Thoughts repeat. Therefore, what I write here may repeat. It is like music on loop. Raw materials for a thought process are a lifetime experience, book knowledge, knowledge derived from peers and many more. Now the brain mixes all these and makes some opinions or thoughts. Unless I go to a new place or I do a new job or I read a new book or I meet new people or develop a new outlook for the same old subject I won't be making new thoughts. When I observed all the great authors, they have all these ingredients and they keep accumulating new raw materials by keen observation of the world around them. If I have to improve my writing or if I have to put out new thoughts here I need to improve my observational powers!

Ninety four

Now it is 12.20 pm. So I happily wasted half a day of the holiday. In the morning I was thinking great things to do, even tried to learn "The Maths". But by 10 o clock, I had become what I am! When you waste time, one strange thing happens, you feel like munching something unhealthy. I don't know why that happens. So I had planned a big heavy blog post such as what to do with life etc,, now I am letting it go, no more feel like writing heavy stuff. For the moment let me not fight with "the philosopher" side of brian I will be happy today being "the lazy". 

Ninety three

It is so difficult to write. The professional writers have to write every day. Film scriptwriters have an even tougher job. I am hardly writing a few sentences every day and I found it difficult. I can pickup subject from a book and write on that. But bringing own subject out from deep pockets of the brain is a challenge and fun. Often things are hidden deep inside the brain pop out on unusual occasions. As I am getting old, I am confused with true memory and false memory. I found that many times I am so sure about the information which is incorrect. 

Ninety two

We were left with the extra time after hunting, gathering, eating, fighting and having sex. What to do with this time? First, we scribbled things on cave walls, later we carved stones, built better things and lazy ones started to make things in the brain and less lazy people wrote down. Finally, we were able to understand a bit of nature. Now all this information is sitting in front of you in the form of the INTERNET. The information available now is overwhelming. You are amazed or frustrated, what to learn? I am not sure, what all things I would love to learn; starting from mathematics to evolution.   

Ninety one

I know poverty is out there. I know how important money is? still, I tend to forget in the comfort of my life. Yesterday I went for a photoshoot at Dadar Market in Mumbai. Life is tough there. Competition is fierce. The selection pressure is ruthless. Evolution is in progress, survival of the fittest. I even saw a person, who recently lost his hand, maybe in a train accident. He was smoking and talking animatedly with his friend. Life goes on. No time to cry or self-pity, you need to fill your stomach. Philosophy is for me, not for them. One day in a similar market a roadside keysmith told me, if you desire the wealth around, even a million will be less for you! and he refused to take extra money from me. I will make a photoblog later.

Ninety

Every one love simple life. But no one wants to live one. I found that simple living is tough. As I said earlier, thinking and doing are in two different domain of life. The connector that connects these two domains is lazy. I wanted to do a project like one lens one camera. I keep searching in the net what should be that camera and lens. I am not buying too many things and hence let me buy the costliest one. How about that? Fundamentally I don't prefer simple living but I love talking about it and I appreciate and say wow when others do. The weekend has started and I have a list of things to do. Today I have maintained the weekday routine till now and hoping that I don't find a new series on Netflix and do not watch cricket in the evening.

Eighty nine

Guilty and regret are the same or different? Select, right-click and search in Google. The first hit takes me to Karen's Blogs. I did not read that blog. I will read it later. Doing something wrong and hiding it leads to guilty. More than that, you are not punished for the wrongdoing, and your consciousness keeps telling you about that. I waste time I regret that. I spend money. I regret that. Regret is a personal feeling of missing out something. You only can regret. But "guilty" you can feel it, or someone also can tell you that you are guilty of wrongdoing. I need to think more about this, while if you want to read more, you can go to the blog as mentioned earlier.

Eighty eight

Today morning I was listing to Ray Dalio. One thing that hit me very hard. He said he was more feared about boredom and mediocrity than failure. It struck me like a lightning bolt. It is right for me too. I need to do much more adventurous. 

Eighty Seven

As I was walking across the market, I saw a couple from a distance, and they were engaged in animated talk. All of us see anything unusual or usual we form an opinion. I thought about this couple why these people are fighting in public. As I approached them, I heard them and couple were talking in Kannada, that is my mother tongue. All of a sudden my opinion changed about them! Why so? In spite of knowing this bias, very often, I am a victim of that. Familiarity bias a strange thing. If a person belongs to your state or speak your language or belongs to your religion, without much thinking, we assume they are right. I suppose, when we have limited data points, the brain tries to find out some data, even it is absurd and irrelevant to make some decision. We can't remain uncertain, human brain always wants definitive answers.  

Eighty six

What is the purpose of my life? My purpose in life has been reset many times during the last 40 years. For the time being, I don't have any meaning. I am living in an auto mode. Do I need to think about purpose? I am living to live nothing more than that. I am not afraid of death. I am scared of " not leaving behind my footprint". I know that this word has marched ahead without keeping the account of the greatest accomplishments of the human race in the past. Still, I am carving for "being unique". Maybe this is my purpose of living. But the question is in what field do I excel and which skill would set me apart? This blog series is one such exercise to find the answer for this irritating question. 

Eighty five

The habits are difficult to keep. They are like a chain if one link is missed rest will miss. If I have to keep a habit going, I need to keep them every day including weekends. Once you miss a habit, next will be missed and by the time you are frustrated and lost patience and end up in binge surfing on the net. The Internet is basically promoting aimless wandering across so that you will see all the advertisements of all the companies across many websites. Oh yes, I am blaming the internet and time being I don't have enough will power for a thorough introspection. 

Eighty four

Yesterday I met with a minor accident. My left leg was sprained. By evening pain intensified and had to go to a doctor. When you get injured or sick you will notice that body part carefully and all of a sudden you realise the function of that body part in the day to day life! My left leg was sprained, just below the knee, top of the calf muscle. What is the function of this muscle? Not a scientific study but just an observation. You need this muscle for bending the leg and walking. Surprisingly not very significant for cycling. This muscle is crucial to balance on one leg in a slight slant position. I realised this when I am mounting on cycle/bike. You can't do sit-ups. Once the pain disappears, I don't pay attention to this. What does this mean? Our brain though knows theoretically that all parts of the body are essential for smooth functioning, the brain doesn't keep an account of that. This accounting will be too much work for the brain. So only when we get injured, the brain pays particular attention to that part. In life also we take many things granted. For example 24x7 internet availability, or ATM machine or fuel etc. Only we realise them when they are not available. The funniest part is, once service resumes we again get back to normal life. The brain only remembers very bitter, sad and traumatic incidents and not small mundane pain and loss. It is not like computer hard-disc, the brain makes its own choice of what to remember and what not and even we don't have any control over that.

Eighty three

ಯೋಚನೆ ಮಾಡುವುದು ಒಂದು ಕಷ್ಟದ ಕೆಲಸ. ಕನ್ನಡ ಬರೆಯದೆ ತುಂಬಾ ದಿನಗಳಾದವು. ಓದಲು ಸುಲಭ ಆದರೆ ಬರೆಯಲು ಕಠಿಣ. 

I tried to write a few things in Kannada. Google has improved transliteration to a great extent. This gives me encouragement to write more in Kannada. In spite of reading and writing English from the past 30 years, I should say I have little or no grip on English. The effortlessness and fluency in Kannada is a different level. I have done all kind of courses, read many books and wrote many things in English. Still, I don't think I have command on this language. All I achieved is that now I can read English and appreciate a good writer. I can make out good and bad writing but I can't say why good is good and bad is bad. 

Eighty two

Some tasks look very simple and we think that that is so easy to do. However, the simple things are most difficult to do. I was supposed to sit quietly for 5 mins per day. It is more difficult than running 5 km. If you don't believe me, try it out for a week. I think and plan so many things and all of them look so easy and I feel I will do them with ease. But when that moment arrives I am lost. For example, I had planned to leave office one hour earlier, still, I am here sitting in front of PC and reading some stuff. 

Eighty one

What I am supposed to teach my daughter? I am sure about the irrelevance of the school. Today morning I was watching this Google talk Yuval Noah Harari: "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" | Talks at Google. Prof. Harari emphasis on emotional intelligence and capabilities to reinvent many times in life. This is an intriguing suggestion. But I have to study and understand these concepts so that I can teach this to my daughter.

Eighty

Enjoying a process is like meditation. When I am doing macro photography, I am deeply immersed in that. Angles, light and shallow depth of field takes me to another world. At the same time often I don't get a satisfactory end product (photo). Even more often the audience won't appreciate your work, and you feel frustrated. I know that I should not go by the judgement of others. But that is only theory, we have evolved to seek appreciation from fellow human beings. When my daughter wants to flaunt her new dress or pencil box, I feel irritated and would tell her, be simple, and that is not good to show off. But the Sotic sitting deep inside me would say, don't you expect that other people appreciate your photography. Don't you flaunt your F1.2 lens? Yes, I do. Let me keep my mouth shut.