The Biggest Mistake is 'Not Doing the Mistake'!

We often complain about the things we did not do or places we never visited or that jeans you didn’t buy. The phrase ‘I wish…’ is employed so casually nowadays that it is losing its real meaning to me. Let’s look at some of the similar common sentences used by people I’ve met in last 1 week. 

‘I wish… I was a News reporter and not a corporate…’
‘I wish… I went to that place/trip/ride/country/holiday…’
‘I want to join the Gym but…’ (Here but is equivalent to I Wish)
‘I wish… I told her how much I love her…’
‘I wish… I asked him to not to marry that girl…’
‘I wish… I visited my father one more time before…’
‘I wish… I had controlled my anger or words that night…’  

I wish this… I wish that… on the contrary, what are you doing? Are you doing anything to get or be what you wish for? Or you just wish for those beautiful dreams and that life but every time the deciding moment comes and asks you to act, you just chicken out by making some stupid excuse or putting some other task or job on higher priority.

Gandhi said ‘Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it's very important that you do it, because nobody else will.’ 

We are always afraid of doing the things which we crave for the most. The reason behind this is simple; they are very close to our heart. They are linked with our Past, Present or Future. They are the things those will decide or change the landscape of our lives. They ain’t easy. They are difficult. They are crucial and require hard-work, temperament and at times sacrifice. 

For instance, there are many great businessmen who started their career with the odds and everyone criticized them including even their own families but they perceived and took the courage to make their dreams real. Many artists, writers, travelers and thinkers quit their well-settled, blooming and successful jobs to pursue their ambitions. Few of them were super wealthy and they quit it all, gave up their riches to become a saint. That’s a big sacrifice. 

So to me, it’s not important what you have today. Important is – Is that what you want?

I am not saying that sitting in the same cubicle and working 10 hours a day, 5 days per week is a bad thing but surely it is not the most exciting thing too. To that specky girl from my office who says that she is content with this life, I’d like to say that, ‘You’re lying. There has to be something more than just that. Something that you have always wanted to do!’

Guys, shit happens to everyone. We are in our 2o’s or 30’s. We all have had heartbreaks, job layoffs, exam failure, credit card fuckups and other ‘big failures’ once or other time. The reason we are afraid to do what we want to do is because we are scared of getting hurt again. That ain’t right. It does not even sounds logical to me. 

Picture this, ‘When you are in your 60’s and sitting on the porch of your house, recollecting the earlier days and all that you have earned and all that you have… and then you ask yourself…
Is that all?
Could it have been better? More meaningful and satisfying!
Is the person sitting next to you today the right person or just compensation to your stupidity for not asking the right person out?

Are you willing to live that day with a heavy heart for the things you should have done in your early days and you didn’t do (doesn’t matter why)? 

We're not perfect. None of us. We make mistakes, we screw up but then we forgive and move forward. When we fail, we try again.

Don’t settle down with that wrong guy just because the right guy for you is currently fooling around with some stupid girl. Don’t give yourself this bullshit ‘If it’s meant to be, it will happen.’ Just wait while he is out gallivanting the streets with the wrong one. You wait for your turn. It may take some time, sometimes some years too. Fight for that person. Fight with that person. You deserve to fight for what you love and years later when you both would be together for a decade, one day he will kiss you saying ‘Thanks for saving me…’ He will realize how important it was when you fought for him. 

Waiting for someone right is way better than settling down with someone ‘not right’. And the moment you will finally be with that right one, you will realize what I am talking about. Walking hands in hand will make you forget the entire wait and all you want to see before you close your eyes every night is that person’s smile. It will make you believe in the impossible and inspire you to achieve the dreams unimaginable. 

It may take a few years and a handful of mistakes, but when that moment comes, right here with you, it’s extraordinary. It’s miraculous. A feeling of genuine happiness, comfort, and security.

Try to live everyday in a way that when you think of it tomorrow, you don't have to say to yourself, 'Gosh, I wish I had lived it better.' All we can do is do our best. To relish this remarkable life. In order to do that, sometimes you will have to do some mistakes and it is really okay. 

I can tell you a trick that you can follow and help yourselves to enjoy this life even more. Have some fun while… living.
Live the life every day twice. Once when it is living with you that includes all the tensions, worries and nervousness’s that has surrounded you entire day and the next one noticing, just realizing how it went actually; like a movie. What sweet and lovely things we missed on and what moments we didn't laugh but we should have. 

There is a song by Baz Luhrmann called ‘Everybody’s Free… (Sunscreen)'. He says worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble-gum; the real trouble in your life will always be the things that never crossed your worried mind.

My point is; it is alright to be young and careless sometimes. It is alright to be in love sometimes. Sometimes it is all we need.
No one can prepare you for what happens when you are in love. When you see that person somewhere or I should say everywhere and you know it's your destiny calling now. No one can prepare you for love and fear. No one can prepare you for the love people you love can feel for them. 

So just for once, come out of your comfort zone, that protective shield you have made around you and try to do what your heart really wants. Pack your bag and take a hike, go and visit your folks for next festival, take a day-off and watch the soccer match of your favorite team. Go and tell that ‘someone right’ how much you love them. How important they are to you and why you belong together.

Don’t be scared of being revoked or rejected. Utmost it could be a mistake but to know if it is a mistake or not, you got to do the mistake. Only then you can look at the past and say ‘Yup, that was a mistake.’ But if you won’t even try, you would never know if it was a mistake or not and thus, the bigger mistake is not to do that mistake. Don’t live a mistake-free life.

Mistakes are the moments just before awesome changes happen in your life.

Until tomorrow,
Sanj

Love You – For Love, With Love

Love is oblivious, unpredictable, magical and terrifying. It happens at the moment when least expected and often leaves us when at the highest peak of celebrations. Love is instantaneous and insane like you walk into a store and see someone and you know – That's the one!

Then the question comes if that ‘Love’ is real or one of the versions of those exact replicas of love that happens to us few times before we actually find the Real Love of our life (unless like few really lucky ones whose first love ends up as the last one too). I can't say what a real love is and how can one find out. I think that if its real love: it'd be beautiful, startling, sensational and mysterious. You won't give up on it just coz once or twice something wrong or unplanned happened. You will fight for it till the last moment and the last thing you would want to do is to look back at your life and wonder 'what if'?

We meet innumerable people in our lifetime, most of whom we never see after the first promise. I’d say if you ever meet someone who stays in your memory with a shiny reflection and startling impression, never let that person go without him/her knowing about it. Life is short, so short to let one really awesome person go just because you are not familiar and wait for another awesome person for you. What if that one person you just let go was the last awesome person of your life? Are you willing to take that risk? If you want to risk anything, risk your heart. You won’t repent it. Risking our hearts is why we're alive.

This article is about a boy I know – Astro and his love for that beautiful, sensuous, amazing and cute girl – Muffins. When I found out about this love story, I just couldn’t resist writing about it. In fact, I asked my editor to use a part of it in the novel I am writing and she was so touched by the innocence in this story.

I found this letter by accident and realized that it was written about 3 months back but was never posted or sent. Realizing that Astro has never confronted Muffins for so long yet, I felt that this letter deserves to be shared with her and with that every guy or girl who is in love with one or other and are waiting for the right time to propose. The time you tell that you love someone is the best moment of your life. I hope Muffins is reading this article too.

Astro, when he saw Muffins for the first time; the first words that popped out of his mouth were, “And where have you been all my life yet?”

I read somewhere, ''We should always speak our heart out. If there is a slightest chance that something can be fixed, we gotta try. Don’t be scared of ruining it today because if you hadn't said it, it was ruined anyways.”
Love is beautiful, so beautiful that it is worth giving hurtful.

Except here maybe Astro went too far waiting to tell her. Maybe he got this feeling of inadequacy that she is so cool, smart and does not even know him that well, why would she believe him? This feeling always kept him at back step and he could never tell her how he feels about her. He always wondered that he is not the easiest person to know and sometimes he just acts weird and so stupid because he’s so hesitant and thinks that someone like Muffins could never like someone like Astro.

On the contrary, to me, Love is about fighting the odds. Telling the other that I'm not gonna go away no matter what you do. It’s about being together no matter what. If one is stubborn enough to play with fire, the other is stupid enough to come along. For me, the most amazing and wonderful love stories are the stories which involves two strangers. That unfamiliarity creates a tension, curiosity and anxiety that leads to challenge each other at first and then slowly turns into playing that game of eye contact and silent conversations and approvals to move further. Wow, just the idea of it makes me so excited.

This is Astro’s letter to Muffins (only the images are added afterwards).

‘Dear Muffins,

I woke up thinking of you this morning. I sat still in my bed, trying not to fully cross the barrier from “dreaming” to “awake.” I asked myself, “What is the word for missing someone, for knowing there is something missing from you because they are not there, when you have never had them to begin with? Does that word even exist?”

When I think of you I can’t help smiling, knowing that you've completed me somehow, even when we are not together and we do not meet everyday. I love you, not just for now, but for always.

I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, and then fell deeper in love with the time, knowing you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.

18 months back I was living into a fantasy that a girl like you can’t even exist but now when I know that there she is and she exists for real, I’m just so scared to screw it and this held me for so long to tell you that I am so crazy about you. I try at least 100 times a day and fail 101 times. I am willing to wait rather I lose my chance. You’re worth the wait.

We may not be alike and I am alright with this because different spices make the platter tastier. I am not the perfect guy and I do not want to be. Instead of being perfect, I want to be the right guy for you and I promise to do everything it takes.

I agree that my fear of holding me for so long to tell you that how much I like you does not depict very positive of me but trust me, saying I love you is the hardest thing I ever have to do, harder than spending everyday with you afterwards. Sometimes the hardest things in life; are the things most worth doing!

We stood together and worked in the kitchen, I don't think you'd remember but I do. I counted seconds, and then minutes until that moment lasted and my head was shaking inside telling me “You just had one of the best moments of your life”. That small argument over naming the pets and then you smiling while looking at Doodle; that smile is so mysteriously cute, it makes me smile too.

Its little things like this that I miss, the tiny bits that make up a whole imagined life, something we could have had, if we were two different people.

You have these deep, prying, knowing eyes, and sometimes I imagine that they are only this way with me, but I know that cannot be true. I’m sure that you look at me just like you look at everyone else — curious, smart, but ultimately bored. I can’t stand to keep looking at you for too long, to meet that gaze, because there always feels like too much expectation: “Say something smart.” “Be funny.”

I just never get enough of thinking about you. I've stopped hitting on random girls because it is no fun anymore unless there is someone to catch you. I like to know, talk or hear about anything that is related to you. I hate that I love you for everything I know about you. I have 100 reasons for why I like you so much and then I do not care for one single reason for why I am so crazy about you. I don’t need a reason to like you. In fact, more I try to not like you; it draws me towards to you even more. I can talk to you from day to night and tell you how amazing you are and still find it scarce.

It’s easy to hate yourself when you don’t have something you want, when you are looking for any fault to blame it on. I give reasons to myself for why we are not together yet. Primarily because I haven't even told you still that I am in love with you. With it, there are many more reasons I give to myself. Sometimes I blame weather and there was a time when I blamed the political parties as well (don't ask how)!

I know that it may or may not work between us, and that tension between ‘What’ and ‘If’, that's the cost of living. You are so bold, don’t you want to try and find it out? We may not make sense on paper! So what, we don't live our lives on paper. Relationships aren't math problems. You don't solve them by being practical.

They say “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

I really love you, Muffins. You may not see it, you may not be ready to but I do. You have to believe in me and my love for you. It's simple, like if you do not believe in even the possibility of magic, you'll never find it.

I think of laughing with you, mostly. I think of sitting with you at dinner, talking with you for hours and hours, falling asleep on the couch because we still have so much to say and don’t want to go to bed just yet. I think of all the things we could have done, the places we could have gone. I know you like rides and adventurous activities. I wonder if I would have loved them that much more because I was there with you.

Do you ever sit and think maybe I am waiting to hear from you?

I know that we barely know each other and every time you'll look at me, you'll see that look in my eyes that I love you and etc etc and I know that you've just moved in here and you're always on work but trust me, us being together does not mean need to mark a territory around each other.

I mean there is something here unless I'm crazy for which one thing I know that I'm not.
Remember, you said you don't want to lead someone on; even I don't like to be rolled on. But for the first time, I came across someone who made me feel that during the journey if I'll be tired, that person is capable of taking the charge.

I am not trying to make hoopla out of you and I know that maybe you’re not so great, when one gets to know you. Maybe you don’t live up to expectations, and there is no reason I should be afraid of talking to you. May be it is the wrong time and may be you're even the wrong girl but if you are, how long am I gonna wait to find out? I have to know anyways.  It’s always possible that the version of you I've built in my mind is nothing like the real you, and maybe that’s why I love you so much. It’s easy to miss someone when all we have is imagination, and all we have to confront is what we've created in our minds. There are no fights, no long silences, no nights where we don’t touch each other because we’re too tired or too angry.

But that's not it. I am done. I am not good at it. Good at hiding my love for you and acting like a jerk for so long. Because I know what I am good at! I am good at being with you, talking to you for hours, bring you chocolates at midnight and take a walk with you at 3 am down the street in that chilly night. I am good at always stand by your side and not judge you. I am good at taking care of your cat even when I am not very good at it. I am good at listening to you about your day at work and nodding even when I do not understand a bit of what you do. I want it all. I want it with you. I want to hear you yell and see you cry and feel you against me at least once, at least to say I've seen it. To say I know you go crazy when it comes to tacos or ‘Hey, c'mon I know you hated that movie’. And I know that I likely never will, and I miss it. I miss it as actually as if I’d had it, or a friend who moved away and never quite stayed in touch.

All I am asking for is time… with you… I don’t want to prove anything, I just want to be with you and let you find out for yourself. Till then don’t just decide on your own. I am persuasive, unpredictable, impulsive, and super lazy but that’s all for you to find out yet.

Give me this time. Help me out. I could be wrong about everything 1000 times but I cannot be wrong with my intuitions, trust me and I can bet that inside that impulsive yet cautious, stubborn and practical girl, your heart melts upon seeing a couple walking hands in hands and wants it for you too. Muffins, you are the most remarkable, maddening, challenging, frustrating person I have ever met. I also want to tell you how beautiful and magical you are and your goofy smile makes me crazy.

A year back, I wrote a song for you which I haven’t shared with you yet. I mean it's hardly a song but some lyrics. Learning to moonwalk was not a pie job for me either.  I know that writing a letter is not the best of the ways to propose someone or tell what your heart feels and believe me if you can; I am a lot better than this... a lot. It's just that maybe at this moment you have the upper hand and I am the one who is conventional. If you can understand me and accept me at this moment, I promise that this would be the hardest to deal with me for you.

Muffins, I know that none of this makes perfect sense but I feel this is how love works! It does not need to make sense to make sense. It just is the way it is. I can write a book or simply say – I love you and I am crazy about you. Being around you is the one thing I know I am sure about... dead sure.

I am here for you and there is nothing I know more than the fact that I want to be with you. I love you and I miss you... What else is there to say...

Just because we haven't figured it out yet doesn't mean we won't...

I'll hold you to that.

Until tomorrow...
Astro'

I Can Write; I Can't Write!

It is generally agreed that true writing of language (not only numbers) was invented independently in at least two places: Mesopotamia (specifically, ancient Sumer) around 3200 BCE and Mesoamerica around 600 BCE.

Since then we are writing for different purposes.

Sometimes to express ourselves, or to send a message, or to inform someone, or to educate someone, or to amuse or at times document something to save someone and various other reasons.

Many of my friends when read my write-ups often say “You wrote well (bla bla bla)” and they liked a particular scene or part of the write-up. How I pictured the emotions or described the pain of a person and all those things they liked about it.

I usually end up in saying – “Well, I must thank you for your appreciation and it’s very encouraging. It’s nothing huge but just putting few words together in attempt to present a story…”

And the reply I get at times is – “well, not everyone can write…”

That’s where it clicked me! Can everyone write? Or when we say write, we mean only writing romantic or tragic or horror stories and tales? Or Legal documentation, doctor’s medical reports, school exam sheets or could there be just no reason to write but to write?

We write because we have something to say or may be because we’ve always wanted to.

 Sometimes we write because we only just realized that we might die next week, or tomorrow, or five minutes from now, and we want to leave something behind for posterity.

People write because they have a secret fire burning inside them and the only way that you can fan the flames is by sharing their thoughts with someone else.

My mom writes because she’s bored and don’t have anything better to do and my niece write for/to herself.

Today we are in the e-age or I'd say age of computers, twitter and Facebook and we love to see how people 'Likes' everything no matter what we post and then we write because we love seeing our stats counter-surge every time we post something. Write because nothing satisfies us quite so much as seeing others share what we’ve written. Write because we like the attention; there’s nothing wrong with liking the attention.

Others write because it fills the emptiness in their heart or their soul or their pancreas or wherever their particular emptiness happens to be and by writing they want to find a way to connect with someone, anyone who might understand.

Writer and poet write serious fiction or romance novels or tragic drama.

Corporate people or people in advertising write something because they know it will be commercially-viable.

A friend of mine writes the review of the movie he saw previous night and posts it on Facebook.

My sister-in-law writes a grocery list before she leaves for the grocery shopping and always forgets it in the car dashboard before she enters the mart.

Sometime we write because one’s ex told them that their characters were dull and their dialogue stilted, as it’s a well-known fact that there’s nothing better in life than proving someone else wrong.

I write because my tenth grade English teacher told me that I had potential.I write because if I don’t tell that story, the one that’s been slowly burning inside of me for the past year, the one that sits like a lump in my throat that never goes away or plays incessantly in the back of my head like a bad song with a good hook, will never be told if I don’t tell it.

Write anything and everything, if writing is what you want to do. Don’t listen to people who want to peddle some kind of elite ideal of what it means to write; don’t buy into the idea that you can only refer to yourself as a writer if you've been published in the Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. or you have a stack of rejection letters a foot deep or you frequently stay up all night weeping softly into a glass of scotch because you can’t arrange exactly the right words in exactly the right order to say exactly whatever it is you want to stay. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you’re only a writer if you've spent a decade or more suffering for your art, starving in a garret in New Delhi, Mumbai or maybe Paris. Try to steer clear of the folks who will want to tell you that only one particular genre or style is real writing.

In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say please write, because I promise you that there’s someone out there who’s dying to hear what you have to say, someone whose life might be changed by whatever sentiment you’re about to commit to paper or screen or cardboard-back-of-the-cereal-box. Write because you are the only person who has lived your particular life, and this has shaped your thoughts in such a way that you are the only one on this planet capable of expressing a thought in your own particular way.

I request you to write because no other person who came before you or who will come after you will ever, ever be able to do it in quite the same way that you can.

So today, for the sake of no one but yourself, pick up a paper or may be a napkin or a rag and scribble your thoughts. Write to someone you love or you long to tell that you love them, write to a friend, family or neighbor. About anything that comes to your mind. Or if that does seems difficult, write to yourself but do write.

Until tomorrow,
SaNj

That Stranger Girl on the Metro Walk

Sometimes, strangers help us discover truths we overlook when surrounded by familiar faces. There’s something magical about the unknown, a sense of possibility, of wonder. I’ve always loved meeting strangers. The very thought of striking up a conversation with someone new excites me, filling my mind with endless possibilities of uncovering who they are, piece by piece!

In words of Charles Baudelaire – “One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters… but with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.”

I thrive on the curiosity and thrill of these encounters. It’s the subtle, uncharted charm of getting to know someone without the weight of preconceptions. Sometimes, I’m fueled by nothing more than my thoughts, a quiet intrigue, and, on occasion, a glass of 60ml single-malt Scotch, just enough to keep me searching, questioning, and noticing what others might miss.

What draws me most are people with layers, those tormented by their own contradictions. Society often warns us not to talk to strangers, not to share too much, and definitely not to accept candy from them (thanks for that one, Mom). Yet, isn’t it ironic? From the moment we’re born, we are surrounded by strangers.

Think about it. Our first encounter with our parents - strangers to us at birth. The first day of school? Navigating life among unfamiliar kids and teachers. Our first job? Strangers again, slowly becoming friends or foes. Moving into a new neighborhood? Even love starts with strangers: “Honey, I knew you were the one the moment we met!” And when life ends? Well, that’s our final rendezvous with the ultimate stranger, God, or maybe the devil, depends where your faith lies.