Keeping my promises alive, here I’m back with a new crap under the tag ‘figment of back bench poetry’.
First you look so beautiful and then you complain why do I stare,
First you speak so sweetly and then you complain why I long to hear.
First you laugh so merrily and then you complain why I give you cheer,
First you cry so childishly and then you complain why I charm your tears.
First you err so innocently and then you complain why I love to bear,
First you forgive so certainly and then you complain why I do not fear.
First you believe so naively and then you complain why do I care,
First you grew so gracefully and then you complain why I love your flair.
First you smell so pleasingly and then you complain why I feel your air,
First you love so fervidly and then you complain why I ask my share.
For all your fascinating complaints I’ve only one reply ‘How Unfair…?’
I believe it’s never too late to become what you might have become. Hope I superseded the previous one.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Absurdity of life
Its 5 o’clock in the morning. It’s been a couple of contemplating hours since I completed reading ‘The Stranger’ by Albert Camus. It contains a strong notion of Camus’s philosophical notion of absurdity. Just before ‘The Stranger’ I had finished ‘English August’. That too again advocated the meaninglessness of existence, through its protagonist Agastya Sen, an I.A.S. trainee having extreme lack of interest in his life as a civil servant, on a year long philosophical itinerary to discover himself, while detached from the worldly affairs around. Similarly the plot of ‘The Stranger’ swirls around Meursault, a man who is psychologically disconnected from the world around him. May be because I have read too much about absurdism these days or/and may be because semester exams are nearing and may be because I have little reasons to believe life holds something meaningful for me, the cynic in me is intensely engrossed.
Coming back to Meursault, Events like parent’s death, marriage proposal and death sentence which could be very crucial for others, do not matter to him on sentimental level. He is honest by not hiding his lack of emotional indifference. He implicitly challenges societies accepted moral standard which earns him a reputation of being an immoral character, a threat to society. In reality Meursault is neither moral nor immoral- he is just amoral. He is an atheist who simply does not makes the distinction between good and bad. Aside from his atheism he makes little assumption about the character of world. However when he is sentenced to death after a murder trial ( His emotional indifference to moral standards works against his case and he is sentenced to death for a murder done in self defense) his thinking began to broaden, in due course of events he concludes that the universe is just like him totally indifferent to human life. He decides that people's lives have no grand meaning or importance, and that their actions, their comings and goings, have no effect on the world. This realization is the culmination of all the events of the novel.
Few of the lines from the Novel reflecting the underline idea are-
1. “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”
---Spoken by Meursault, these are the opening lines of the novel. They introduce his emotional indifference, one his most important character traits. He does not express any remorse upon learning of his mother's death; he merely reports the fact in a straightforward manner. He implies that it does not matter that his mother died at all. Here Camus introduces the idea of the meaninglessness of human existence, a theme that resounds throughout the novel.
2. “When she laughed I wanted her again. A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I supposed I didn’t.”
---With characteristic emotional indifference, Meursault answers Marie's question completely and honestly. Always blunt, he never alters what he says to be tactful or to conform to societal expectations. Meursault's assertion that love “didn't mean anything,” asserts his belief in the meaninglessness of human life.
3. “It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”
---These are the last lines of the novel. After being insisted to turn to God in the wake of his death sentence puts Meursault into a blind rage, he fully accepts the absurdist idea that the universe is indifferent to human affairs and that life lacks rational order and meaning. He realizes that the universe's indifference to human affairs echoes his own personal indifference to human affairs, and the similarity evokes a feeling of companionship in him that leads him to label the world “so brotherly.” He does not mind being a loathed criminal. He only wishes for companionship, “to feel less lonely.
Due to the effect of this feeling of absurdity, in which right now I am deeply convolved in, even a dazzling sunrise witnessed after months seems so forlorn. It is giving me the identical mournful solace which is a part of my daily evening’s schedule. I wonder how to spend the day, I know the gripped cynic in me is going to make this whole day miserable. I can figure out approximately how long this day is going to be, and unlike Meursault I have no silent companion to share my calm desolation and make me feel less lonely. I only wish this feeling will evaporate with the heat of the day as most of the optimist resolutions made in night for the next day are gone with the morning blues.
Coming back to Meursault, Events like parent’s death, marriage proposal and death sentence which could be very crucial for others, do not matter to him on sentimental level. He is honest by not hiding his lack of emotional indifference. He implicitly challenges societies accepted moral standard which earns him a reputation of being an immoral character, a threat to society. In reality Meursault is neither moral nor immoral- he is just amoral. He is an atheist who simply does not makes the distinction between good and bad. Aside from his atheism he makes little assumption about the character of world. However when he is sentenced to death after a murder trial ( His emotional indifference to moral standards works against his case and he is sentenced to death for a murder done in self defense) his thinking began to broaden, in due course of events he concludes that the universe is just like him totally indifferent to human life. He decides that people's lives have no grand meaning or importance, and that their actions, their comings and goings, have no effect on the world. This realization is the culmination of all the events of the novel.
Few of the lines from the Novel reflecting the underline idea are-
1. “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”
---Spoken by Meursault, these are the opening lines of the novel. They introduce his emotional indifference, one his most important character traits. He does not express any remorse upon learning of his mother's death; he merely reports the fact in a straightforward manner. He implies that it does not matter that his mother died at all. Here Camus introduces the idea of the meaninglessness of human existence, a theme that resounds throughout the novel.
2. “When she laughed I wanted her again. A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I supposed I didn’t.”
---With characteristic emotional indifference, Meursault answers Marie's question completely and honestly. Always blunt, he never alters what he says to be tactful or to conform to societal expectations. Meursault's assertion that love “didn't mean anything,” asserts his belief in the meaninglessness of human life.
3. “It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”
---These are the last lines of the novel. After being insisted to turn to God in the wake of his death sentence puts Meursault into a blind rage, he fully accepts the absurdist idea that the universe is indifferent to human affairs and that life lacks rational order and meaning. He realizes that the universe's indifference to human affairs echoes his own personal indifference to human affairs, and the similarity evokes a feeling of companionship in him that leads him to label the world “so brotherly.” He does not mind being a loathed criminal. He only wishes for companionship, “to feel less lonely.
Due to the effect of this feeling of absurdity, in which right now I am deeply convolved in, even a dazzling sunrise witnessed after months seems so forlorn. It is giving me the identical mournful solace which is a part of my daily evening’s schedule. I wonder how to spend the day, I know the gripped cynic in me is going to make this whole day miserable. I can figure out approximately how long this day is going to be, and unlike Meursault I have no silent companion to share my calm desolation and make me feel less lonely. I only wish this feeling will evaporate with the heat of the day as most of the optimist resolutions made in night for the next day are gone with the morning blues.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Poem-Shoem: The begining
I have written these most outlandish lines which I regard as back bench poetry, named after the serene corner in my classroom where it was emanated. Back bench is the place where the ingenious and creative inhabitants of class breed their flair and so do I.
When commotion of emotions throb my heart,
My brain said: Beware we can’t handle it at all.
After all love’s notion is an ephemeral thought,
Let’s be realistic and let not poignancy stand tall.
Your heart’s delusion and our goal shouldn’t differ,
Ask it eminence or happiness what does it prefers.
That’s it dear. You can’t take it anymore. But caution this is just the commencement of a fresh sequence of crap in this blog. There are many others waiting to supersede it.
When commotion of emotions throb my heart,
My brain said: Beware we can’t handle it at all.
After all love’s notion is an ephemeral thought,
Let’s be realistic and let not poignancy stand tall.
Your heart’s delusion and our goal shouldn’t differ,
Ask it eminence or happiness what does it prefers.
That’s it dear. You can’t take it anymore. But caution this is just the commencement of a fresh sequence of crap in this blog. There are many others waiting to supersede it.
Monday, March 9, 2009
WHY NO GIRLFRIEND(s)?
Till then the interview was going slickly. I was confidently jabbering the dexterously practiced retort of all archetypal interview issues. But only till then.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have a girlfriend? ME: No sir, not exactly.
INTERVIEWER: What do you mean ‘not exactly’? Are you in the process of stalking some girl? ME: No sir, absolutely not. I mean there are girls who are friends (to be true precisely acquaintances), but not exactly what we mean by the term ‘GIRLFRIEND’.
INTERVIEWER: What according to your lexicon does girlfriend means? ME: Ahh…. (Paused a while to google all my raison d'être) …Sir a girlfriend is a regular female companion whom one trusts and shares all his thoughts with, and has some emotional intimacy.
INTERVIEWER: And you don’t. Are you biologically exact? Authenticate. ME: ……………………………I was blank. (Still sticking to the adeptly trained methodology I managed to smile, vacantly however).
It is long time since ‘then’ and I am still vexed figuring out what authentication that moron exactly anticipated. Coming from a place where apart from very close pals (definitely male) you can’t let slip to anyone else that you are even vaguely interested in girls, to a situation where having a girlfriend helps in enticing a respectable job certainly qualifies as a great alteration for me. Bothered by that echoing WHY within me I contemplated for some plausible reasons that why I don’t have a GF (let’s cut the chestnut short).
Sigmund Freud proposed that any mental muddle is caused solely by psychological rather than organic factors. (I wish I could tell this to that moron that nothing is needed to be verified biologically). So I started my interpretation from the phase of very creation of psyche, childhood. I have no sister and though I was turned sophisticated in a co-ed discipline I never had many friends till 10 years of age given my highly introvert nature then (currently it is simply introvert, somehow I have administered to do away with the adjective ‘highly’). So till then there was nothing like the notion of girls. There were just women and students. Though there was a girl in my neighborhood but she was always poised excessively feminine, too old to qualify for girl.
Things changed a bit in teenage. I became less reclusive and made some very manly kind of people ‘my dear friends’. They (or we) preposterously thought it was not the attribute of a real man to mingle up with girls. (Thank God I didn’t turn into a Shivsainik). We idiotically trusted Mark Twain when he wittily quoted “If your wife doesn’t like the smell of your cigar change her.”
Anyway the feeble believe, of we the neophytes, succumbed to our matured hormones. But being reclusive to girls that long, I never realized exactly when I developed the shyness towards this gender. When I realized that few of so understood other half of my class have grown-up into pretty young things (PYT), I was too diffident to initiate an association. I dreamed to talk with them forever but didn’t cause I was scared my words could turn into a meaningless babble. I was scared they might not like me, and that would have hurt.
Providentially, a new PYT, from a more urbanized environment, got admitted in my class and concurrently got interested in me. Despite the fact that there were many interested and few more eligible candidates she chose me. I think she liked the fact that I was the one who showed least curiosity in her. Oblivious of my shyness she naively thought I was different. In a way I was. Initially the inanity was intriguing and the fantasy of deeming that we were in a perfectly special world was captivating.
But soon I realized that it doesn’t exist and also the entire intricate emotional commotion drawn in in these short of affairs took over me. It seemed more of mess then bliss. And thus the only GF of my whole long life till now seemed a person in charge of my freedom, and I hate to be owned. The association wrecked then and there with all the culmination drama implicated. So we moved ahead using ideas as our maps. Initially it saddened a bit but sooner the sadness was overcome as the senses roused.
Then and there I realized the meaning behind the T-shirt wisdom ‘Love is like a beautiful flower, even the most attractive one will die someday’.
Since then lots of times I came across PYTs and one of the time in college I was profoundly fascinated but given my past experience and my present resolution to shed off the emotional part in me I practice patience and let the desire dry out on its own (My shyness helps keeping patience). Sometime I have to linger long but in most cases soon someday I spot that concerned PYT with some dim-witted fella and at once the longing departs.
But after all this learning still sometimes there is a nagging in some corner of my heart, which wishes if things were little different, if a decent and gracious lass would have taken some interest in me. See that’s the matter we never learn, we never change.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have a girlfriend? ME: No sir, not exactly.
INTERVIEWER: What do you mean ‘not exactly’? Are you in the process of stalking some girl? ME: No sir, absolutely not. I mean there are girls who are friends (to be true precisely acquaintances), but not exactly what we mean by the term ‘GIRLFRIEND’.
INTERVIEWER: What according to your lexicon does girlfriend means? ME: Ahh…. (Paused a while to google all my raison d'être) …Sir a girlfriend is a regular female companion whom one trusts and shares all his thoughts with, and has some emotional intimacy.
INTERVIEWER: And you don’t. Are you biologically exact? Authenticate. ME: ……………………………I was blank. (Still sticking to the adeptly trained methodology I managed to smile, vacantly however).
It is long time since ‘then’ and I am still vexed figuring out what authentication that moron exactly anticipated. Coming from a place where apart from very close pals (definitely male) you can’t let slip to anyone else that you are even vaguely interested in girls, to a situation where having a girlfriend helps in enticing a respectable job certainly qualifies as a great alteration for me. Bothered by that echoing WHY within me I contemplated for some plausible reasons that why I don’t have a GF (let’s cut the chestnut short).
Sigmund Freud proposed that any mental muddle is caused solely by psychological rather than organic factors. (I wish I could tell this to that moron that nothing is needed to be verified biologically). So I started my interpretation from the phase of very creation of psyche, childhood. I have no sister and though I was turned sophisticated in a co-ed discipline I never had many friends till 10 years of age given my highly introvert nature then (currently it is simply introvert, somehow I have administered to do away with the adjective ‘highly’). So till then there was nothing like the notion of girls. There were just women and students. Though there was a girl in my neighborhood but she was always poised excessively feminine, too old to qualify for girl.
Things changed a bit in teenage. I became less reclusive and made some very manly kind of people ‘my dear friends’. They (or we) preposterously thought it was not the attribute of a real man to mingle up with girls. (Thank God I didn’t turn into a Shivsainik). We idiotically trusted Mark Twain when he wittily quoted “If your wife doesn’t like the smell of your cigar change her.”
Anyway the feeble believe, of we the neophytes, succumbed to our matured hormones. But being reclusive to girls that long, I never realized exactly when I developed the shyness towards this gender. When I realized that few of so understood other half of my class have grown-up into pretty young things (PYT), I was too diffident to initiate an association. I dreamed to talk with them forever but didn’t cause I was scared my words could turn into a meaningless babble. I was scared they might not like me, and that would have hurt.
Providentially, a new PYT, from a more urbanized environment, got admitted in my class and concurrently got interested in me. Despite the fact that there were many interested and few more eligible candidates she chose me. I think she liked the fact that I was the one who showed least curiosity in her. Oblivious of my shyness she naively thought I was different. In a way I was. Initially the inanity was intriguing and the fantasy of deeming that we were in a perfectly special world was captivating.
But soon I realized that it doesn’t exist and also the entire intricate emotional commotion drawn in in these short of affairs took over me. It seemed more of mess then bliss. And thus the only GF of my whole long life till now seemed a person in charge of my freedom, and I hate to be owned. The association wrecked then and there with all the culmination drama implicated. So we moved ahead using ideas as our maps. Initially it saddened a bit but sooner the sadness was overcome as the senses roused.
Then and there I realized the meaning behind the T-shirt wisdom ‘Love is like a beautiful flower, even the most attractive one will die someday’.
Since then lots of times I came across PYTs and one of the time in college I was profoundly fascinated but given my past experience and my present resolution to shed off the emotional part in me I practice patience and let the desire dry out on its own (My shyness helps keeping patience). Sometime I have to linger long but in most cases soon someday I spot that concerned PYT with some dim-witted fella and at once the longing departs.
But after all this learning still sometimes there is a nagging in some corner of my heart, which wishes if things were little different, if a decent and gracious lass would have taken some interest in me. See that’s the matter we never learn, we never change.
MONEY MECHANICS
Society today is composed of a string of institution from political, legal, religious, social class, familiar values and occupational specialization. These institutions have a seminal significance in determining our perspective. Yet of all the institutions we are born into, directed upon and conditioned there seems to be no other system as grossly misunderstood and taken for granted as the monetary system. How money is created? What policies administrate it? And how it truly affects us is unfamiliar to a majority fragment of society. With 1% of population controlling 40% of wealth and 50% of population leaving at less than $2 a day one thing is sure there is something wrong with the system.
Understanding the system is like understanding why our life is what it is. What is money and how is it created? Gone are the days when gold was reserved in exchange of money circulated. Today money is piece of paper, circulated by federal reserves of different nations, carrying different domination. These pieces of paper are passed on to government in return of treasury bonds. The government hands it to banks and other financial institutes where they become legal money carrying value. And thus money is created.
Treasury bonds are by design instruments of debt. When fed receives them they create money out of thin air. In other words money is not coming out of the assets of the bank. The bank is simply inventing it. Perhaps except them only God can create something of value out of nothing. The government actually promises to buy back the bonds and takes money as a loan. Thus money itself is created out of loan.
Now the banks pass this money to people, charging them interest on it. This interest multiplies the actual sum many folds over the future. Suppose for eg the bank sanctions a loan of 1 lakh at an interest rate of 10%. So ten years down the line this money is compounded into 2.59 lakhs, and it keeps on increasing. Thus this 1 lakh of real money adds 1.59 lakh of virtual value. In fact in U.S. only 3% of money is in physical form rest is the compounded interest and treasury bonds.
Now see it like this when bank passes money to market it passes principal. But when it asks for the Amount one needs to pay principal + Interest. But from where comes the money to cover the interest that is charged. Nowhere, it doesn’t exist. The only basis of money creation is credit loan so if all the persons are able to pay back all the loans and debt there will be no money in the market. In fact if there were no debts in our money system there wouldn’t be any money.
What it also means is that mathematically default and bankruptcy are literally built in the system as there always will be deprived receptacle of society that gets the short end of the stick. Physical slavery necessitates people to be housed and fed but economic slavery requires people to house and feed themselves. It is the biggest scam ever done and is an imperceptible war against the population. Debt is the weapon of bank and interest is its prime ammunition.
Understanding the system is like understanding why our life is what it is. What is money and how is it created? Gone are the days when gold was reserved in exchange of money circulated. Today money is piece of paper, circulated by federal reserves of different nations, carrying different domination. These pieces of paper are passed on to government in return of treasury bonds. The government hands it to banks and other financial institutes where they become legal money carrying value. And thus money is created.
Treasury bonds are by design instruments of debt. When fed receives them they create money out of thin air. In other words money is not coming out of the assets of the bank. The bank is simply inventing it. Perhaps except them only God can create something of value out of nothing. The government actually promises to buy back the bonds and takes money as a loan. Thus money itself is created out of loan.
Now the banks pass this money to people, charging them interest on it. This interest multiplies the actual sum many folds over the future. Suppose for eg the bank sanctions a loan of 1 lakh at an interest rate of 10%. So ten years down the line this money is compounded into 2.59 lakhs, and it keeps on increasing. Thus this 1 lakh of real money adds 1.59 lakh of virtual value. In fact in U.S. only 3% of money is in physical form rest is the compounded interest and treasury bonds.
Now see it like this when bank passes money to market it passes principal. But when it asks for the Amount one needs to pay principal + Interest. But from where comes the money to cover the interest that is charged. Nowhere, it doesn’t exist. The only basis of money creation is credit loan so if all the persons are able to pay back all the loans and debt there will be no money in the market. In fact if there were no debts in our money system there wouldn’t be any money.
What it also means is that mathematically default and bankruptcy are literally built in the system as there always will be deprived receptacle of society that gets the short end of the stick. Physical slavery necessitates people to be housed and fed but economic slavery requires people to house and feed themselves. It is the biggest scam ever done and is an imperceptible war against the population. Debt is the weapon of bank and interest is its prime ammunition.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.
Nothing from me.
This speech is commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. I think is one of the best pieces of wisdom that would fit in 15 minutes. Like many things I deeply admire, I felt like sharing this one with people I feel connected to. You know this feeling when you come back from watching a great movie, and then you really want your friend to watch it too, just because you liked it so much. Its similar to that. So if you haven't already been through with this speech, please read it now. You won't repent these 15 minutes, you'll cherish them, hopefully!
So lets get started with the iconic Steve Jobs' words:
<< I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
>>
P.S. Anyone interested in watching the video may collect it from me.
This speech is commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. I think is one of the best pieces of wisdom that would fit in 15 minutes. Like many things I deeply admire, I felt like sharing this one with people I feel connected to. You know this feeling when you come back from watching a great movie, and then you really want your friend to watch it too, just because you liked it so much. Its similar to that. So if you haven't already been through with this speech, please read it now. You won't repent these 15 minutes, you'll cherish them, hopefully!
So lets get started with the iconic Steve Jobs' words:
<< I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
>>
P.S. Anyone interested in watching the video may collect it from me.
Friday, March 6, 2009
IN THE NAME ONLY
Well it’s been a long time coming. Almost three months. Somewhere in the middle of all the bedlam I was eventful contributing my own chaotic ingredient. In all these creative mayhem I happened to indulge in various new stints. One of which was producing a movie written and partially directed by me. And due to lack of actors I even got a role in it. The movie was 6:42 mins long, with a budget of 23 Rs only and my part was somewhere around 30 secs now that explains all your querris. About the script writing part here is the abstract that we submitted along with the mini movie.IN THE NAME ONLY
‘In the name only’ opens with an unknown man writing an entry ‘democracy?’ in his diary. Then the scene shifts to the office of cabinet minister Kashinath Tiwari where he is busy working on his biography aided by writer A.K. Joshi. They are joined by Kashinath’s political right-hand Ramakant. In the subsequent scenes it is disclosed that though Kashinath has never been to college he asks Joshi to put in writing the contrary and other such bluffs to exalt his image. While choosing an apt college name Ramakant advises sticking to a Hindi name which will support their Hindutva agenda.
In flashback it is revealed that Kashinath used to work at a tea stall where he came in contact with a contemporary materializing leader of a Hindu outfit. During a conversation the leader was impressed by his aggressive remarks and envisages in him the potential of a latent demagogue and hence seduces him to join his outfit. With time the leader’s calculation was established and along with Kashinath he reached to the corridors of power. The stature of Kashinath as a politician rose as he played the self proclaimed savior of Indian cultural and religious values.
The scene returns back to present where Kashinath is attending his son Munna’s call. Ramakant apprises Joshi that Munna was a University topper to which Kashinath reveals that that too was the game of power. The viewer is acquainted with the story of how Munna’s copy was swapped with that of a scholarly student Manohar, in a series of flashbacks. The writer Joshi is appalled to hear this story.
The picture now returns to the opening scene where it is disclosed that the unknown man writing the diary entry was in fact a disconsolate and poignant Joshi himself. After making the entry he takes out a letter addressed to him as ‘Dear daddy’. The letter is actually a suicide note by his son, who turns out to be the same boy Manohar.
Through this short film the creating team wants to communicate the message as what kind of people are running our politics, how the Indian demagogues have baked and elevated issues like religious and cultural discrepancies to assuage their self ambitions, how they are bluntly practicing favoritism and nepotism exclusive of hesitation. In the movie what starts as a normal working day in Joshi’s life in minister’s office develops into the day when he realizes how the politician has played with his son’s future and in a bigger picture with that of nation for meeting their own goals and how still as an individual he is helpless to still work for them, and how still are we the citizens susceptible to sordid politics.
P.S.- You may wonder why at all I posted this crap. Well it was out of sentiment spawned in me by affirmative reaction of enthusiastic fans. You know sometime even a thinking mind plays an emotional fool... and I am not even a thinking mind. Now I really feel sympathy for Rakesh Omprakash Mehra.
P.P.S.- The movie made it to the finals of 'Cognizance 09' in eastern India. :)
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