WHY SO CURIOUS?!

As a child I was a curious kid. I know it is not an ideal statement to start a blog with. But I was, and that is not really the type of child parents wants. Parents want you to do well, but without asking questions that could make their life difficult. So as I grew up my questions also grew up. I started question the one thing Indian children are not allowed to question, “THE GOD”. I don’t have problem with the concept. I just want to know the meaning of the things you do in the name of GOD. So as a child you expect them to know everything. But it is not like that. My mom used to just accept that she never was a curious kid and never asked her parents anything. ‘I just did whatever was told because I was afraid of my parents’ was her standard response. And without knowing my curiosity was turned into a privilege.

What I didn’t realise back then is, if the curiosity is not fed properly, it starts to diminish. Looking back I think, I was more curious 8-9 years ago then I am now (I have started feeding my curiosity 4 times a day and that is more times than I actually eat). And as far as I remember; I loved being curious about anything and everything. Everything was a mystery and everything was answer to something else. Over the period of time I lost interest in many things because no one was answering the questions I was asking, and no, Google does not have answer to everything! That lack of interest cost me in general interest in life.

I have had instances where people ask me why are you interested in certain things if it doesn’t affect you day to day life and these are the same people who would spend hours on gossiping about other people’s life which was even more remotely affecting their own life. And I agree few times curiosity is stupid. To give you an example: recently I was talking to a friend and we had curiosity about the how did older generations found out about poisons? I mean did someone eat it and died and they remaining people declared, that can kill you don’t eat it. But is it not worth being curious like how? Also biggest curiosity has to be about food. Especially Indian food! How did people made so many delicious dishes? Who Invented panner? Who invented puranpoli? Or Gulabjam for that matter?  How can you decide to try and deep fry something and add it to sugar syrup? JUST HOW?!!

We are the scroll down generation. And yes we do spend alot of time on social media (which is not actually helping us with curiosity). So are we the least curious generation? I mean sure scientist are doing great and so is Elon Musk! Technology is going ahead within a blink of an eye. And we need to work alot just to catch up. But the scroll down generation is not happy and do think it has something to do with how we treat our little curiosities. I never see people talking about how fascinating little day to day things can be. People should go “I mean HOW DID THEY DO IT” or “how do you do it more often”. Just for the sake of your healthy brain.

Humans do well when they use their own brains more. And that happens when you are obsessively curious about one thing or moderately curious about every other thing. Because to find answers you need to apply the logic and no matter how smart your computer is, you do need logic to find answers to your curiosities. So make sure you feed your curiosity, even if anyone is not. Find people who know answers. May be scroll down to find correct people. And if you are past reviving your curiosity, help a child to find answers. May be, just may be, you would find that joy again.

Remember world will always try to rush you in doing things their way, but most of times you should be able to say, it is my way or highway, that too with a lot of swag! And nothing but curiosity and ways to find answers to those curiosities can give you confidence to say that.

Just a Dream

Have you ever had a nightmare? Like someone is trying to kill you? And then you suddenly scream and disturb the poor person sleeping next to you or scared the shit out of him/her for no reason. Here, some legendary people are born with ability to forget what they were dreaming. Hence, when person sleeping next to them, who now is very much scared and angry and confused wakes them up, they just get angry because you woke them up!

Next level horror, you see a lizard in your dream, and while saying this I am counting on collective hate for this reptile for no apparent reason and how this reptile has terrorized many of us. For example, I cannot sleep well even if I see this reptile; dream or no dream. But unlike many, I do not scream or utter desperate words in my sleep. May be I am just a passive dreamer but certainly not when it comes to Mr. Lizard! The reference is to Cinderella movie, where Disney actually tried to show friendship between a lizard and a girl; I mean this is soo Disney! VERY REALISTIC!

But coming back to doing the cruelest thing a person can do i.e. waking up a soundly asleep person that too unknowingly, because you have had a bad dream. This poor person is now morally obliged to comfort you, no matter how badly he/she wants to hit you or scream back at you for screaming in your sleep! So he/she start telling you that it was just a dream and you should go back to sleep, and may be not scream so loudly again (assess the dream before telling this or crying episode may happen). And most of the time you just go back to sleep, well because it was just a dream!

So hear me out when I say your life is dream! No I am not high! Life happens to you only when you have you senses and mind open. Do not believe me? Try it yourself. Close your eyes and focus on any one thing for 2 minutes (Actually max you can do this is for 20 seconds but please try and focus). Now you don’t actually don’t care for anything else but that one thing in your mind! So practically nothing else happened to you in those 2 minutes even if in those 2 minutes many things happened in the world. Technically your mind and senses created a world for you! Just like your mind created a dream for you! Research also says, that there is correlation between what you see in your dream and what you think or what you see or read or anything that your senses have picked up during recent times. Well in life also you attract what you think! So isn’t life a dream?!

Dream as defined by Cambridge Dictionary: a series of events or images that happen in your mind when you are sleeping or (my addition) may be even when you are awake. You can influence you dreams by feeding your brain what you want to dream, like Disney feeds you princess stories and girls dream of prince charming! But may be tell your brain that it is A Dream and achieve it. I am not saying most of the time you will just go back to sleep even if you have had a nightmare, but most of the time you will! And if you are a legendry person, you won’t even remember the nightmare! Don’t you do the same with your life? Go back to living it even if something bad happens or may be forget the thing altogether!

So just live it like a dream. Make sure it is a Good Dream. A Big Dream. And start feeding that not so small brain of yours. Food is important; dream or no dream!

Little Things

No, this blog has nothing to do with web series by the same name. Though, I also belong to ‘How can Mithila Palkar be so cute’ group. But, this blog is about what that series is about, all the little things that matters! Things that we hardly notice when everything is super normal and things we forget as soon as the things go back to normal. Just like remembering God during exams!

Considering how my last one & half month was spent, I really started appreciating these little things. Like a simple hug to your mother, or eating hot rotis, even the work she does (okay that is not a small thing). But as soon as she recovered and slowly started doing these things again, I kind of forgot to appreciate these little things. Not that I intended it, but you just get used to other people being nice to you or doing these little things for you, and unknowingly, you stop appreciating it over the time.

But I guess that happened to all of us in this pandemic! I mean, we never fully appreciated the small business vendor who filled our lives with delicious food. Ask yourself, if you have ever said ‘Thank you for existing’ to a pani puri/vadapav vendor or momos seller?! I certainly wish to say thank you to my favourite Missal Pav seller. Never in my dreams, had I thought that, it would be this difficult to eat that missal pav! It was only some 5-6 Hrs away. All I had to do was plan a trip and go to my native place! And I am pretty sure; I would forget to thank him after I eat it again; because people easily get used to other people doing good things for them. And there is no better thing than feeding delicious food to others.

And a person like me always thinks that we should be grateful for anything that makes us happy or makes our work easy. May be just like Ranchhoddas, I think zip is machine and makes my work easy, so I should be thankful for a machine as well. Remember, most of the time it remains a thought only. Like food vendors or machines, I now think (see the pattern, not normal times) I have never appreciated random people smiling at me on road. I know, this may sound creepy to some people, but the joy of stranger smiling at you is out of this world yet very human. Now a days, like a friend who works at a bank pointed out, since you don’t see the face, you just have to guess, whether the person is angry or smiling (for her it was a great relief from being polite to rude customers).

There are many tiny tiny tiny thing, that I miss now a days. Walk in nature, people meeting each other, hanging out with friends (even if they don’t appreciate my lame jokes), eating out, drinking Chai at Chai tapari (not the shop but actual Tapari), sitting on a park swings, going to places, sleep over with my best friends (its been 7 months), planning a *never gonna happen* Goa trip (I want the option to plan it open). And I don’t think I’ll ever appreciate these things when things go back to normal. And knowing you all, I am sure neither are you.

In all this missing, I started meditating. You have to find a way to calm all that craving. No matter which app I choose, they tell me to show the gratitude. It is like telling me to do what I cannot do, because no pani puri wala is open, I cannot talk to stranger or tell him/her to pull the mask down and smile at me (that is just creepy), machines won’t understand my gratitude, you shouldn’t tell your family that you are grateful for them or they get hurt (no logic) and if I tell my friends I am grateful to have them; we all know how that ends.

So, in a nutshell, I should be grateful for myself?! In a sense, I am enjoying all this or feeling all this because I am alive. But is it allowed? Is it allowed to be grateful for being you? No book or app has ever told me that! So I am asking you people, Is it okay to be grateful for understanding as you like to understand, comprehending as you comprehend, loving as you love, struggling as you do, forgiving as you want to forgive and just being you? Can we be grateful for all the little things we are and all the little things we do and all the little things we see?

This is what I realised in my abnormal time and 99% what I’ll stop appreciating when things get started at their own pace, because people get used to other people (may be even yourself) doing good things for them. So should I just love myself, while I can? Be grateful for being Myself while the gratitude lasts?

Why So Serious?!

After last blog many people asked me why are you writing so serious blogs? I assume that all of them have seen the latest Robert Pattinson’s (the Twilight actor ladies) Batman trailer and was missing THE JOKER and his iconic line “Why So Serious?” Like many others I am still not over the Christopher Nolan trilogy but at the same time it’s Batman! How can you be not excited? And with that excitement I decided to write something that is very close to character Batman i.e. technology! The whole pandemic has made it super essential part of our lives like batman. So to make the pandemic cooler, be a Batman and wear a mask and gloves whenever you are going out (consider it as a mission) and save the world.

In a week I had three distinct experiences with technology and obviously people using that technology. First one is related to my grandmother. Technology and really old people is always a fascinating story. They see the new technology like you watch superhero movie (Batman still on my mind). You have the basic idea about the superhero’s powers, but you are excited to see how it works out in the film. And like all the supporting characters in the movie you are just helping them unwind the suspense of how technology works. And yet the fascination does not end. You can watch a super hero movie ‘n’ number of times and still be amazed. Just like that Grandparents always have that fascination about the technology. But often, they are not very enthusiastic about learning it (or is my grandmother REALLY old?). And that create many humours situations. I am sure you have your own stories.

Here is mine. My sister was unable to come and meet my grandmother due to Covid and she wanted to see her and talk to her. So like normal person I made a Video Call. But that was not normal for my grandmother. About my grandmother, she is partially deaf since the time I can remember. And it’s not like we haven’t tried telling her that you can see and talk to people in real time but somehow she has always managed to consider it as a JUST video and not VIDEO CALL. This time she was able to comprehend it and was completely fascinated. But since she is partially deaf, she just kept asking questions without waiting for my sister to answer. At one point I even heard her say, “is it me in  the corner?  I don’t look that good”. That call ended with few laughs and without she understanding any answers, but looking thoroughly fascinated.

Second one is obviously regarding the online schools. Being Indian, who has more interest in other people’s life, I always end up talking to auto drivers, shop keepers and anyone from whom I am just supposed to purchase something, pay up and leave. But the Indian me have to takes up the job of reporter (because no one is doing that job properly) and ask how the current situation is affecting them. It could be GST, demonetisation, corona or just our Prime Minister Modi, who is always the hot topic. So when I saw the young kid selling vegetable the other day, I asked him “Don’t you have school?” And he gave me the expression I know so well and have even tried to master it but I always fail to. The expression kids now a day give when elders ask them any question, “why do you have so much interest in my life, don’t you have your own life?” I mean, how do you master that? All I can do is answer awkwardly and excuse myself and run for my life. Because I literally have nothing going on, and that’s not an answer I give to elders; that is the answer I give to my friends (understand the seriousness)! Back to topic, even with that expression he answered “Classes are online, only for 2 hrs in the morning, so done with classes. You just upload the homework and then you are done”. I was super jealous and couldn’t ask anything. School only for 2 Hrs (understand the pain). No matter how much nostalgia school can give me and no matter how bad I feel for these kids, that sentence will always hurt me! But it was a relief as well; since these people need to upload the homework and I never did my homework! Glad that unlike American courts, Indian courts never took suo moto actions or I would have been in jail for forever. Those of you, who didn’t get that, just google, “girl jailed for not doing homework.”

Third one is related to having crazy family and being thankful for that. Every year during Ganpati Festival, I have extended family at my place. This year due to pandemic they couldn’t be here. So like any Indian Family we decided to have online pooja so the family can enjoy it. And my mother being my mother asked them to take arti and offer flowers to ganpati online. Yes, the whole thing was very funny, not because she didn’t understand how the video call works but because she exactly knows how it works. Still like any silliness it is now a memory and that too a happy one.

It is always said that, technology either can be used for good things for bad things. But this pandemic showed us technology can be used for literally anything! From video calls & online pooja to online schools and colleges and even possibly exams as well! We officially live online now! All there is left to do is upload ourselves online! Oh wait! Isn’t that is what TRON: LEGACY is all about!? Too much Si-Fi and super hero movie content on my mind! No wonder I cannot study even online.