SMS'S ... The necessary evil

Short message service has become one of the dominant factors of our life..... So much happens on the sms’s..  Texting has become the necessary evil for most of us. Most students, on an average send and receive 200 messages every day. How much time and energy they spend on this? And all the focus that they give on this determines what kind of life they lead. People cannot imagine their life without sms’s. It is cost effective, sans embarrassment and people can get away saying anything on the sms. Everything happens on the sms for most people, love, hate, anger, happiness, sacking, accepting, deals, etc etc..

I remember my younger days, when telegram was of great importance. It indicated emergency, mostly of the negative kinds. One would have had to go to the post office, fill the complicated forms, and wait in the queue, bear all the pain of the clerk who would behave as if he is doing us a great favour. Then the arrival of the pager happened and this had the fastest death of all technologies.

When i started texting, way back in 2002, it was not common as sms receiving was also charged and i was ridiculed for this habit. But now sms’s makes and breaks relationships. Most often, people follow the conversations up with the sms’s,   the moment they are angry, unhappy or want to express the negative emotion. Earlier, in life, people had the option of subsidised anger, subsidised intensity of any feel as there was no alternative to physical presence and could only talk after meeting them. Now we all pour out all emotions and do not hide. This is building lot of impatience and emotions are expressed in hurry and often wasted resulting in instant fights.. I have done it myself hundreds of times with dozens of people, and complicated relationships also. I know several cases where the easy way of sms makes them express many emotions without actually being there in that intensity and measure. In that sense, sms has complicated the relationships.

In some cases people wait for the sms, as if it is life threatening or life making expectation. It is true of cases also where people leave a message and expect replies, as the persons they call do not take the call. This is both advantage and a disadvantage as both the parties suffer and have equal justification. Waiting for sms can be very nerve wrecking and can be the most essential part of your life. People who undergo this experience will alone understand.

For me waiting for the Praveen’s sms ( my senior colleague) on Wednesday is high point of my life. I get into illusions and wake up in the middle of the night and check for the sms from Praveen. I am brushing my teeth and keep looking at the phone for his sms. Then i feel every second that my phone is sounding with a message tone. I am scared to take long time in the wash room as i can’t delay to see his sms. Then i am driving to my meditation class and i am constantly looking for the sms. It’s like waiting for the result of the performance and the hard work of the last week, that i am waiting for. Just want to be done with on what the result is about the TAM high points. Before i switch off the mobile to get inside the class, i do a countdown before switch off the mobile. The first thing i am expecting after i switch on the mobile is again Praveen’s message. Never ever imagined that one sms would be so important every week of my life. Here attitude and life learning fail and not the forum to talk also about it. Needless to say that, Programming team and creators of content in television, live on tam results and entire life revolves around that. It makes or breaks the day and succeeding week. Why sms? The highlights are sent by Praveen after he extrapolates from the basic data. That moment is the most crucial for me for the week and so for the entire year. Like these, there could be several situations for people who wait desperately and endlessly for the sms and that moment of waiting seems so long and never ending.

I want to call sms as kambaqt. I hate sms’s as much as i love. I don’t want them as life gets complicated and i want them as life becomes easy...

LOVE ENHANCES WITH THIS...

NEE CHOOPULE SONG.... BY G.V.PRAKASH

One more tragic case of how the lack of success for the movie fails the song too. Nee choopule song sung by Hari Charan, Chirta, penned by Ramajogayya shastry and music by G.V.Prakash is an outstanding number from Endukante Premanta movie.

This is one of those songs, if heard for the first time in the right frame of mind and right time is sure to arrest you. I can bet that, you will not stop listening for at least 8 to 10 times in a row. This comment is meant for passionate movie lovers and not for claimed music followers who go only by the sway and so called hit.

This song is sure to make anyone either fall in love, recollect their best love experience or will enhance the existing love. There is terrific tenderness, subtlety, and extreme depth which will immerse one into a world, where we want to stay and not face this racy, mad world. 

One of the breaths taking reality is the refreshing and most soothing voice of chitra who is so rich in rendering the lyrics. Especially, when she says “ Nityam ila nanne choodatam” and the nuances that she gives to the composition is to be experienced.

I could not resist myself and called lyricist and composer and expressed my highest respects for them. This song is wasted by not giving due publicity and taking to people. In fact, i made a request to G.V.Prakash to make this song listen to A.R.Rehman, his uncle as it seems like his composition. G.V. has arrived big time with this song.

For all the singers, it’s a huge challenge to sing the most difficult pallavi, which changes into 3 different pitches and notes. The feel of the song is like a dew drop on the fresh leaf and one would never want that to go away. It’s so tender and incisive.

This song has once again proved that love can be expressed in a most refreshing manner time and again and again. This is made possible by Composer, lyricist and singers. Must listen to all people who love music, good lyrics and who were in love sometime in life.

THIS IS TRUE AND THINK FOR A WHILE

                 This is true,  and think for a while

This piece of writing is special for me as it is difficult to put it across. It is also challenging because, my daughter Grusha and people like her, have to be pleased, essentially by not being GYANISH. Friends like SVS, Kumar who are very particular on grammar also needs to be satisfied. Hence it is a herculean task to be able to express on a public platform and do so with honesty and correctness of various kinds.

Coming to the topic, .. Human beings by nature are extremely positive and they force themselves to negativity. In other words, left to the nature, nothing negative will ever affect human beings and we get into negativity consciously. On a higher plane, everything happens because of the “Samskaras” that is embedded in our soul. We need to constantly overcome them by being conscientious of existence. Bad samskaras need to be identified and cleaned from our soul.

Let us take few examples. Most of us keep indulging in excessive eating, or abusing our body either by undisciplined sleep, lack of proper exercise or do nasty things on our body. In many cases, it is not the lack of the knowledge, but the gut feels that ill health will not affect them. IS this not the positive attitude, the way of taking things for granted?  It is easy to call this negligence but it’s the inherent positive attitude. Likewise, all the people who are reckless in driving will not even think for a while that, they are accident prone. Is this not a positive attitude? What about all the students, who write the exam expecting something greater to happen than the efforts that they have put? 

The list is endless. From the film makers who expect block buster by producing a run of the mill stuff, to a husband who expects wife to put up with all the non sense, to a criminal to let him off.. In all the cases, we expect something tangentially different to what is done by us and forget the basic mathematics that, as we sow so we reap. The way we take every part of our body for granted also has to do with the attitude that, nothing can go wrong with us. Oops, what do you have to say about people who continue to smoke despite being diagnosed with cancer? Think about several such instances where people can either be called foolish or just positive. 

Just look at all constructions and houses. Do we see any houses constructed with the thought that, people can get old or sick? The sick and the old needs to be having different facilities and even as a matter of fact, the blind also needs to have different arrangement of room, elevation, spacing etc. But we are not thinking on those lines as somewhere we are positive and do not want to foresee that, it could happen to us or any of us. Even to think and imagine of such things is supposedly negative. Hence positivity is all around us.

Then why get negative? This trait of negative is antithetical to the very nature which embodies harmony and peace. The best to cut negativity is to keep focusing on the self like we do in all the positive situations as mentioned in this piece. The moral of the story is that, negativity comes when we shift our focus to someone other than the self. This shift can be either by comparison, or not knowing the self and working on the same. This is true,  and think for a while as we are basically and originally positive and that’s the way to be.

ARROGANCE OF SURVIVAL

One of the biggest paradoxes of human existence is the arrogance of survival, while the most certain thing is mortality. To come to the basics, why does anyone feel arrogant, proud or egoistic of anything? It is because of the deep rooted feeling that, their success, wealth, position, status, power is permanent or so it seems when one of the above is giving high to the individuals. Politicians, media owners, film stars, business rich men, bureaucracy,  good looking woman, and just about everyone whose life is protected and well off, have this known or unknown belief that, what they is either everlasting or will last for longer time.

Probably sports persons are different and they realize the reality better as they face success and failure very often and in more trying circumstances. Even people in television and movie makers (not stars) are also slightly better as success and failure is very thin line for them. Hence the scope for arrogance is less.

The other side of the coin is that, if we all know and realize that, nothing is permanent and everything happens as a drama and we are just essaying the roles, our life will be better. In fact our basic life is very short and much shorter is the youthful zeal. 

If one keeps extending the logic of why most of us have arrogance, it is only because of the fact that, somewhere we are sure we are going to live longer and in a better manner. The abuse that all of us do to ourselves and to the mother nature, the final result, which is the death, is always not far away should be the hard hitting realization. 

Imagine, a child who is given a toy and told she has only today to play with and it’s not his or hers, the joy is pure and there is no negative feeling attached. The same rationale can be applied to everything around us. IF all of us knew the exact date of death after we are born, our whole attitude would be different. We will not suspend our disbelief that death is not for us. Even a chain smoker will not think or believe that, he could get affected anytime with cancer. He wants to believe that , he is quit and anyway it will not affect him.

Such foolishness is what most of us are subjected to, in our own different ways. IF we all know, that nothing is permanent and nothing is even vaguely sure of time period, why have any negative emotion or feeling for anything or anyone.

Honestly, i always wonder, if someone, ( could be myself) dies in the sleep, the entire living becomes false in a minute. So is, all instant deaths. OR so is any death.

When death is known as inevitable , why not accept it happily and gladly or at least prepare for it happily.

 According to me nothing is more spiritual than 1) Learning to lead the life happily and without getting hurt or hurting anyone 2) Accepting death gracefully. To achieve these 2, all of us need to take some path of spirituality and live it up every minute. Best way is what Sujatha potay recommends...     Do something for the A) Body B) Mind C) soul everyday and what you can do is several things and choose what suits you.

TELEVISION AUDIENCE AND TELEVISION CREW

Television audience is like a nagging mother in law. NML (nagging mother in laws) can be very unpredictable and difficult to please. Anything that is done can be either done better or is just not ok. NML has privilege and right to refuse and deny anything that comes from a docile daughter in law. Probably that is why most serials still have saas bahu issues. This is on a lighter side, but what is most difficult and most difficult is the understanding and fixing on, which the audience is.  It is almost like not knowing the target and aiming for it. 

Take a Hindustani music concert, and understand the rock show... There is always a crowd, a gathering which relish that kind of music. The performers and the organizers can be focused on the content as there is no pressure to churn out something different than the expected kinds. This is applicable to the classical dance, theatre plays, pub dancing, Disk jockeying etc..

But when it comes to television audience, one needs to keep in mind the cross section of people, across age groups, across income groups, across regions, sexes etc.. How can any creativity cater to such wide audience and how can someone entertain to such varied group? If yes how does one go about it? Is it easy to know the tastes and preferences of the audience for entertainment? 

It’s because of the above questions that, some standardized formats of singing, drama, dance, keep happening as they can’t totally go wrong all the time. In other words, television brings and perpetuates not only mediocrity but predictability and stereotypes. This is inevitable as there is TAM, and there are business targets to meet. No other field, no other career is tested as frequently as every week on performance. Hence TV industry people are always under tremendous stress for what happens and for what does not happen.

Gut feel, cuing, pulse, all these help one create and plan. But in all honesty, television unlike other forms of arts is far less creative as pressure entails that art is compromised. People also get into assembly line production and hence even creativity becomes mechanical. It’s very difficult for people in television to get entertained as even watching TV is a work as we all tend to compare, feel envious or try to ape etc.

Despite all that, it’s fun under pressure as the success on Wednesday’s makes all of us wait for more Wednesdays. It’s always life before Wednesday and Life after Wednesday for people working in television and only these people can understand.

Without a doubt, television is just in a very nascent stage and there is lot to achieve and hundreds of channels are going to come in very many specializations. You tube, face book, apps on mobiles, various net options are already getting integrated into television and TV is not watched in its time of telecast but is followed in a much larger scale than what the TAM can catch and appraise. Working in television is like performing marriage every day (marriages of olden days and not current .. all out sourced formula) and these marriages have kids of all kinds. And we in television keep nurturing all kinds of children.

WHY DO WE TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED

What does it mean to take anything for granted? According to me, taking anything for granted would mean , not giving enough value or “bhaav” to something and in turn expecting everything to function always the  same way it does or expecting something and somebody to be the same always. Now this expectation of permanency in anything is anti antithetical  to the modern way of life. But we still unreasonably do it often as a contradiction of our existence. 

The most important thing we keep taking for granted is our own human body. Every part, every structure, every element in the human body is a wonder and if we engage in the thinking of this, we will never cease to get tired or bored of wondering , how everything is designed and  how everything functions. There is no better machine and no bigger mystery than the human body as we can only keep wondering and not find the logic or sequence of anything .. Things go right if it has to and go wrong if its inevitable. The birth, and the death signify the unanswered marvels of the nature . 

But the least all of us can do is to show the gratitude towards our own body by not 1) abusing it any ways  2) By nurturing it properly 3) By nourishing it with love, proper food and exercise. Many scriptures, theories and books have detailed the need to thank each part of our body every day and there is nothing wrong even if it said once more, albeit boringly; any time better than talking about the box  collections that movies have made, as if they all go to our bank balance. 

My 1000^th time awakening has come when i was getting my mom operated on the eye for cataract. There was a provision to witness the surgery live from the observation gallery. And when i saw how Sookshamam ( delicate and subtle) the eye is, there is cornea, retina, pupil, fluid, optic nerve,  oh my god... anything can happen to the eye and get damaged a hundred times a day but still thank god nothing happens.  Can we take the credit for this? Hundred percent not, except in very few cases . May be it is not even possible to be careful all the time, about any part of the body as the correlation between injury, irresponsibility and goodness, wellness is not always scientific and mathematical. 

But still, we should not take anything  for granted. We must thank every part and cell of the body everyday and thank god for giving us all these wonderful things . if we really sit down and list out all that we are bestowed with and blessed with, we will all stop cribbing and feeling sad on what we don't have and what we keep seeking.

Only if we have the time, sensibility and basic courtesy to thank all that we have, only then we have right to seek what we don't have. This is the way to be happy. I want to thank the Agarwal hospital staff and doctors for very fantastic hospitality . They did not make us feel that we were visiting the hospital. They made me and my mom feel that we are visiting a good relatives place and my mom was treated like their mom. Special thanks to my colleague sarvanan without whom, i would still have neglected and prolonged taking my mom. Thanks all and thank god.