Friday, December 21, 2007
I give up- pretensiousness wins!
Candidness would win one day. This has been the mantra which i have chanted every day of life. But candidly speaking, the world has proved me wrong. While preparing for the Personal interview round of the MBA entrance exams i got to know that people who are straight in their answers, those who declare to the world that what they present is what they truly are, are the ones who lose out the most. If i say that when i took up engineering i was immature and could not judge if the decision was right or wrong for me then i have a high chance of being grabbed by the neck and thrown out of the institute. But if i cook up the story that i had planned in my tenth that i would be the greatest techno manager in this world and engineering was taken up to satisfy the techno part and an MBA would equip me to be a manager then nine out of ten times i would be greeted with open arms. similarly if you haven't faced any significant event in your like death of a close relative which has changed your life then you are encouraged to take a leaf out of a spinsters life and learn how to tell a tale. Now its unfathomable to me as to why a person should portray what he is not. why can't a man with limited abilities but immense inner drive be allowed to enter the so called heavenly gates of an mba school? Why is it that rhetoric is given preferance over candidness? Its frustrating to know that a person who has never given a serious thought about what to do in life, who by the sheer innate ability and not any planning has reached so far is allowed to go further while a man who eats, sleeps and dreams MBA is not allowed to follow his dreams because he is true to himself and to the world and is not willing to place mask over himself. I have read, met and seen such cases and after experiencing the preparations first hand i say that I GIVE UP! PRETENTIOUSNESS WINS!
I should be cared for and others can take a chill pill
When i wanted love i got love, when i wanted affection i got affection, when i wanted attention i got attention but when the time came to reciprocate i developed cold feet. this seems to be the attitude of people nowadays including myself who desire everything, receive everything but when the time demands that we adopt this role of a giver for others we shy away. What has made us so selfish?
The incident which triggered off this unpleasant train of thoughts is the way in which events are celebrated. take for instance diwali. nobody made it compulsory to give away gifts to people against one's will. but still people gift things which they wouldn't use themselves or worse forward last year's gifts which were no good to others. Now i wonder if there is a law which makes gifting compulsory. Weren't gifts meant to signify that i cared for you so much that i went to the extent of specially going to the market for it?
Another thought which troubles me sometimes is the postponing of birthday celebrations to some other day. it happens to everyone some year or the another. i feel amused as to why should birthday celebrations ever be postponed?? if they are to be postponed then they better be postponed to the same day next year as a birthday is as special as festivals like diwali, holi. eid and others. when they are never postponed as per the wishes of the people then why should birthday celebrations be postponed? i have never come across people who celebrate diwali a week or a fortnight after it was. i may sound silly hankering after a small thing as birthdays or gifts but to some it may just mean the whole world to be cared for a day
another thing which irks me like nothing else is gifting money or taking out the person to select the things which he or she wants and then telling the same person that its his/her gift.
Now give me a break!! who the hell in this world wants money as gift from people who are close to you. money gifts are acceptable either if you are broke or if the gifter is a long lost aunt.
Money gifts signify that either you are too worthless or the other person is insensitive.
the other way of gifting which involves taking out the person to a shop shows lack of creativity, insensitivity and utter callousness on the part of the gifter. frankly there are only a few people who care to gift a gift as it is meant to be. gifting involves taking out time, analyzing what the other person may like and then searching the shop for that particular thing.
its a tough tough worl for romatics who put heart over mind and care to love the small joys of life.
it may all sound silly hankering over such trivial things but if we think giving small pleasures to others is far better than waiting for a big opportunity to give. to a materialist it may all sound gibberish but a romantic can share how it feels
The incident which triggered off this unpleasant train of thoughts is the way in which events are celebrated. take for instance diwali. nobody made it compulsory to give away gifts to people against one's will. but still people gift things which they wouldn't use themselves or worse forward last year's gifts which were no good to others. Now i wonder if there is a law which makes gifting compulsory. Weren't gifts meant to signify that i cared for you so much that i went to the extent of specially going to the market for it?
Another thought which troubles me sometimes is the postponing of birthday celebrations to some other day. it happens to everyone some year or the another. i feel amused as to why should birthday celebrations ever be postponed?? if they are to be postponed then they better be postponed to the same day next year as a birthday is as special as festivals like diwali, holi. eid and others. when they are never postponed as per the wishes of the people then why should birthday celebrations be postponed? i have never come across people who celebrate diwali a week or a fortnight after it was. i may sound silly hankering after a small thing as birthdays or gifts but to some it may just mean the whole world to be cared for a day
another thing which irks me like nothing else is gifting money or taking out the person to select the things which he or she wants and then telling the same person that its his/her gift.
Now give me a break!! who the hell in this world wants money as gift from people who are close to you. money gifts are acceptable either if you are broke or if the gifter is a long lost aunt.
Money gifts signify that either you are too worthless or the other person is insensitive.
the other way of gifting which involves taking out the person to a shop shows lack of creativity, insensitivity and utter callousness on the part of the gifter. frankly there are only a few people who care to gift a gift as it is meant to be. gifting involves taking out time, analyzing what the other person may like and then searching the shop for that particular thing.
its a tough tough worl for romatics who put heart over mind and care to love the small joys of life.
it may all sound silly hankering over such trivial things but if we think giving small pleasures to others is far better than waiting for a big opportunity to give. to a materialist it may all sound gibberish but a romantic can share how it feels
Why do we hold ourselves back??
In a stroke of enlightenment while walking on the roads an idea struck me. i was wondering what keeps my friends, my generation from expressing themselves. the main question which troubled me as to why can't friends amongst themselves compliment each other or for that matter even reprimand when going down the wrong lane? Why is it that many times even compliments conceal a tinge of jealousy? Why is that even when we wish a friend of ours good luck and when that good luck rewards the person with some fruit, then that sweet fruit of labor turns us off?
Pondering on this question which occurs in my mind every now and then i finally struck gold! the problem according to me lies in the way children in our country are brought up. When we are toddlers we are asked to recite poems alphabets and what not in front of people to gather praise which we would not get otherwise. When we enter school from the nursery class itself, it is the brilliant boy who garners all the attention leaving behind people who try hard to garner some attention from themselves but are unable to. That sows the first seed of hatred for the brilliant in the minds of the slightly lesser gifted children and contempt for the laggards in the mind of the brilliant students. Now once the seeds are sowed, those seeds act as a dividing bush between those who perform and those who don't. But still this explanation answers some questions but leave out as to why my friends can't compliment each other. the reason is simple. though all of us belonging to a same group are exceptionally brilliant but still we are not equal. the bush which acted as a divide between us brilliant students and the laggards had its small little branches which can create divisions even at micro levels. At the school level a false sense of superiority could be nurtured but at our level where one outshines the other that false sense of superiority can no longer be satisfied. When i entered college i felt that people at the age of 18 would be mature enough to see through this futility of competitiveness which drives people away but strangely enough i have observed that older you grow the sillier you get. maybe thats the reason why people become senile at the age of sixty. why to say best of luck when you don't really mean it? why to say you are my friend when you don't wish to take up any responsibility which comes along with it? why to fake whole relationships which leave behind broken hearts?
Pondering on this question which occurs in my mind every now and then i finally struck gold! the problem according to me lies in the way children in our country are brought up. When we are toddlers we are asked to recite poems alphabets and what not in front of people to gather praise which we would not get otherwise. When we enter school from the nursery class itself, it is the brilliant boy who garners all the attention leaving behind people who try hard to garner some attention from themselves but are unable to. That sows the first seed of hatred for the brilliant in the minds of the slightly lesser gifted children and contempt for the laggards in the mind of the brilliant students. Now once the seeds are sowed, those seeds act as a dividing bush between those who perform and those who don't. But still this explanation answers some questions but leave out as to why my friends can't compliment each other. the reason is simple. though all of us belonging to a same group are exceptionally brilliant but still we are not equal. the bush which acted as a divide between us brilliant students and the laggards had its small little branches which can create divisions even at micro levels. At the school level a false sense of superiority could be nurtured but at our level where one outshines the other that false sense of superiority can no longer be satisfied. When i entered college i felt that people at the age of 18 would be mature enough to see through this futility of competitiveness which drives people away but strangely enough i have observed that older you grow the sillier you get. maybe thats the reason why people become senile at the age of sixty. why to say best of luck when you don't really mean it? why to say you are my friend when you don't wish to take up any responsibility which comes along with it? why to fake whole relationships which leave behind broken hearts?
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