Pressing right buttons at right time

In our day to day life we come across many people who seem to be always at right place at right time.The first reaction these people evoke in mortals like me is awe followed by a monologue...wish I could be this lucky .

Can people ride on luck every time? Is there something else also which makes them successful? May be some right decisions , some foresight  and yes of course some luck :). 

I think that these people press all the right buttons at right time in life.Though luck is an important factor in life but self assurance and self confidence also plays a big part in enabling people to press the right buttons.It is very easy to blame everything on luck but as they say  that opportunity knocks at your door only once.Wise people welcome the opportunity and make most of it while others just either  fail to recognize that or fail to put efforts to leverage it.

In a retrospect if people revisit decisions taken by them , they would certainly regret many of their decisions and would say if only it could have been done in other way. It happens with all of us. We have that tendency of looking back into past. Looking back into past is not a bad thing provided one just takes learning from there but it gets into a bad zone if people start living in it day out and day in.

I get in that regret zone quite frequently but off late I have made peace with myself !  I am trying to use my regrets as a teacher.


After all - "Mistakes are the biggest teachers which one can have in life ". I am pressing the right button for once and all by bowing to my teachers :).

Dharamsala....in the lap of mountains

Dalai Lama is not the only reason people should talk about Dharamsala.I know people would say Cricket Stadium is another one. Agree , but there are many other aspects of Dharamsala beyond Dalai Lama and Cricket stadium.

I have had a chance of observing Dharamsala very closely. Thanks to the  school vacations which gave me chance to spend my time  in Dharamsala with my grandparents.This is the place which is literally at the footsteps of mountains.If you start trekking up , It will take maximum of one hour to land your foot at one of the hills of lower Himalayas.The hills have little streams which turn to gurgling rivulets while their journey down the hill.Few steps up the hills and you get closer to clouds.You can see yourself walking in the clouds.The flora changes as you go up. One can see pine tree line getting changed into cedar tree lines as the gradient increases.

Dharamsala is also known for it's incessant rainfall.The rainfall brings that magnificent shine in flora.However in summers , Dharamsala can be quite harsh.It can get quite scorching in summers but the heats gives way to cool breeze as soon as rain arrives.Rain is quite a frequent visitor.This is the place which can boast about beautiful temples like Kunal Pathri  and Bhagsu Naag. Kunal Pathri is in the heart of pine tree forest.I am not sure of now but few years back it used to be like that. One had to trek through pine forest (Cheel gaadi in local language) to reach this temple. Bhagsu Naag is located in higher parts of Dharamsala. One can have beautiful bird's eye view of Dharamsala town on way to Bhagsu Nath.

Civil lines have some old nice looking palatial homes.It is home to many prominent people of Dharamsala. Kotwali Bazaar is the main market .Few kilometers up from Kotwali bazaar is Mecloed Ganj.This is a Tibetean center and one can shop his or her heart out here.It has wonderful eateries both national and international cuisine.You can not miss the confectionery shop by the name of Narojee's .It is there since British time.It still has old world charm to it.On way to Mecloed Ganj , there is a cemetery which is straight out from pages of Gothic Novel.The character of Dharamsala town is very different from the character of it's upper parts .Upper parts have been more taken by foreigners and it seems more of foreign land than Indian.
But whatever it is , Dharamsala still remains the quaint town which just takes pressure off you.

Are gadgets making us under utilize our brain

I have started struggling for words .Sometimes they just sit on tongue but  never come out :(  Has it been happening to you guys too. Well I can understand that I am not that young but I am not that old too  that I start forgetting stuff.

I gave it a little thought and after a while I realized that this is nothing to do with age. It is to do with practice.I think I have been not using my wits as I should have been. I have been just whiling away my time and doing absolutely nothing constructive. Though I certainly feel that life is not all about taking pressures especially when they can be avoided but  is always better to have one challenging task at hand  at a given point of time. It really stimulates brain and keeps brains and emotions in control.

We belong to always online kind of generation.Our reliance on gadgets (read smart phones/tabs ) is getting heavier day by day. For any single piece of information we just punch in some keys on our gadgets and we are served with express information . Even for doing simple math for day to day transactions , gadget comes as a savior. What a brain wreak we have become. We are not doing any mental calculations , we always have internet at a click away .Whatever information we want to seek , we never query our brain instead go straight to our phones.There is a lot of information lying in the brain unused as we are not even getting it used.What is the use of tools which never gets used so what is the use of accumulating information when you are not using it !It is obviously turning to fossil.

I get so amazed when I see how people of non internet era do calculations so fast and remember so.Even if they are carrying gadgets , their reliance on them is just for a voice call and nothing more than that.Unlike us who see gadget as panacea.

I have decided to decrease my dependency on gadgets from now on and start taking services of my own CPU rather than some artificial CPU .I have decided to start using less of gadgets for day today life.Starting with  remembering phone numbers of near and dear ones and dialing them by numbers instead of stored names. Saying bye to plastic money wherever I can , doing crosswords ,Sudoku ...

Lets see how far can I go !

Precious five minutes sleep..

Oh is it already time....how can i get five more minutes ? This is the first brainwave which strikes you in the morning.
One feels sleepy the most when it is time to get up? I am not the first one to state this paradox. I am just the humble follower of this philosophy. I am also one of many doing my math of getting extra five minutes every morning whenever my alarm clock goes off or someone is yelling at me for the umpteenth time to get up.

This is what I feel for my alarm clock in the morning -

And this is what my megalomaniac clock thinks...

Anyhow coming back to five minutes - the thrill which one gets by stealing five minutes for oneself from ones own time does not find any explanation in the realms of logic hungry world. Don't they say that curiosity killed the cat. Therefore somethings should be left without answers. What do you say ?

The feeling which you get by just thinking that you still have few more minutes to get up gives you some divine kind of solace.The moment you start you timer, 5 minutes seems to be big time but somehow when the alarm goes again after snooze....you start getting this familiar feeling .....Oh is it already time to get up...five more minutes please. ...and the cycle goes on and on.

These precious five minutes are actually not absolute but very elastic  five minutes. Elasticity depends upon the disposition of the person. These can extend in multiple iterations amounting to hour or hours .

What is the elastic limit of your five minutes?Mine is around 30 minutes :-)
 

Let's not be slaves of some random survey..

Every now and then we come across some survey findings in newspapers, health magazines or internet. One time the surveys would say that it is sin to eat egg and after a decade or so , they will tell a different story singing tunes about eggs.

The other day I was reading about the desi ghee(clarified butter) survey which states that the our humble ghee is not as much villain as it has been made out to be in past few years. In fact it is recommended that we should have at least a spoon of ghee everyday .

Similar is the case with rice. One of the headings in health magazine  was screaming..."Rice may be not that bad after all". Poor rice is the first thing to get crossed from diet when it comes to healthy eating.

Antioxidants is the another wave people are riding on. There is a lot of talks doing rounds about them. No doubt they are good for health and we start thinking that if something is good for us we have a liberty of taking it in abundance but that is not the case. Now many journals say that too many of them can cause cancer.

We should not become slaves of whims or fancies of these surveys. Everything in moderation is perfect be it eating eggs , enjoying sweets or eating scrumptious ice creams.Extreme of everything is bad and our body knows the best. If you are honest to yourself , you will know where you are faltering because you body will start showing that.

It's just a matter of getting into the middle of spectrum and not to be on the extreme side in life.

Eat ,eat eat but do not forget the principle of moderation! After all healthy body and healthy mind is a team work of various food items.

 Give due respect to each and every item !