Bio-data of an Alien

परत एकदा..

माझ्या मना सांग तिला
माझ्या मनी राहू नकोस

झुकवून तुझी नजर अशी
माझ्या मनात पाहू नकोस

किंचित वर तुझी नजर
घेऊन का बघतेस मला?

माझं अंतर धर्तीवर
पाउल पुढे घेऊ नकोस

धूळमाती, हिरवी पाती
सगळं सगळं देईन तुला

सांजराती तेलवाती
उजेड घेऊन जाऊ नकोस..

-यशोधन

It Is A Cruel World

Yes it is! It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you do. It doesn’t matter if it was your fault or somebody else’s. It doesn’t matter if you had had this same shit happened to you three times in the past. If you are found in a wrong place at a wrong time, you will get punished.

When you are riding a bicycle, you don’t want to get caught in front of a truck. No matter who leaves the proper lane, it’s you who is going to pay the price. Slippery floor doesn’t get laughed at if you fall by slipping on it. When it rains, you get wet even if you already had gone through it twice on the same day.

Of course, the opposite is also true. But I don’t feel like explaining it. You get the idea.

It’s an unfair world. And make sure that you are in a position to thank God for this!

Things Often Lead To The Opposites

I recently came across this quote and like not unusual, this provoked my thoughts. We often come across things which have layers of meanings hidden deep inside them. On the first sight, they look too plain and simple. But give it some time and you discover the deeper layer which you couldn’t first see.

Talking of this particular quote, it was plain and obvious. You do something in excess and it produces a very opposite of the desired effect. Consider eating as example. If you eat too much, you get indigestion. That causes you to lose taste in food. And you end up with a completely opposite effect. If you get more, you enjoy it less.

Now I gave this a little thought and in no time realized that the opposite is also true. If you do not eat and stay hungry (for a sane period of time), it enhances your ability to digest food. And on the same lines, it also makes you enjoy even relatively simple food. If you get less, you enjoy it more.

But again, there is a third layer. When you eat too much, you miss many of the details. That is, your tongue misses many shades of flavors, your nose misses many shades of smells and your guts miss many proteins the food has to offer. If you eat less, you get a detailed view and feel of every dimension of the food. If you get less, you know more about it.

One more thing. All what is said above is not the demand and supply rule of economics. Yes, that rule is also true (I guess), but there is certainly more in life than economics.

And as usual, these principles apply to all the things you do in your life.

Uncertainty Principle of Life

The other day, when I was once again reminded about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, I started to think about me. Or should I say a thought sparked in.

By the way, to put it simply, the uncertainty principle says that a fundamental limit on the accuracy with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known. In other words, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be controlled, determined, or known.

Now what it has to do with our lives? You don’t know it unless you are in control of and responsible for something. I am a web designer. I want to create great and user friendly websites for basic users. For this, I have to go through a large number of websites created by other designers and developers. But by doing this, I sort of choose to go on advanced user level. And at the same time, I cease to know precisely the needs of a basic user.

In the same way, when you turn into a parent, you have to think like one. But for being a good parent, you want to know or guess what your child thinks. But as you assume your new role of parenting, it gets increasingly difficult to think like a child and to read a child’s mind.

I have came across a large numbers of lecturers and teachers in my life who, when left alone, are masters in their subjects. But when the try to explain it, they fail miserably. That is because they fail to read the needs of the minds of their students.

That is one more reason for you to want to achieve a state of perfect balance in your life. Running blindly in a direction is easy, but knowing where to slow down or where to stop and doing so can be incredibly difficult. But doing exactly that is what makes all the difference.

Steal Their Ideas, Don’t Just Copy Them!

Corporate world is full of copy cats. People try to make an exact copy of whatever is successful in recent times. Be it some product, a movie, TV serial or a book. It’s alright when people do it on local level or in the form of some stepping stone from where they actually plan to go somewhere.

Apple (read – Steve Jobs) is the best known example of copying things successfully. But when it copied things, it changed them so much for better that it looked like a totally different thing, which established Apple as their owner. And as these things were now available in much better form, original ideas became worthless. This was something more than copying. This was stealing.

When you copy something, the original thing remains with the original and rightful owner. What you can get is (at the most) as good returns as the original owner gets. But when you steal, you become the owner. The original rightful owner ceases to be in possession of that thing (or the fruits of it). Apple (you know what to read) had mastered this art.

But what happens when another top level company tries to copy Apple?

You must have seen the popular 1984 commercial by Apple which was aired only once and gave the company promotion worth of millions of dollars. The commercial was aimed at IBM, the then computing giant. It was (hopefully) original idea which worked as a charm for apple.

But after two decades or so, BlackBerry tries to do the same with the current tech giant – Apple. Though it gained somewhat popularity as a gimmick amongst some Internet users, it never delivered what BlackBerry aimed for. Because, they had just copied the idea. And the presentation was crude. Apple didn’t have to strike back, but it sort of did.

Moral of the story? Don’t just copy their ideas, steal them!

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रिते रिते मन

  तुला भेटल्यापासून

  जसे वाचलेले सारे

  कुणी जावे विसरून

आता अंतरात माझ्या

  

गच्च आभाळ भरून

तुझ्या होकाराची वाट

  बघ पाहतो दुरून

तोड बंध सारे

  जाऊ दे पाऊस पडून

  कशी होशील हिरवी

 थोडी भिजल्यावाचून?
-यशोधन