Best Before -

As a new chapter unveils in Australia,  I am closely observing the different lifestyles in here. But one thing is for sure. These people perceive everything with an expiry date. Yes, “Beginning with the end in the mind” is a good way as put forward by Stephen Covey in his ‘First Things First’. However, thinking so, makes your life shallow.

Lets talk about it..

Welcome to the age of manufacture and sell-by dates! 

are we living with built-in obsolescence?  Everything we love, experience, treasure seems to come with a sell-by date today?

So what’s the difference between your Nokia E72 and your yoga guru? What sets apart your S Class from the Souza you bought at the last online auction? How are your state-of-the-art Bose speakers any different from your music collection if your mind is already hardwired to reject everything you love and pursue today as obsolete tomorrow. Even the movie you watch this weekend and rave about is gone by the time next Friday comes. You need a new shot, a new high, a new purpose to your existence every morning when you wake up. Yesterday’s gone, over, done with.

An interesting lifestyle. But I just cant follow it.

Cricket’s a great example. The game as we once knew it is dead. The cold stats of its achievements lie in the morgue and mock us while the game has morphed from a 5 day local spectator sport into a 4 hour reality show for millions of TV addicts desperately seeking entertainment not just from the game but also from the antics of its star promoters, its players, its charming cheerleaders, and its Gotham City underbelly of bettors, bribers, match fixers. What happened to Bodyline? What happened to the frenzied nationalism that once fired great players like Douglas Jardine? It’s gone. Cricketers play for Money, teams, leagues, Sponsorships and a shot at stardom now. They go out as quickly as they come in.

No, this wasn’t always the case. Everything didn’t have a sell-by date when I was growing up. In fact, most things we valued seemed immortal. That’s why we cried our hearts out when we lost someone close. I even cry when I fight!  We went from bookshop to bookshop, library to library to seek out a book we wanted to read. We waited eagerly for months to watch a movie and spent years thereafter discussing it, dissecting it. Paintings were treasured as heirlooms and hung on our walls for generations. Marriage jewellery was passed on from mother to daughter or daughter-in-law. Even wedding saris were carefully folded and kept away in steel trunks to be passed on. I still have the HMT watch my grand father took off his wrist and gave me when I turned 18. I still wear his ring sometimes, tight (:P) as it is. It has never struck me to trade them in.

Our tastes didn’t chase fashions either. I listened to Backstreet Boys with the boys in school. Yet when my father listened to Mandolin Srinivas in the concerts, I used to attend and listened intently. That didn’t stop me from discovering Kishore Kumar or Yesudas. There was no conflict between the classical and the popular. There were no choices to be made. We experienced and enjoyed everything.

No one was in a desperate rush to shuffle his iPod. So Rafi, Mukesh, Hemant Kumar, Lata, Asha, Kishore survived for years on end. Satyajit Ray’s following grew throughout his life. So did the admirers of Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, Ritwick Ghatak. No one worried about their sell-by date. We didn’t even know if they had one. In fact, we worried what would happen when they were not around. Nehru voiced this when he said, on Gandhi’s death, that the light had gone out of our lives. It was not a torch battery he was referring to, that had run out its course. It was a life that had enriched ours.

Let’s look at it today. How long do you give MJ before he becomes a blip in your memory? Do you recall the lines of Billie Jean? Or you remember Lucky Ali, who was busting music charts till a few years back? Or Made in India, a song that nearly upstaged Hindi film music and brought Indipop centrestage? Or Alisha Chinai who sang it and became the heart throb of the nation? Remember the Colonial Cousins? Nazia Hassan? They came in spectacularly packaged, grabbed your attention, vanished. Poof! That’s the way it’s all going to be. The time for grandmom’s recipes is over unless you know how to repackage it and give it a new shelf life.

So sit back and enjoy what the market sends your way. Revel in the 15 minutes of fame each of these products enjoy. Experience them. Savour them. Wipe your memory when you're through. That’s the way today is. That’s the way Warhol predicted it would be.

Thank God, I am not like that. I love forever, I experience forever, I respect forever, I eat forever.

Weak,

JD.

Making of the Boring

I am heavily low profile. I am not a fancy major guy. I am a gawky 24 year old. I am rarely on Facebook. I rarely trawl malls and try out new brands, new restaurants. I avoid pulp fiction and Hollywood blockbusters don't excite me overmuch. Dating a celebrity is not my idea of a great evening out. And no, I don't go to Hard Rock Cafes to party or Bahrain for F1. I don't even own a Blackberry or an iPad. I haven't worn a watch in days but am almost always on time. And no, I don't consider myself famous, never did.

Now doesn't this make me the perfect bore?

I worked in one company for my livelihood, wrote for my pleasure. I walk into bookshops, sit in a corner and read. I roam around a lot because it allows me to escape the ennui of routine. You can recognise me anywhere by my faded jeans and white shirt. A grey waistcoat and sneakers complete the ensemble.

I listen to all music, enjoy them all. From Bryan Adams to Kishore Kumar to Raghu Dixit to SP. But yes, I love music where the words touch my heart. I love Sahir and Kaifi. I re-read old classics. But I enjoy watching Tom and Jerry too. It bothers me when Inception tests my intelligence, and my patience. But that doesn't mean I watch Kya Super Kewl hain hum. I would rather watch ZNMD or Kahaani. Mystery and magic are what I seek from life.

So rarely do I go to parties that people have stopped inviting me. The company of one thoughtful intelligent person excites me far more than people in the collective trying very hard to enjoy themselves. I find the world a charming place, best savoured on one's own or with someone you love.

Even then I am deadly boring. S&M doesn't titillate me. Mozart may. Alcohol makes me drowsy. And the current obsession over food I find gross. I eat little, speak less, grab the passing moment. Neither greed nor gluttony excite me. I wouldn't notice if Gordon Ramsay was in the kitchen. It's the person I am with who makes it happen. I never eat alone. The only food I miss is what I don't get. Ergo, nostalgia food. I miss food from little known places that have shut down. I remember a city by what I ate there, usually happenstance street food.

I believe our hearts teach us how to react. A book, a film, a song may move me to tears at a special moment. On another, they could leave me untouched. That's why it's so tough being me. You have to carry your moment with you. Trees, dogs, cats, birds, flowers, squirrels running on the fence, the sound of laughter work any time for me, and the delight of walking through unknown streets, empty fields, unseen dreams. I love them all and wish I could pass on the memories to those I care for instead of the trinkets we gift each other and so easily forget.

And evolved the JD. And I am not a DJ. The reticent – boring JD.

The BusinessMan

Welcome back! Last few months were hectic as I am scaling up to the next big thing though it involves a web of uncertainties. Drawing inspiration from the Jamaican proverb - To eat an egg, you must break the shell, I am now in the process of getting out of the safe shell I was in and learning to sail. Time knows whether it is going to be a hit or a flop. But I am positive. 

Lets talk Business.

The once much maligned caste system, complex and inscrutable as it may appear to us, once had deep roots in our society. The Brahmins pursued knowledge and statecraft. Kshatriyas fought and protected our honour and sense of nationhood. Banias ran business and trade. The sub castes (which ran into many hundreds) played their own roles. It all worked perfectly well till the lower castes, who got the rough end of the deal, began to protest. They refused to do the jobs assigned to them by history (many of which were demeaning) and sought a new status in the emerging India. This was but natural and ended up largely dismantling the edifice of caste. Merit became the new yardstick.

But the triumph of merit created its own problems. We see fewer people today doing what their forefathers did so amazingly well. Many have migrated to new jobs, without the skills required to back them. Others have become what can be best described as caste refugees. And, funnily, everyone wants to do the Bania’s job. So, however skilled they may be at what they do, most people now want to be in business, make lots of money. So from a great nation of many castes, many skills we are slowly becoming, like the US, a country where everyone, from teachers to healers to rock stars believe that God sent them to this planet with the sole mission of making money. The scramble for lucre has become so obsessive, so obscene that the dignity of many professions has simply vanished.

Where have the great thinkers gone? The legendary healers? The great musicians, painters, philosophers, teachers, leaders of change? Everyone seems to have joined the Gold Rush today. Painters talk more about the price of their canvases than the magic of their craft. Authors discuss sales graphs more than what they write about. Doctors spend more time arguing over their fees than the treatment. Teachers don’t talk about acquiring knowledge. They talk about coaching classes to help you pass exams, find lucrative jobs. Even fortune tellers blindside you to love and tell you how you can make more money by wearing some silly gemstone.

Cricketers have long ceased to be sportsmen. They are like cattle, valued by how much they fetch at slave auctions. So you write off a Saurav or a Brian Lara simply because no one bid for them at the IPL. A politician’s power is assessed not by what he does for India but by how much he stashes away in Switzerland. This country has become just another bazaar where everything’s bought or sold, from spectrum to wakf property to pretty underage brides to seats in Parliament. Everyone’s a Bania today. Everyone’s trading. No one buys art to hang it on their walls. They stash it away in vaults. Over 50% of flats sold in Mumbai, possibly the world’s most expensive real estate, are bought by investors or by politicians and Government officers to park their ill gotten cash. This ensures that prices stay at a level where actual home makers can’t afford it.

Life is not transactional. Nor is friendship, love, marriage, jobs. All around me today I see this bustling marketplace where everyone’s transacting, I understand now why our forefathers created the caste system. For all its faults, it allowed our society to have currencies other than cash. There was knowledge, skill, wisdom. There was courage, honour, pride. There was art, craft, music, the mysterious science of healing. There were so many things that made life magical. Now there’s just one currency driving us: Money. We have become a nation of Banias. Or, as the Americans would proudly say, entrepreneurs.

I am getting into Business as well. But I will never join the Gold Rush. 

Jd.

Independence!

5 months! No blog! How busy I am! Busy loving. Busy working. Busy cracking jokes. Busy playing cricket. Busy visiting places. Busy watching movies - I am waiting for Businessman. Had a memorable new year celebration in the sea. I have cold. Though my jamoon is trying to make it disappear with her talk, my cold just doesn't go. And I was trying to take steam in an old fashioned way while my cool Ajji comes to me with this machine which gives steam out. I was surprised. Machine for everything, I say. And my mom is in Mumbai.

There was a time I could multiply 891 by 992, call my friends, family, followers without referring to a phone book, remember the birthdays of those who mattered most to me, spell every word I knew without the slightest hesitation. I never owned a dictionary nor a phone book. I remembered the statistics of every Indian batsmen.

Today I use my cell phone to add and subtract, recall phone numbers and faces, remind me about birthdays. My laptop tries to correct my spellings, language, grammar and often makes mistakes itself. I can still beat the computer at chess but it's so easy I have long given up playing. No, I don't need to remember anything at all. Google helps me find it in an instant. Who directed Blood Diamond? How to make a bomb? How to fool your manager? What is K V Kamath’s educational qualification? Google has an answer for most things, from curing your neighbor’s Lab's loosies to which old bookshop in Bombay may have the speeches of Nani Palkhivala on Taxes and Budgets. When Google fails, there's twitter. Somebody, somewhere will always have an answer to the question bothering you. The answer need not always be right. None of us look for right answers in life. We look for answers that comfort us. It's a bit like finding God. If he doesn't exist, we'll have to manufacture him.

No, it is not Alzheimer's nor stress (nor the refusal to eat fish) that's slaying my memory cells. It's this continuous acceptance of technology that's being thrust into my face, demanding it be used. I may not be as quick as a calculator but I'm certainly better than a dictionary or thesaurus. I may not be able to do Rubik's cube in under two minutes, but I'm ready to take a Mensa test with anyone. The problem is not in my faculties. It lies in the dependencies being forced onto me by technology I have no need for. I am ashamed I have to remember my grand-father's death anniversary by an alarm on my cellphone.

I'm not alone. That's pretty obvious. Without Facebook, I am sure nobody wishes nobody on birthdays. Nobody knows what’s happening in other’s lives. Even I forget so many things. Thank God she reminds me.

Do we need so much technology in our lives? Do we really need taps that go off on their own or lights that come on when we walk into a room? Don't we want to do these things ourselves? Do we really need 10 digit phone numbers that no one can recall without assistance? Must we perfunctorily celebrate all birthdays? Why not stick to 10 people who really matter to you and call them instead of sending fancy bouquets to hundreds of people with notes from florists? Why send a V-Day e-card when a simple kiss can do? Why do I need 8GB of music on my iPod while travelling to office? Why must technology isolate us instead of bonding us with a real world of real people, real passions? How can internet sex be a substitute for The Real Thing? Yet porn is the biggest business on the net. How can any cell phone chat (with a zillion call drops) be a substitute for talking face to face with someone you love? Yet 700 million cell phone users here cootchie coo on it.

So as this year begins, I make this promise to myself. Let me slave technology, not let it run my life for me.

Jd.

Wanted ?

Rainy season! Hot Samosas! Sleeps! K'taka politics! The confused life as it is. But it's good.

Dravid is back in the ODI team! As a Bangalorian, what else does one need! But I believe since he's inducted, the no. of overs might be escalated. It might be 75 overs match instead of 50.

Saw Zindagi na milegi..something. Liked the company than the movie.
I watch only comedy films which make me forget some mess for sometime. But I do watch serious movies but that need to be exceptionally good to catch my attention.

The film I like the most is Manhattan (Woody Allen's ofcourse). If you ever want to catch a movie that captures the magic of a real relationship, watch the story of Ike and Tracy. The movie starts with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and quick shots of the jagged New York skyline. And as the camera zips across the city showing you its incredible energy, you hear Woody Allen talk about New York as the Philharmonic swells under Zubin Mehta’s baton, and you arrive in Manhattan, inside Elain’s Café. Ike and Tracy with their friends, as the movie introduces you to their world, their relationship.

But the most memorable part of Manhattan is the end where Ike, sprawled out on a couch as geekily as only Woody Allen can, wonders darkly whether his life is worth living at all. That’s when he tries to list ten things that make him happy. Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong’s Potatohead Blues. Swedish movies. Flaubert’s Sentimental Education. Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Cezanne’s Apples and pears. The crabs at Sam Wo’s. He sighs and then adds, almost as an afterthought, Tracy’s face. And that’s when everything changes. Instantly.

Ike tries to call Tracy. Her phone is busy. He runs out of his apartment, onto the street, tries to hail a taxi but they are all occupied. He runs faster. The music picks up. He tries a phone booth. The number’s still busy. He keeps running, running till he arrives where she lives-- just as Tracy is about to leave for London. The dialogue between the two is possibly the most amazing bit of writing I have ever seen on screen. To repeat it is impossible. You have to watch it to understand why Manhattan is one of the finest films ever made. Its simplicity, its poignance changes your whole take on life and love and everything that comes in between.

But this is not about Manhattan. It’s not about Woody Allen either. It’s about that soliloquy where Ike asks himself about the ten things that make life worth living, and chances upon the eleventh-- Tracy’s face. How often do we ask ourselves this question in the privacy of our most lonely moments? How often do we think of things that make life worth living? At different times, I have listed different things. Then I have stopped midway and changed a few. I have paused, pondered, argued with myself every time over every one of those ten things but never hesitated for a moment when I had to think of the eleventh.

Every one of us has a Tracy’s face secretly tucked away in our hearts. It takes courage to acknowledge that, as Ike did, and run out to where we need to go to touch base with our deepest loves. (Mine was simple though - right click and add on comm) More often than not we are running away from it. The only way you can ever see Tracy’s face is by sitting down, asking the first question: What are the things that make life worth living? You will be surprised at how many there actually are. I have to pick and choose every time. It’s not about permanence. The ephemeral will do just as well like say eating the world's best Dosa at CTR? You can change the list as often as you want. You can make mistakes. But every time you reach the end, Tracy’s face will appear before your eyes, almost as if by magic. That’s why good films are so important. If you allow them, they can actually change your life. They can make you see things you have not seen, feel stuff you have not felt. And, if you are brave enough to open your heart to them, they will teach you how to let go of your fears and run for it. Like Ike did, down the maddening streets of Manhattan, the moment he remembered Tracy’s face.

Think over it. And regarding Zindagi Na Milegi Dubara, I am glad I was the pillow.

Jd.

The Silver Thread

Death is such an intelligent entity, isn't it?

It was Winston Churchill who said that one mark of a great man is the power of making lasting impressions upon people he meets; and another is so to have handled matters that the course of after events is continually affected by what he did. A.V.Subramanyam - loved and respected by hundreds as Subbanna - fulfilled both these hard tests.

If greatness consists in the combination of character and intellect of the highest order and if it is to be measured by the lasting value of the solid work done in the fields of thought and action, my maternal grandfather - Subramanyam was beyond question one of the outstanding men.

The man died in 2007 because of Cancer.

Flow through -

I am luckier than most people. I knew that he was dying. I was, you could say, ready for it. He was old, but could have lived a couple of decades more. He was born in the third decade of the last century. He had seen everything the world has forgotten now. - the coming of the first radio; typewriter.

We had provided the best medical care. Multiple degrees holding doctors, state of the art medical equipments - I believe the journey will be over at the predestined hour, irrespective of the medical care which money can buy. He lived with his grief for 2 long years till the Cancer mercifully took his memory (and to an extent, I guess) his pain away. He stopped recognizing me and all those around him and lived, like a frightened child, in a dark fearful world of his own surrounded by phantons he alone knew and could recognise. Once in a while, a window would open for a moment and the light would come streaming in. He would recognise me and say a few familiar words. Otherwise, he would lie down in a dark corner and cringe. Nurse after nurse came and went. Likewise, the doctors. It was an unbearable duty.

He would be hospitalised now and then. But I can never forget those terrible days when he lay in bed, a small, crumpled, little figure, shrunk to half his size, combating pain and suffering without anyone by his side. For he recognised no one; he did not even understand where he was and why there were so many tubes and needles poked into him. I could see the fear in the eyes. I could see the pain, the helplessness, the complete lack of understanding as to why he lay strapped to a bed for days and none of us around him would set him free.

Everytime he was admitted to a hospital, he came back home smaller in size. And even smaller in spirit. More lost than he ever was. More confused. More bereft of hope than I had ever seen him. The big banyan tree under whose shadow we all played and grew up had shrivelled into this tiny, dry plant whose twigs seemed as if they would break off at the slightest rush of wind. He was so frail, so frightened that I left him alone. There was no communication possible between us. It was only love that kept us bonded. When he cried out loud we would go up to him and take his face between our hands and he would keep quiet. Even though he did not recognise us, there was something in the way he responded to our touch that told me he knew he was in safe hands. It was like hiding under a bed during an earthquake. It gave him some hope but that was all. Fear hijacked his entire life.

Fear of what? I do not know. Doctors say that it is a strange, all encompassing, never leaving fear that all patients suffering from a mysterious cancer feel. An inexplicable, unknown miasma of dread that eventually destroys their will to live. I could see that happen to him. He would occasionally disappear for days inside a huge, ugly smog of hopelessness and not speak, not eat for days. We would plead, beg, shout, scream, threaten him. In fact, do anything and everything to wake him up to the world around him but he refused to budge. You could describe his world as virtual, sick. An imaginary world induced by the illness he suffered from but for him it was the only world he had, he knew.

I sat beside him for long days, watching him die. It was an experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The helplessness, the pain, the desperation of watching someone you love more than yourself dying before your eyes and not being able to do anything about it. I prayed. But what can prayers achieve in the face of death? I could not even cry. I cried, in fact, a whole week later when I realised that I would never ever meet him again. He was my best friend, my only confidante..

He is gone now. He died yesterday or was it today, who knows? All I know is he is dead and I am left no wiser about life and death, happiness and sorrow, joy and anguish. The pain, ofcourse, will ease.

My Grandfather personified the courage never to submit or yield. You could truthfully apply to him the great words of Milton:

"...Unmoved,

Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,

His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;

Nor number, nor example with him wrought

To swerve from truth or change his constant mind"

I wish his mordant wit runs like a SILVER THEAD throughout my life.

Jd.

Inter-Alia

Phew!..That was some week. Happening one.

It’s been business, as usual these days. Everything’s so hollow upon closer scrutiny.

Meanwhile, I had my b’day. Celebrated with my relatives at an Elephant Training Camp, about 90 kms from Jog Falls. It was awesome. Then had one more bash with my closest friends. Got lovely gifts.

Birthdays usually begin with resolutions. The most common resolutions, I have noticed, are to give up some forms of addiction or the other. Over the years I have seen many of my friends resolve to give up smoking, drinking, chocolates, caffeine, speeding, hash, carbs, transfats, going late to work, etc. The list is long but, luckily, most resolutions don’t last that long. They are not meant to.

My birthday was on a Monday. I did my usual. I switched off my everyday life, pondered over things that matter to me, none of them of any earth shaking importance to either me or the world at large. I went into what I call a retreat. It’s a space I occupy for a couple of days. Yes, there were things I was supposed to do which I didn’t, much to the disappointment of my friends and family. But then, this is one day I keep for myself. And no, I have no desire on that day to contemplate any kind of denial. Ergo, I don’t make any resolutions. On the contrary, I try on every birthday to acquire some new addictions, live my life richer, fuller, learn something new.

Dad had a silly request asking me to pursue MS abroad. I laugh when I type this too. I said No, much to his disappointment but I have promised him that I would study something else in the best school here. At 56, I don’t understand why he wants me to follow the standard template dream which the others all did. It’s a silly idea to spend the best years elsewhere enduring a hundred thousand pains, missing a hundred lac fun. I don’t wanna get into the logistics (laughs). I am very direct and the details can pain the readers (the standard template readers).

Well, I had an interesting TO-DO (a hundred things to do before I die) list made recently. I wanna have everything ticked against it. Everybody will have this list, isnt it? We just don’t work towards it. All the big things I set out to do, I am pretty much done with – (I successfully got out of Manipal (laughs)). But all the small things, the ones that really excite me, I have missed out on the way. It’s no use trying to climb EVEREST if you can’t make a perfect Masala Dosa. Most of us don’t figure this out till it’s too late. And the reason is: We have all been programmed to perpetually hunt down and fulfil the big tasks of life. By the time we get down to the fun stuff, the successes have taken their toll and we have lost the ability to see the smaller things, let alone enjoy them. Would Mukesh, after breaking all those world records and making all that money, get time to go back to his childhood stamp collection and find a Penny Black?

That’s the problem with success. In fact, that’s the problem with our lives. We are always chasing The Big Dream. It’s only when you fulfil your larger than life ambitions that you realise how hollow they actually were. Ask Bill Gates. Or Warren Buffet. When they realised how boring it was to reach the pinnacle of wealth, they turned to charity. They are now spending double the time and effort they spent on amassing their wealth on trying to get rid of it in the name of philanthropy. They should be actually wondering why they didn’t do it in the first place, like Mother Teresa. She created the biggest empire of charity in the world with Rs 10, a pair of blue bordered white saris, a bucket and a mug to call her own and she did a damned good job of it. Dr.Devi Shetty is doing the right thing, isn’t it?

It’s these small things in our written list that are the most important. You miss them even more when you succeed with the big ones. And if you don’t succeed with the big ones, it’s worse. You consume your whole life chasing them. In the process, the real stuff goes missing. And those are the things that make life worth living. Any idiot can make lots of money, and many do. Just look around you and see if I am wrong. Would you really like to spend your whole life migrating from a BMW to an Audi or a Dior to a Bottega, or would you prefer to take a chance and choose a life that allows you to experience the magic, the vastness, the excitement of being on this amazing planet? One of the things in life I miss out on doing is what Bear Grylls keeps doing all the time. Like entering the Mojave Desert hanging inverted under a biplane at 8,000 feet. Since you can’t skydive from a biplane, the pilot flips the plane upside down and drops you out. Now that’s something I would like to experience. I would love to be lost in the middle of Bandipur forest or Kodachadri mountains trying to find my way out. Or find myself in Aokigahara, the Sea of Trees at the base of Mount Fuji, where not only wild animals but also the great demons reside.

I would have liked to play chess better than Bobby. Or solve the Riemann Hypothesis or exact a bank robbery as written in Artemis Fowl – The genius intelligent criminal he is, problems that cleverer men than me have struggled over unsuccessfully for years.Or argue like Sorabjee. I would have liked to challenge Blake Edwards, film director and brilliant card shark who died to a game of blackjack. He had boasted he could take anyone to the cleaners in a game of cards and make love to a woman at the same time. I am sure, with practise, I could improve on that. I wish I could converse better with dogs, particularly the ones roaming the street outside my home. Or go boating in the Bhadra river where legend has it that there are many whirlpools which has sucked in hundreds of men. Or sing a Kishore Kumar song for her to the perfect tune. Or pour coffee 180 degrees from glass to glass like the Sukh Sagar fellow does it. These are things I always wanted to do.

They are not really all that small, when you look back at them. But then nothing on your bucket list is ever big or small. It’s what you make of them. Life’s not transactional. Life’s about choices. Most of us are so busy chasing our standard template dreams that we never notice the ones on the sideline. It’s only when you get back to your list or update it from time to time that you notice all the stuff you missed out on. And then, all that you actually achieved looks so trite, trivial and unnecessary that you wish you had another shot at life. Life is definitely not VAT-69.

Have fun. Gotta study.

ISB calling? Ssshhhhh..

Scale, speed and silence.

Vintage Jd.