When I saw the Moon before the dawn
It was still shining bright
I asked Him the reason for the shine
And all the pleasant light

He said to me He saw someone
I am dying to see
The shine is just but the glow from her face
That is reflecting on me

He said to me she waits for me
from dawn to dawn
Awaiting on the path
You’ll be coming from

With this the Moon dimmed a bit,
And lost a little glow,
I didn’t know really what to say,
As I too was a little low.

Just right then the Sun peeked out
Throwing us some light
A ray of hope to lit my day
And make it shine bright

He said that in some hours from now
He will see her too
And will wait till then to tell her that
I very much miss her too

The Sun, the Moon together they said
Son not to worry at all
You will be there to be with her
Before the year fall.

You will start your new life,
And she will be with you
I had a smile on my face
And they had too.

Oh rail! Oh rail!

Can you come out to bail?

I want to go home,

where I last left my trail.

Its miles away,

its far and long.

Will you please ride me there

where I do belong?

Place this is great

and is quite good to be.

But I want to be there,

what my childhood had seen.

Would you promise me,

you will take me there.

To my people who love,

who adore, who care.

I think this says it all…

With everything else in your life, you still feel incomplete. With lots of people around you, you still feel lonely. You’re still in search of THAT someone, who would come to your life, without you even noticing it. THAT someone who would read and understand every expression on your face, and looking at THAT someone, that expression would only change to a SMILE.

Love is gone and love is found
You are not and yet around

I think of you and smile, I do
You’ve done but some voodoo

I see you in the day and night
When my thoughts take a higher flight

You make me laugh like no one has
You helped me raise my real self

I wish I could just make you mine
To live a life together and fine

To start a new book and a new chapter
And live life happily ever after

Now while I find myself on a turning point of life, I am doing the same thing. Reflecting on my past. To me it has come up as a mixed image of life, but still felicity dominates. Sadness only comprises of regrets of some unforseen mistakes done in past. I have a self developed principle in life –

“Never do things that make you sorry later on and never feel sorry for things you’ve already done”

I know this is contradictory. Let me justify it. First part “Never do things that make you sorry later on” should be pretty clear. It means you want to do things thoughtfully and not regret for it later on. While in the second part “Never feel sorry for things you’ve already done”, I don’t say that you should not be sorry for the wrong you’ve done. Of course! You have to be sorry to whom you’ve done wrong to, but don’t feel sorry for yourself because at the first place, you should have been thoughtful and have not done that. Anyways, that’s just me.

Getting back to the topic, about reflecting on past, yes, I find myself to have changed a lot and changed to good. A boy from a small town, not too serious about studies, a bit nerdy and not too popular TO a boy in a metropolitan acing the studies, confident, leader and inspirer TO a guy in foreign land who is much mature, a good thinker and loving life.

After fetching good score in 10^th, while in teenage, I was never too serious about things in life, neither studies, nor future. Never took my parents seriously. And I failed in 12^th. Highly inspired by my technocrat dad, I chose to continue in engineering and went to Mumbai for further studies. Away from home, just by self, struggling to make my place in new city, but I started loving it and settled quick enough to prove myself and my potential. And I did it, maintaining top 3’s throughout studies, leading college Table-Tennis team, organising first ever events, best of all receiving national-level best student award. And, then in Australia, with God’s grace, I have been lucky to find jobs easily and find good friends. Though away from home, I’ve never felt home-sick much like other international students. I have learnt to feel content about myself, my potential and my belongings. Only thing I strive now is to give out my best to others.

Sadness or regrets I have when I look back in life, is only about the two things, not obeying my parents when I should have had and about my unsuccessful streak of tries to build relationship(s). You know what I am talking about don’t you?

I am sure, with all that I am now my parents would have forgiven me for my disobedience. But when it comes to relationships, I have been complete unfortunate or may be a bad judge. I have fallen for ones, who would never reciprocate equally, while I have been helpless otherwise. My very good friend once said to me “There is a no now, for there is a better tomorrow”, and I am still waiting for that tomorrow.

Well, soon with all the current progress and rapid changes, life is only going to get better. Let’s wait and watch what life has in the plate for me!!

As you would have known in my previous blog, I’ve been away from home for almost 7 years now. Feeling home sick, missing friends back home, missing old days, were some easy excuses to fall into blues. But at times and over, my near and dear ones have supported to me to get over it and be happy. So, I exactly understood what my dear friend was feeling when she expressed her apathy in a poetic way to me.

I’ve never felt this lonely before, it has never been this dark…

I’ve never felt so helpless; things have never been this harsh

I’ve lost the colours of hope; I’ve lost them all…

I’ve lost what made me strong; I’ve lost it all….

But I want to grow before its dark….

I want to live before it’s over…

I want to enjoy, I want to sing

I want to smile…

When I first read it, it surely revealed here ample disappointment. And if you notice, like me, the last two lines tells she is trying to come out of that darkness, she is talking about and there is a ray of hope. I asked her to complete, but didn’t want to. So I promised her I would complete it and will send a reply to it. Though I took it real long to reply to it, as I would do in a poetic manner as well, but I did. This is what I call it as my “pill of Optimism”, and am sure she knows this term.

You’re not alone like this single tree,

Just break the notion, set yourself free.

Let it be dark, there are still the stars,

And then sunrise too is not so far.

Don’t lose your hope, don’t lose at all,

Colours of love shall brighten it all.

Life gives you hurdle at every mile,

Just jump them all with a pretty smile.

The hurdles shall lessen; you’ll meet the plains,

But then life won’t be so exciting again.

Just rise again, if you fall at all,

There are heights to reach on a mountain tall.

Just take flight, and spread your wing,

Live your life enjoy and sing.

 “And yet again” was the phrase that clicked in my mind. Should I say I am lucky or should I say am unlucky. But all the friends that I have really come close too, haven’t stayed with me for longer period. This doesn’t mean we ended friendship, it’s just consequences of life, have got us to depart geographically.

Bad part about such situation is that it creates a negativity or wariness of losing a friend, with every friend I become close to. While the better part or the good part is that with so many good friends in life, I have lots of memories to cherish and lots of different events to associate to. I wish I could, in a possible event gather all my friends in one place and acknowledge their importance in my life.

My housemates - A family away from home!!

I wrote something very relevant to this, couple of weeks back –

Life full of metaphor,
Timelessly flows like a perennial river.

Boats float on the river,
Like friends in your life.

Rafting in the childhood, cruising through the falls;
That’s when we make friends first of all.

Mountains became plateau, Plateau to plains;
Snow to Sun and Sun to rains.

Rafts left out but I met new boats,
And some yachts, that accompanied me in my journey.

Sharing abundance of love and support,
Some banked while some still aboard.

With some turbulence and many diversions though,
Hoping to see meet them again, I continued to my flow.

One day I know I’ll merge in the Sea,
And My Lord will take care of me.

But the story left behind with you my friends,
Will be told to world in legends.

Now when I look back, my life looks like a nomad. I might be exaggerating it here, but I don’t find it normal to move so much. Though I realise your fate keeps you moving till you find your destiny. I was born in Bharuch, spent my childhood in Halol, and then moved for schooling to Vadodara (Baroda), then college in Mumbai (Bombay), back to Vadodara and now in Australia, in just 25 years. Before I get settle in a place, life says, “Hey dude, sorry but you gotta move!” These moves have been hard for me initially, but then I was blessed with so many good friends around me to make me home.

Chinks, Me and Shireen

It’s this mode of movement that has taught me to be what I am today and my friends who taught me how to be a real good friend and a real good person and hence I end here by dedicating my one more poem to them –

Out of the dark comes a sudden moon, which lits up the sky;
Who makes you laugh, who makes you smile and never lets you cry;

He kicks your gloom and makes you bloom like a rainbow in the sky;
Who lits your way on the darkest day, like light from firefly;

Who taps your back when you do wrong, but pats your back when you do right;
He shields your back, and protects you while you are struggling through the fight;

Isn’t that what friend is, I always ask myself?
I’ll be the one, I’ll be the best. Be rest assured thyself!

Thank you to all my friends and though we are walking on different paths of life, and geography departs us, I miss you all very much and love you all.

How much do you love yourself? How much do you know yourself? How much do you expect out of yourself? And many more such questions, I ask to myself. People say I think a lot. May be because I am not satisfied, not that with the things around me or things I possess, but with myself, my capabilities and my extremes.

I was just talking to my friend this afternoon and we discussed weird incidents that happen in life, different phases that life goes through and various challenges that we come across. He was of the vote that “I am very annoyed with life, nothing goes as I expect, nothing that I have wanted have I received in one go, etc.” First thing that came to my mind was a phrase, I had unknowingly learnt from somewhere, “Zarurat se zyada aur samay se pehle kisi ko kuch nahi mila”, which means “Nobody attains anything more than their needs, and nobody attains anything before its designated time”. I was once a very impatient mind, and impatience still trails in my mind, but to a minor extent. I have learnt to be content at least with my material needs and requirements.

But, I believe, the moment you start feeling content about yourself, your activities and your outputs, your personal growth stops. At the end of every single day I ask myself, What did you do today? Did it go as expected? Did you do anything wrong? Are you happy? Could you have done better? And I realised the necessity of this question from my subject on Control Engineering, where I first learnt about the Feed-back Loop.

Feedback Loop

Feedback loop is the system or condition of getting feedback from output or comparing the current output with the expected output. The difference more or less is adjusted next time to maintain a consistent required output. If there is no feedback, it’s called an open loop where you never realise what your output is, if it is even at par with the requirement or less or more.

A very simple example of this could be thinking about talking to my friend today, the points we discussed and the suggestions I gave to him. I would re-assess, should have I talked to him about this? Should have I suggested these things to him? Would it have been confronting for him or would he have understood and taken it seriously? If not, what is the other way I would talk to him, or help him through his situation and give more diplomatic suggestions?

You can even reassess yourself after a job interview that you would have appeared for, on a particular day. An interview is something I would consider more as a diplomatic discussion, or even a marketing session, where you are selling yourself and your skills. Before or after you know you were successful, you can think and go through the whole set of questions in your mind and confirm,

This is what can be called as KAIZEN a Japanese term meaning “Continuous Improvement”, a mode of continuous self-improvement. This is how person changes, and changes whether good or bad, depends on the perception he/she develops. This is how I have evolved to what I am now, compared to what I was say 7 years ago, while I was back in my hometown.