What makes one different may not be a different thing altogether.

I do not play squash, nor do I go for go carting. I am no keen blogger, not a painter, can’t sing outside bathroom and I can’t paint even an amoeba. I like watching cricket but don’t have the stats on my tips. I like clicking pictures but never bothered to buy a camera to click some award winning stuff.

I get short of words when asked about my hobbies or interests. But isn’t it possible for someone to be content with life without actually pursuing something interesting, unique or at least different from what is usual. Hobby or interest is something very personal to someone, just like someone’s choice of underwear or a curry in a restaurant’s menu. Then why should it be a matter of pride for someone to be swimming in English Channel if one is simply following an interest which might not be of any interest to someone else. It’s almost similar to someone watching cartoon on TV or playing pinball the other moment if we consider interest as something which interests you. It’s agreeable that when somebody spends time, resources in the pursuance of some activity then it could be called as interest or hobby. But how different is it from somebody switching from one thing to the other where none of the activities the person indulges into is too unique or awe inspiring? Here the object of pursuance is not the activity but the aim to spend time as the mood permits. So we all have hobbies, it may not be well defined obsession for something but something too trivial. It’s just that we need to identify the real motive of a hobby; it’s the peace of mind and getting some time spent for ourselves without any profits or losses involved. We may find that peace in the work itself where we may try to put something extra without the goal of being appraised by our superiors. We may find reading history interesting but may not be passionate enough to become a historian, ultimately the goal is to be able to do something that interests us (even if for just that single moment). So rather than trying hard to find what interests us from the already subscribed list of so called passions, I feel we should try to find that happiness, contentment and satisfaction which should ideally be the outcome of the follow up of those passions.

What interests me is what stimulates as well as calms my mind. After all it's all in the mind.

When heaven had its first entrance exam.....

Angels were having a tough time with a lot many visitors knocking the doors of heaven. They all brought well written statements of purpose, had one of the best experience certificates(of noble deeds), and many of them had even brought special recommendations from renowned religious people. But due to lack of funds and pressure from 'not so elite' heaven guys of keeping special provisions for other 'not so elite' yet' not so poor' applicants, heaven couldn't afford too many berths. Apart from that a poor 'Apsara'-'Heaven inhabitants' ratio was making the matters worse. So a few 'I am the king, you just sing' kind of heavenites came up with a superb idea of putting a filter finer than a tea strainer to filter out 99 out of every 100 visitors. Each visitor was supposed to climb a wall, and only one out of a batch of 100 was selected who may or may not be the first one to climb up the wall. But soon it became a strenuous task of judging hundreds of thousands of noble, learned,knowledgeable and hungry visitors as a part of filtration process, so they made it simpler for themselves. They asked the applicants to bring a record of all their previous sins, be it 100 births earlier and started rewarding visitors, with a relatively cleaner record. Sinners who had later turned into saints were pulled out and reprimanded for all the sins they had committed, even if unknowingly and were filtered out. As a decade passed by, heavenites noticed that almost three-quarters of the entrants had blue-colored tails. They tried to bring in other colors but those colors just couldn't pass through the filter they had put in. Desperate to see different colored tails, heavenites blamed blue colored tail guys as of  forming a coterie and not allowing other colors to mix in. So heavenites passed a decree "A blue tail visitor can use only one out of two legs to climb".
Isn't that happening in our reputed MBA colleges, first half of the seats are to be filled by those not so poor and not so needy yet so called underprivileged aspirants and then for remaining half you score a high percentile, then before you actually boast about it somewhere you get to know that no IIM has shortlisted you. Reason is straight and simple, your past is not that bright, and the shimmer you tried to bring in with your CAT percentile hardly matters. Second issue is with you being an engineer, your seniors committed the sin of performing good, proving their mettle and beating others. And the X-Y chromosomes they brought in made the matters even worse. It's now you, a 'Male Engineer' who has to climb the ladder using one leg(5% reduced for being engineer, 5% for being a guy). I ask these profs, did they have very clear thought about what they were gonna do in future and how a little less percentage of marks scored in SSC could hamper their post-graduate educational prospects. Is there nothing like mending your ways, and go in the right direction when you realize it. You better invent a time machine and go back and change your past, but I wonder would one even care about an MBA degree after inventing it!!