My 'GOOBE' Friends

It would be a tribute to my friends, an honour to me and you will be the victim as my memories flow. I will try n not to mention anybody’s name in here. It will be infringing into their privacy though they are they are my best buddies and also it is against Guru’s Data Protection and Privacy Act of 1999. Um… it is a group of seven people, four boys and three girls, a perfect mix to maintain the rhythm of our lives. It is almost half my life time (at present) since I have known them, most of them since 12 years or more with two of them joining us a year later. Well, it has been a journey, journey of our lives. The past, the present and hopefully the future. We were all tiny little high school kids when we all first met. Every one of us are unique in own way, talented and blessed in one way or another. We were at an age when none of these really did matter to us when we all first met. It was age when we tried to form meanings to our environment, our people. It was the tender age of accepting mostly everything we were offered. The age when we did not know the meaning of relationships or meaning of friendship. The early teens, the beautiful years of ones life, where you expect all the good to you. Good teachers, good pocket money, good parents, good friends, good looking people as friends, everything around you should be good. The age when we learn about ourselves, our body, mind and also think of future in really weird ways. It was the age when we all met, the age when we all were framing our meaning structure of our lives. So for many of us, the whole meaning of all the things I mentioned above revolves around these people. I am not sure of remaining six, but it is how I have frame worked my thoughts. Said that, I would say, I have been one of the few fortunate people in the world who are blessed with at least a few friends. I mean FRIENDS and not acquaintances.

With few secrets among us, we virtually know everything about everyone and we don’t shy away even if we have to confide for the silliest reasons. Many of us have taken similar paths in career and life style; however there are a few like me, who is still hunting to find a solid base to settle down. It has turned out that at every point of time since we have known each other, two of the seven has been doing similar things, like there are two electronic engineers, two doctors (though they specialize in different subjects) and now two girls are married. The days of our high school, college have been precious to us. It is not that we have no other friends than the ‘Goobe’ gang. Of course, we all have. There are many who have played important roles in our lives, many who have influenced us, a few who have been influenced by us. To me, all the new friendships developed are based on my Goobe gang. I guess they have set standards in my life. Oh! Yes, ‘Goobe’ is not our brand name, is not the way we are known to people, it is just the way we are known to ourselves. Goobe (Owl) is just apt and it rhythms with all our names (E.g.: Goobe Guru) and also the fact that most of we goobes were awake the whole night during our college days.

Over 13 years, things haven’t changed much (which I like) with each of us as growing as strong individuals. We all are now professionals or professionals-to-be and we do not have the time to meet as we used to do. The distance constraint, because many of us are in many different continents which sometimes even make a conference chat or call difficult. Of course, more responsibilities, family commitments all make us stay physically far from each other, we may not see each other for years, may not attend marriages or anything like that, we still have the same spirit, the spirit that binds together. I am sure the remaining six would agree to it.

There were days when we all watched a senseless movie together and tried to make sense of it within ourselves. The beautiful days of long and serious telephonic conversations. The serious silences, the little fights and misunderstandings, the offer of help in so many different unimaginable ways, the birthday parties, the meetings ahead of somebody’s b’day, the time spent in greetings gallery selecting cards and laughing at jokes imagining the person who the card is for. All these petite and lovely memories, locked up in me keep me going on. People say not to live in past, but I think, it is the past that makes the present and the present that makes the future. My hats off to my Goobe friends and my sincere thanks to God.

Self Deception!

I believe in God and good, God is not real. I would have had red cheeks by repeated slapping or burnt marks or broken bones by now if He were to be in real. How self deceiving can I get? I pray to God, quite often. It is one of the means for me to find concentration and solace. A means to believe in a belief. Unfortunately, over last three weeks, I have been mean, a swindler for myself. I have been promising to myself and to God every night that I would pray to Him the day next. The next day morning, I would be convinced myself, it is God; it is okay if I don’t do anything today. He won’t punish me for not doing anything and postpone my prayers. I am sad by my act and I should be sorry for that. SORRY!

The Need to BLOG

BLOG – the shortened form of web-log. I guess there are millions of thousands of websites on internet and millions of thousands of users of these websites. Probably there are a few thousands of websites offering blog services and of course the millions of users of these services. But why do these sites offer these services and why do people blog. The websites, yes, it is a part of their revenue generation, but what do we get from blogging. We here, are all bloggers. As I am writing this I am thinking why am I writing this? What for? Who will read this? There are so many blogs and so many users but the probability of someone reading what I write is say 0.00001% which could not been be even considered negligible.

I have asked people, why they write? They have come with answers like “I like writing” which is agreeable or “I want to share my ideas or thoughts” or a few go on “its happening, it’s a forum to exchange views, opinions” but a few exceptional argue that “I just want to write what I feel, I don’t care what people think, I don’t mind if people leave comments on what I write” which I feel is not real, I think people who say that put on a face and hide the reality.

After some deliberation into the reasoning, I found out the reason. The reason why people blog, a few of them may not agree or accept, but I feel it is the absolute truth. We all blog to be ‘APPRECIATED’!! Appreciated for our work, appreciated by people and appreciation for everything we do. The idea may not be practical and many of us would have not even thought about it, but if we knock the door of basic needs of humans, we would definitely find the concept of ‘Appreciation’. I would say appreciation is as basic a need as food, air or water for human to survive, to survive emotionally, though not physically. The law of Darwinism also holds well in this survival ‘Survival of the fittest’

When we get down to the basics of life to survive, everyone does everything to be appreciated for. A kid may start crying in a crowd thinking that his/her parents are drifting their attention from him/her and he is not being appreciated for what he/she does. If an innocent child is all for appreciation, imagine how much we adults crave for it or as in the phrase people ‘die for it’, either knowingly or unknowingly. They may not acknowledge it or they may substitute it with things like love, hate or something similar which are un-quantifiable by themselves.

Finally, we blog! The need for us to blog is only to satisfy our basic need, to quench our thirst for appreciation. I am sure one would be happy to see a comment on their thought, be it a good or bad, at least it reiterates the probability that someone has read your blog and your work has been appreciated irrespective of it being good or bad to you. I guess that is the reason why you can see ‘Number Visited’ meter at the end of some blog pages.