Miles to go...

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' `That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. `I don't much care where--' said Alice. `Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
- Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

This milestone in the post is ofcourse not from Alice's Wonderland, but from Calangute in Goa. As a blogger pictures inspire a lot of thoughts, and this one sure did. When I first saw this milestone my first reaction was 'Oh! what a direction to follow'. Obviously as you can see there is nothing written on the milestone or rather the paint has peeled off. A lot of times in life this is our state of mind. We know we have to go somewhere, but we don't know where. Because unlike most milestones that have been put up because of someone else's experience of having gone through that before, we don't neccessarily have that access like this milestone.

On a positive note, there is ofcourse the option of defining what that milestone will say. That is upto the person who now paints it afresh. What that reads defines how far that person is going to go or rather willing to go.

Inch by Inch

Looks like I'm on a YouTube trip searching for videos/audios that have motivated me and in the process have set off a multitude of goosebumps everytime I watched them. This was I first as an mp3 audio from the movie 'Any Given Sunday' that features my fave Al Pacino in the lead role. This is his speech when his team is in doldrums. More than the delivery of the dialogs I loved the script that is such a great piece of pep talk on team dynamics.
Hence this finds itself on my blog.



For those who are interested in the subtitles I have them given below.

I don't know what to say really.
Three minutes
to the biggest battle of our professional lives
all comes down to today.
Either
we heal
as a team
or we are going to crumble.
Inch by inch
play by play
till we're finished.
We are in hell right now, gentlemen
believe me
and
we can stay here
and get the shit kicked out of us
or
we can fight our way
back into the light.
We can climb out of hell.
One inch, at a time.

Now I can't do it for you.
I'm too old.
I look around and I see these young faces
and I think
I mean
I made every wrong choice a middle age man could make.
I uh....
I pissed away all my money
believe it or not.
I chased off
anyone who has ever loved me.
And lately,
I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror.

You know when you get old in life
things get taken from you.
That's, that's part of life.
But,
you only learn that when you start losing stuff.
You find out that life is just a game of inches.
So is football.
Because in either game
life or football
the margin for error is so small.
I mean
one half step too late or to early
you don't quite make it.
One half second too slow or too fast
and you don't quite catch it.
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
They are in ever break of the game
every minute, every second.

On this team, we fight for that inch
On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us
to pieces for that inch.
We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch.
Cause we know
when we add up all those inches
that's going to make the fucking difference
between WINNING and LOSING
between LIVING and DYING.

I'll tell you this
in any fight
it is the guy who is willing to die
who is going to win that inch.
And I know
if I am going to have any life anymore
it is because, I am still willing to fight, and die for that inch
because that is what LIVING is.
The six inches in front of your face.

Now I can't make you do it.
You gotta look at the guy next to you.
Look into his eyes.
Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you.
You are going to see a guy
who will sacrifice himself for this team
because he knows when it comes down to it,
you are gonna do the same thing for him.

That's a team, gentlemen
and either we heal now, as a team,
or we will die as individuals.
That's football guys.
That's all it is.
Now, whattaya gonna do?

Think Different - Motivation to do things differently

I saw this video some eight years back. It was an ad by Apple that talked about their philosophy of thinking different. I found this on YouTube and though I have shared it earlier through a link I thought I would share it again because it changed my life and the lives of few others who saw this video. It has also made way into the employee induction programme at my organization.

The transcript is given below for all of you who want to go over it, and this was written by Steve Jobs.

Here's to the crazy ones,

the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers,

the round pegs in the square holes...

the ones who see things differently --

they're not fond of rules... and they have no respect for the status quo

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them

because they change things... they push the human race forward,

and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius,

because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world,

are the ones who do.

Remains of the taste

I have the money now...but cannot buy and relish the Rs. 4.00 Beef Curry Rice that I craved for while in college.

I have the money now...but the taste of the 50 paise tapioca jaali wafers that they used to give in school is out of my reach.

I have the money now...but the Rs. 4.00 Puri Bhaji with loads of fried chilies at the VT Zunka Bhakar that I ate on the way to college doesn't taste the same anymore.

It's not because I am not in school or college anymore or the taste of the Puri Bhaji has changed, times have changed. Money was dearer then than it is today. The taste was because of the affordability quotient.

I know I can afford a lot more today and maybe eat what I want, but those days will always remain an unfinished chapter. The taste still lingers in my memory.

No. 13 - Unlucky for some

On the way out of that sweet college life - 12 days before I counted the last days of the teen years, something rocked our mind and soul and bodies of millions of Mumbaikars. It has been all of 13 years and 6 months exactly after that and there is a glimmer of justice that is being meted out. Finally, At last, a lot of people would say with a sigh of relief. Statistically it has taken all of 13 years to bring to book people responsible for 13 bomb blasts that went off in a little over 2 hours. A year each for each bomb blast!

When I track back to that day, sitting in class in St. Xaviers College, sitting there brave with my teenager hot blood running through my veins, this had become common place already. 3 months had changed people from Dec 06 1992 till Mar 12 1993. First the rioting and then the blasts - immunity had set in. That was the first time I saw the spirit of Mumbai and it became more evident on the 13th of March where people were back to business as usual as though nothing had happened. I too went back to college to hear the bravado, rumors, truth from friends and college mates. It had become apparent that this is how it was going to be. This was not the end – this was the beginning.

Other instances have happened over the last 13 years and I’m not sure if all those people responsible have been arrested, judged and punished. But as they say the show must go on. Life is too short to worry about what if it got cut shorter. Maybe that’s survival – Maybe that’s the fighting spirit.

Freedom

I finally managed to see Lage Raho Munnabhai last night and it impressed me by taking me to emotional extremes. For someone who gets goosebumps everytime he sings the national anthem it's not difficult for a movies like Lage Raho Munnabhai (LRM) and Rang de basanti (RDB) to impress me and strike a chord deep inside. The emotional upheaval the national anthem induces is difficult to explain but easier to experience. Of course the discussion in the post is not around the national anthem, that's just me getting a bit passionate about my country.

The point I'm trying to make here is are we becoming anti establishment, and considering the movies are an indicator of the current mood of the masses, these two movies are making it more evident. There is an underlying call to rethink our premise of freedom and whether we are taking the right direction. There seems to be a call to awaken the masses and not wait for the classes (read political system) to define and carve out the direction this country is going to. The common man is now not just a vote bank but is being called upon to take action. I would call that anti establishment. We seem to be fighting for freedom again.

Are movies instigating a revolution? A revolution for freedom from the drudgery of the political syste; Freedom from mismanagement; Freedom from corruption; Freedom from bondage in a free country.