The joy of doing absolutely nothing!!!

6 months ago I wrote my last exams ever.

It was sort of a relief. Like for the past 23 years its been a constant struggle... exams, deadlines, projects, etc etc....finally a break from everything.. yay!!!!!

Initially I thought that I cud not handle the free time.. I mean having nothing to do at all - OMG!!!

But then, as time passed i started liking it.. getting up late in the morning having any type of breakfast you want .. taking all the time in d world to finish 1 pack of maggi (45 minutes my personal best, had to throw away some of it at d end coz it lost its taste later on)

Not to forget the late night movies and marathons of your favorite shows.. which usually run up to 3:30 in the morning.. chatting with friends till you fall asleep on your cell phone or laptop...getting up again late in d night due to some cramp coz of wrong posture :P

Trying out new recipes is one thing which you can do when u have nothing at all to do some turn out to be disasters some become your signature dish.

Well to summarize it all.. yes its fun when u have nothing to do at all!! It’s really a version of paradise.

But as time passes by u keep becoming more lazy quoting my Bhai here “there is a time when you get up from your sleep and debate over which leg u want to put down first.. the left or the right .. or do I try something new today.. put both of them down together” .This does happen –trust me .

-Sumaiya Ahmed Shah

THE BCG Matrix- is our life going to the dogs!!!

After finishing my previous article I was overwhelmed with the feeling of gratification and pride for having been born in such a fast-paced and goal oriented generation, but this feeling was very short lived .As the comments started pouring in I had stop and think over few of them: and one in particular which said that I had not focused on the loss of happiness and its pursuit.

Not once had I used the term happy or happiness in it. Why did I not think of it? Why was it that only some people thought about it? Has happiness become such a trivial issue that a majority does not even bother about it?

These thoughts had not subsided for a few days, until I attended a lecture on the BCG matrix. As the lecture went on there was a point which stated “never let a product move over to the dogs region”, I had an epiphany – OUR LIVES HAV GONE TO THE DOGS!!! That one line answered all my questions.

The dogs in the BCG matrix are products with a low share of a low growth market. They do not generate cash for the company, they tend to absorb it. Basically they are just dogs!!! Like the “dhobi ka kutta” (for more information on the BCG matrix visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth-share_matrix:\)

When a product slides into the dogs region it is usually withdrawn from the market or in rarer circumstances it is redesigned .The redesigning too doesn’t usually generate favourable results .So the safest bet is generally withdrawal from the market. 

But this is life, it cannot be withdrawn!!! We have to redesign it and it has to be successful.

When it comes to life, how does a dog turn into a cow?

This question cannot be explained by evolution or any mathematical law nor can physics explain it as a matter of fact no science can explain it. Nor can we simply assume that a dog will give birth to a cow (cash cow) out of mutation.

Hell!!!!

How did we even get here?? 

In the present scenario- the distance between the countries has shrunk but the gap between the hearts of people has drastically expanded. We can now reach any country in a matter of hours but do we reach out to people? Do we really care?        

                                                                   

The standard of living and the quality of living has gone up but the moral values and ethics have been slaughtered at one level.

Treatments have increased but so has the number of diseases. The mortality rate has come down but how many of us are really living??

Success and achievements have taken up the front seat whereas happiness has flown the co-op.........

The advantages of our lifestyle and our orientation towards life and our inclination towards success are endless but it comes with its own shortcomings and it is high time we realised those. We need to shift now, maybe to a little safer option which does not take us this far away from ourselves, our very sense of being.

Slow down a bit-we have to live our life not turn it into a perfect résumé which is going to make us a more and more desirable candidate to be employed.

Do a bit of charity-connect to the human kind, take up a cause (not just on facebook). Look at the smaller things in life, enjoy nature, and admire the weather (not just curse the rain for ruining your plans).

And above everything get in touch with your inner self-figure out what you really want and give yourself a chance to be happy, at least once in a while.

Maybe it is not too late after all. Maybe we can still turn this dog into a cow defying all the laws.

-Sumaiya .A.  Shah

ARE WE REALLY IMPATIENT???

Going through the magazines on the stand on a regular college day- the familiar “INDIA TODAY “caught my eye, not because it had the face of the even familiar JAGAN MOHAN REDDY but because of the title of the cover story “impatience of the youth”- that is when it occurred to me “Why are we being labeled as impatient ?”
“Sabre ka phal meetha hota hai “-This, I think was the only lesson we learnt in our childhood regarding patience. The lessons which we learnt after that had more impact on us. These lessons mainly had to deal with only one concept “The race of life” In which we were taught to keep running no matter what.... as fast as the others were running if not faster.
Come standard 10th, youngsters are told that they now have to step up and have to keep themselves ahead of everyone and that does not stop there, the ordeal as it is only gets much harder when the student enters junior college with entrance exams such as PMT, CPT, AIEEE, EAMCET, IIT-JEE etc. These students are left wishing for more hours in a day not even realising that they are actually missing out on the best and probably what should have been most carefree and fun-filled years of their life.
All this running and being trained in being restless until the goal is reached has subconsciously programmed us in being “impatient” (according to the bygone generation).
The next factor that adds to our restless is the technological advancement. The past decade bore witness to the maximum advancement in technology in all areas of science –medicine, engineering, telecom etc. The sector which has grown drastically in the past 10 years is communications –with cell phones and internet facility reaching almost every household in the country entailing “almost no waiting period”- where is the chance to exercise patience???
Finally, the biggest question which I have- Can it not be the other way round??
Can it not be that the generation which trained us to keep running and be restless couldn’t keep up with us anymore? Is it us who have become too fast or have they not changed their pace at all??Is it us who are fast or are they slow?
The past generation did not realise that while teaching us to run and push beyond our limits for academic excellence .They have set in motion a chain of events which resulted in young adults so used to rush and so used to making things happen- that we cannot wait for our dreams or goals to be reached eventually, we have to make them happen and they have to happen now.
Be it a Jagan Mohan Reddy or a Rahul Gandhi or an Omar Abdullah or any regular young adult we are all in constant planning and continuous state of action to make our dreams come true. Nobody sits silent nobody has patience .The only time they do is when they have reached were they wanted to reach.
According to Darwin’s concept of “Survival of the fittest “-the less fit or the unfit species tends to get phased out during the process of evolution. Are the fast runners the more fit species? So, will the slow runners eventually get phased out? Is this one of the factors contributing to our restlessness?
The final thoughts that come to me now are –Are we really impatient? Or this is all a quest of survival in the process of evolution?
The youth of today are not restless .The youth of today are not impatient .We are normal youth living in a society which runs fast and everyone living in the society contribute to it.
We have not made the society what it is now .This is the way we got it from our predecessors-fast moving and restless, maybe not as fast moving as it is now, but it surely was fast moving and even back then there was no place for slow runners .
When there is no scope for slow movers and there never was, is it wrong to be a runner? Is it justified to label the youth as impatient when we are just running at our pre-programmed pace?
This is just something to think about .Opinions made over ages rarely change overnight.
-Sumaiya.A. Shah