Thank god the weekend is over

 

People say its sin to lose your temper. “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you…” (Ephesians 4:32) .

 

When we lose our temper, we say and do things which we almost certainly regret later. And more often then not, we end up hurting our dear ones. I can count the number of times I’ve lost my temper in last few years. So much so, that my friends accuse me of being emotionless. My best friend says she doesn’t want to be like me – she thinks we need to be emotional at times.

 

In fact, not very long ago, I did admit to her that at times its better to be an emotional fool rather then being a practical stupid. Specially after the realisation that we all act super cool at times.

 

I like the fact that I can ignore most of the things around me. I know how to differentiate between important and small things. Small and meaningless issues have never bothered me. At times I wonder if anything affects me emotionally?

 

I’m not sure it was because of this or something else, but I lost my temper 4 times during the weekend. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a horrible weekend.

 

First of all, I had a fight with Ships (my best friend) over a stupid issue. Guess she was in a bad mood (she always is these days). And I was not in a great mood either. In fact, the whole week was very frustrating. It being a Diwali week, nobody was working which delayed few of my jobs. There were few other issues which added to make it a ‘zero output’ week overall (both professionally & personally).

 

And when Ships opposed a suggestion, specially when I had just returned after another frustrating day at work, I lost it completely. Thankfully, both of us didn’t try to solve it then and there and only few messages were exchanged.

 

So, when I got a call from the lady with the hot legs who wanted to hijack me again for a drive at around midnight, I gladly accepted (not that she gives me a choice anyways). In fact, during the course of the day, we have had a “SMS fight” already and we had exchanged few nasty messages.

 

What I didn’t know was that she wanted to sort it out during the drive. I was already in a very bad mood and the last thing I wanted was a matured and serious discussion (I’m not justifying myself – in fact I was being unreasonable). In short, the long drive was a disaster.

 

And just when I thought the worst was already over, I had a terrible fight with a friend who is an air hostess and was in town for the weekend. So much so, that she walked out of my house slamming the door on my face.

 

And to add salt to my wound, I had a terrible argument with my cousin over buying a LCD TV.

 

To be honest, I don’t remember when was the last time I fought with people. I do admit that I’ve started losing my temper more often now, but then I don’t react most of the times. I prefer ignoring things but this weekend was an exception. Whatever the reasons were, I know I was in a very bad mood.

 

Though for some reason, I’ve a feeling that I’m still not in a very good mood. But thankfully, nobody has poked me yet. And I promise I’ll try and behave. These guys know me too well to remain upset for long (all four of them are ok now). But maybe, someone wouldn’t take my nonsense. Hopefully, that someone will not meet me anytime soon – because I’ve a feeling a big fight is just round the corner.

Give me more such weekends

Since I’ve been trying to discover new places in Mumbai, we decided that we will go to Redlight in town. I haven’t been to that place for a long time now and really wanted to go there or some other place in town for the weekend party. But we got late and hence we decided against going very far. We thought of hard Rock for a while but the fact is that its getting boring now, simply because of the fact that I always land up there.

 

It is said that in Mumbai, when people are confused where to go, they land up at shack. And we are no exception. So we reached shack at around 11pm. And to be honest, it was the best parties in recent times. I’ve always felt much better at shack simply because of the fact that you see so many familiar faces whenever you go there.

 

I just hate alcohol. I honestly think it tastes like shit (not that i know how shit tastes). But recently, I’ve noticed that I like the feeling of being high. And since I cannot enjoy my drinks, I always mix my shots to get high. An hour into the party and I had had more then 7-8 shots (whiskey, vodka, tequila all mixed). I vaguely remember meeting few friends there.

 

Though I was really high, I remember being introduced to few hot women who were from Pune but now settled in Mumbai. And I remember two of them walked up to me when I was waiting for the car outside (after the party got over) and asked me about my plans for the night. They told me they were going to cater road with some more alcohol and that they love having alcohol watching the sea. After that they would head home and watch some video there. One of them took my phone and gave herself a missed call from my number. I told them I would let them know if I feel like joining them (though I had no intentions of joining them as I had my own plans with my friends).

 

Thenafter I went to “Sun & Sand” with my friends for dinner. And to be honest, though I was high, I fell in love with the place. We had great food there and thenafter we were sitting at their sea facing lounge till 4 in the morning. In the meantime, I got a couple of calls from those ladies also but I excused myself.

 

And now when I think about it, I feel that I should have gone with them after we were done at Sun & Sand. There is no harm in knowing new people and they seemed like fun loving gang. And since I’ve anyways decided to make new friends (10 things to do before December), I could have gone out with them. So, next time if I get a chance like this, I will take it.

 

Anyways, Sunday early morning, we all left for River rafting. The guy who did all the bookings and knew the way backed out at the last moment and hence we left for our destination without knowing the details. We were 8 of us – 4 ladies and 4 men, in two cars.

 

It took us 4 hours to reach the place. In between, we lost our way many times. There was a time when our phones were not working and we lost the other car. But we did manage to reach just before they were shutting it.

 

Trust me guys, it was so much of fun. It was a 13 km stretch and it took us almost 2 hours. In between, we fell in the river few times, few of us got hurt also and we also swam for some time.

 

While coming back, we had food at a roadside “dhaba” and enjoyed the beautiful drive. When I reached home at around 10 pm, I was dead tired and slept off withing minutes.

 

All in all, an exciting and fun-filled weekend. I honestly feel such breaks help you recharge your batteries and prepare you well to face the heat at work the whole week. With River rafting over, I’m looking forward to para gliding now. And we have already started planning for the first weekend after Diwali holidays.

 

The rat race

From last few days I’ve been getting a lot of messages from various people,all asking the same question – “Pratyush,why aren’t you blogging these days?” Well,it has been a hectic week.I had an awesome weekend with my friends,bought a big double door wardrobe and something good has come up on the professional front.

I’ll tell you about the weekend party and my double door wardrobe later on (and I anyways don’t write about my professional life). I didn’t write anything all this while because i didn’t feel like. There was nothing I wanted to write or express my feelings about.

But then, today i got a message from one of my friends.

It said – “Leaving the house in the morning, dressed in clothes that you bought on credit card for work, driving through the traffic in a car that you are still paying for, putting in petrol that you cannot afford, in order to get to the job that you hate but need it so badly so that you can pay for the clothes, car, petrol and the house that you leave empty the whole day, in order to live in it”

Come to think off it guys - its so true! We are all part of a rat race and we all are running non-stop. We feel good about the fact that we are doing well in life, have enough money to lead a good life, wear branded cloths, spend thousands on weekends, buy expensive gifts for our family / girlfriends / boyfriends.

But the fact is that though these things make us feel good,they don’t guarantee happiness. I’ll give you a very simple example – My Mom is in town. She’s been here for almost 3 weeks now but I’ve only taken her out for dinner once. She doesn’t want to eat out. She has a very simple explaination for this. She says she is happier cooking for me. She can go out and eat anytime but she hardly gets to cook for me. Everyday, she makes my favorite dishes and serve me great food when i reach home. I also make sure that even if I go out in the evening, I don’t eat anything because I’ve the same logic – nothing compares to Mommy’s food.

So,do I need to earn lacs to get my Mommy’s food? The answer is no! I can go back to the small town where I came from, and live life king size in the same money that I’m getting now.

I love wearing my Armani watch. But I was much happier spending time with the beautiful lady who gifted me the watch. I like my new shoes but I would anyday prefer a long drive with the lady (who gifted me the shoes) over the shoes.

These days, I go out 3-4 times a week, party every weekend,meet new friends and then go out with them again. Few years ago,I was seeing this girl who lived very close to my World Trade Centre office. She would pick me up from my office after work and we would land up at her place just in time for an early dinner (home made food by her maid), watch TV, DVDs, play games,talk and sleep early. In almost a year when we were together, we hardly watched 10 movies, hardly went out for dinners (and that too, only to one place both of us loved), never went to a party together and never bought each other expensive gifts. We were just happy and content in our own world. And I’ve hardly felt better in my life.

2 weeks ago, I celebrated my birthday in a grand style. I threw a party at one of best places in the city, called all my friends and spent close to 30k in few hours. And yes, I felt good at the end of it. But I’m not very sure if I was happy (Birthday blues).

Now compare that to last weekend where all my friends came down from different places to spend the weekend together. we all went to our college in Pune and had a blast. And I’ve absolutely no doubts in my mind that it was one of the most memorable weekends I’ve had in recent times. And it didn’t require a “happening” place and a lot of money to get it right.

There are so many instances I can mention where small little things have made me happy ( pursuit of happiness). The bottomline is still the same – we need to figure out what makes us happy. And trust me, most of you will be surprised to find out that you too would prefer small little moments of happiness as compared to the mad race that we all have become a part of.

Time to sit back and introspect!