Filhaal abhi tak aisa koi kaam nahi kiya Jisse main khush rahoon khud se,
Filhaal bahut waqt se main qaid hoon Karke gunaah phasa khud ke zehen mein;
Filhaal haal-chal aaj kal kam puchhte hai Log mujhe khud se, Filhaal mere sapno se door Mujhe karne pe tule mere apne filhaal mera…
Bahut waqt se nahi khud pe zor, Dil tootne ke baad mehsoos hui chot Pehle toh mujhe laga sab aasan Bade bade channels karein mujhe call,
Sar pe ghamand Chadha jaise gira khai mein, Todha maine rishton ko baithe jhaai mein Aankhein khuli jab tak ho chuki thi der, Maine khoya mere apno ko apno se apni ladai mein..
Babe, tu hi sahi teri jagah Mere jaise insaan saala kisi ka nahi hoga Sun, mujhe kar dena maaf Jo main mar jaun kal par aisa bhi na hoga…
Yeh mujhe dekh maare taaliyan Par mudte hi dene lage gaaliyan… Khair mujhe pataa toh hai sab, mujhe pataa toh hai sab…
bahut waqt se main khush nahi khud se main kore kagazon ka ghar bana baitha, main bolta tha aag hoon main beta par khud ke hi haathon khud ko hi jala baitha;
bahut waqt se main soya nahi chain se main khaali qalamon se baatein bana baitha main sochta tha phelna hai mujhe par khud ke hi haathon khud ko hi daba baitha…
Jin doston mein mere charche nahi the wahi doston mein gaane mere chalte hai ab, bhale aaj kal dikhta main mehenge se kapdon mein maange hue kapdon mein tha main kal tak…
Maine chhod diya khaana, kaam kiya zyada, pata nahi kab soya, aankh khuli kab, laga muje galat raasta bhi sahi chun liya jahaan jahaan dikha mauka gira, utha, aur bhaga…
kapde safed daag lage sau, main leke ghooma saath shakalein jinki do…
na khud pe bharosa karna chahoon main khud lage zindagi mein jeene ki wajah di maine kho
bahut waqt se main khush nahi khud se aaine mein khud ko main dhoond raha, kise kahu meri taqleefein kya, kise kahu mai har din toot raha…
bahut waqt se main khush nahi khud se bahut waqt se main khush nahi khud se…
If I tell you this is your last day, will you be doing what you are doing right now?
10 odd years down the line, there will be many events, decisions, and people you would have regrets about. This is purely natural. After all, to err is humane. And we pretty much know that we will have regrets about our past actions. It is not very easy to make the right call in every situation. But this particular sort of a mental damage can be marginalized to a great extent by following some simple tricks of living your life.
As an individual, you may come across many new challenges in your day to day life. How you deal with them; lies completely in your hand. Here are the list of 10 things you should stop doing in the present in order to avoid lifelong regrets. Read on.
It’s not your Dream!
The most common regret that people have in their life is that they feel they missed out on the opportunity of fulfilling their cherished dream. People have the habit of trying to live someone else’s dream. In the process of doing so, they forget themselves and their own aspirations and desires. In most cases, people in their younger age fail to recognize their own talents and dreams, and thus fall prey to the wishes of their parents or the society. Even if they do not have the right will towards doing something, they tend to pursue career in that particular field which their parents choose for them. Find your dreams and know what you are good at in the early stage of your life and live with no regrets. No matter how severe the obstacles are, never quit. Strive hard and hard to attain your goal. Try to get a best of both worlds?
Trying to be Someone Else
We have role models and we revere celebrities. There is no harm in it. But sometimes people idolize other people who are entirely different from them. Soon they start changing themselves in order to be like their role models. They start living a life of person who they are nowhere related to. What is the point of living someone else’s life? This is yet another regret that people have in their life. So just be yourself and stop committing this mistake. You are good and unique the way you are. Love yourself and let the regrets go away!
Building a Web of Lies
One thing that I have learnt from my mistakes is that I should never lie. Funnily enough, I do not even remember the things I have lied to different people. I know I could get in trouble because of that.
No matter how old you are, you always have some things in your mind which you hesitate to leak out simply because you fear the reactions of other people towards your call. As a result of this, you end up with a lie which forms the base for a series or a web of lies. Believe it or not, these lies will never let you live with peace in your life. No matter how severe the impacts could be, always stick to the truth. If you build up your present on the basis of such lies, you will end up nowhere in the future. The most content man is the one who has no secrets and nothing to hide. He lives a life with no regrets. The secret to a happy living is giving up on all lies and telling the truth in every situation and thus avoiding regrets in life. You might get into trouble because of this, but this trouble is always a short lived one. Never have regrets speaking the truth.
It is about Living the Moment
Most of the people refrain from doing things simply because they are scared of the reactions and the outcomes that may perspire in future because of the things they do in the present – the fear of failure?
Due to this, they fail to enjoy the very essence of life. It is a very common thing to see people not live in the present. In this process of regretting the past and planning for the future, they forget to live the present moment. The past is inevitable and the future is unpredictable. So why live your life around these facets of tenses where all you can have is mere regrets? You should always live in the present and stop worrying about the things that could possibly happen because of your actions and thus remove these regrets from your life.
Not having a Stand
If you believe that whatever you are doing in your life is the right thing, then you should have the chutzpah to stand by your own actions and words in the future. There is no point in living a life where your decisions and mindset flickers every second and you are preoccupied with regrets. If you see something wrong happening right in front of your eyes, have the guts to take action against it and stand for yourself and for others. If you do not do this in your life, it would be a sin committed and the regrets would linger forever. This would give very deep regrets and in the future even if you try to change your actions, you would be found wanting to do so.
Life is all about making right calls and living without regrets. No decision is correct or wrong. It is up to you how you see the things and avoid such regrets. Take the decisions and then try to prove them right. This is the essence to a happy living.
The post was originally posted on tiptoplifestyle.com in 2014. I had written this post for Dose Media.
Covid-19 is quite scary, but it did give me (and possibly many other working professionals) a thing that that they longed for – Work From Home!
The day my manager notified us all that we would have WFH until further notice, I jumped in joy. I know how it feels when you WFH. Having your home as your workplace is perhaps the best thing that you can ever wish for. I have been a freelancer and I know the perks of it.
Cut down – 3 days later.
It has been 3 days since I last visited office. I stocked up essentials after the city lockdown, and I have largely confined myself to the four walls of my room. I have everything within reach – food, water, books, laptop, phone, speakers, good internet connection, guitar, and everything else – you ask for it, I have it all around me. Do I need anything else? Perhaps, no.
But as I sat down with my laptop this Sunday morning, a thought struck my mind real bad. I read many reports of people being ‘quarantined’ and ‘isolated’ to prevent the spread of the infection. Yes, the infected, and the suspected, were isolated. And so were we – everyone else as well.
I already received messages from a few close friends about how lonely they are feeling at their homes, and how badly they want to get back to their social circles. Me? Not much. I don’t mind it either way – social or anti-social – it has never really concerned me much.
Well, that’s not the point anyway!
This is not what bothered me much. There was another thought that this news led me to. I thought of a person in my life who has been alone and isolated for a long time now – maybe years. And yet, people around her failed to notice it. I am talking about my mother.
The Art – I recreated it from a source from Internet.
She is a homemaker who lives in a different city. I visit my parents twice a year and I am sure those few days are the best ones for them. So why do I only talk about my mum here?! Well, dad is a working professional too. Every morning he leaves for work, gets to meet new people, talk to his colleagues at office, go on field visits, and yes, be among other people.
Mum? Not so. She is a blood pressure patient with a medical record that could make a lot of people panic. She is literally confined to the boundaries of the house. Not by choice or compulsion, but by the environment around her. She is not at the best of terms with dad, so there’s very little talk that she has with him too. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t separated, it is just that dad has his own ways of occupying himself post-work – be it with work, with colleagues, or whatever.
People in the society are occupied with their own work. Her children, precisely my sister and I, are busy making money to settle down in to a lavish life. All this while, she had one good friend who ran a shop nearby. Every time mum was bored and felt alone, she visited her friend and the two used to have endless conversations. The day I got to know that she has found a friend, I was happy because I could see her happy.
But fml, her friend had a heart attack recently, and is now hospitalized with critical illnesses. I won’t get in to the details here. But now when I see my mum share WhatsApp stories like ‘Miss you friend’, it is like an arrow running right through my heart. I know I have failed her by not being with her, by never noticing that she has been alone all this while, and even now, when I do know this, there is very little that I am doing about it.
People are quarantined by diseases and infections for a short while, but she has been quarantined for quite a long time now – the infection still unknown.
Alright then, time to be brutally honest. We do judge the books by their covers, and we do judge people by their appearances. A lot of people might disagree and quote that they do see the other side of things too. If you are one of those, great! If not, then you probably would relate to the words I quoted a line ago.
Timeto relate – A lot of people who watch me in my daily life say, “Ah, he has got a lean body”, “Patla sa to hai (He is skinny), no wonder he can do 25 pull-ups in one shot , “I am not surprised to know that he runs fast”, etc.
The same lot of people then see me work out at the gym, and quite a few of them are honest enough to admit that I am among the hardest workers at the gym. Here comes the issue – the ones who do not see me work hard day-in and day-out, are quick to comment that I am nothing but a result of supplements. The minute I take my shirt off, (I do sense them going green with envy), but quite obviously, they have their escapes (the ones that they make to themselves) quoting – “Bleh! that’s just because of the supplements”.
Magic? A miracle?
People think supplements are magic. You take it, boom! You get the hot bod – you become the lean mean hot machine. And then, they feel they shouldn’t take it because it is not ‘natural‘. And they become anti-supplements person.
I know a lot of people who take supplements. Do they all have the same body? Have they all gone on to become the fittest people around? Well, let’s not stereotype things. You take the most expensive supplements, but if you don’t work out hard enough, you won’t see the results.
A message to those people who think I am who I am only because of the supplements I am taking – Let’s get real, buddy.
What are supplements? Do you even need supplements? Firstly, if you blindly answer a yes, or a no, please stop. Don’t make a fool out of yourself. There’s a good line of detailing that goes in before one answers this. In a nutshell, whether or not you need the supplements, largely depends on your end goal.
If you are a fitness buff, or an individual aspiring to get fit (either gain weight, or lose weight), you do need the supplements, provided your daily food intake does not cater your nutrition needs.
It is very unfair to quote that you don’t need supplements at all. We are not in early 1960s to quote something as silly as this. Back then, the Sports Nutrition industry had just started. Now, when it is booming as we approach 2020, we need to act a little more intelligent than we claim to be, or perhaps believe to be.
Let’s put things in to perspective – Why do you need them? Come again, please.
I won’t quote this for anybody else but me. Let me take my own example. I am an ectomorph – in layman terms, a hard gainer. Also, if I don’t work out for a couple of weeks and eat just my normal diet, I will drop my weights drastically. This is because my body has a very high metabolism. To ensure that I sustain my current weight, I need 2500 calories per day, and to gain weight, I need to eat 3500 calories per day for 30 days to see results.
A little more math – Let us consider my maintenance calories. Out of 2500 calories, my daily Carbohydrates requirement is around 1146 calories; I should get about 750 calories from Protein sources, and about 642 calories from Fat sources. Quick Maths (1g of Protein and Carbohydrates contain 4 calories each, and a gram of Fat contains 9 calories).
Quick check – How do I calculate my daily macro needs? This depends on your age group, BMR, RMR, PAL, etc. I will soon (November 20, 2019) be releasing a guide wherein you can calculate your calorie requirements too. 🙂
Won’t complicate this further and jump to the conclusions. To get about 800 calories (200g) of protein, it is improbable to get it from the daily foods. One egg contains 6g of proteins. Even if I consume 10 eggs a day, it only amounts to 60g of protein. And do note that eggs bring in a lot of heat in the body, and that can cause other issues like acne. Hence, I am forced to tone down my egg consumption to 6 per day. I can include foods like soya chunks that offer 52g of protein per 100g, but again, that comes with high oestrogen levels that can get my chest fats accumulated.
In the same way, every food item that I consume during the course of the day comes with some downsides. To ensure I get my maintenance calories in check, I tune in Whey concentrate in my diet. A scoop of whey gives me 24g of protein. Four scoops a day = 96g protein. Check. Remaining 104g, I can get it from my natural food sources.
This is just plain science. Before we quote anyone to be a product of supplements, it is very important to know that there is a lot of effort and hard work that goes in to it. Tell me a supplement that gets you a good body even if you don’t work out whilst taking it. I will stock up a fortune.
Claims?
You might claim that a person got that body only after they started taking supplements. Well, my friend, it is bound to be that way. Supplement, as the word defines itself, helps. When I add supplements to my diet, it adds up to the total caloric intake of my daily requirements, which is quite tough to meet with normal available food. And if I am meeting my requirements, I will shape up better. I can match up my daily intake by taking normal foods, but will mess up the macros. Taking in correct nutrients in proper quantities holds the key to shaping up well.
Obviously, there’s a lot to the story and I jotted this down hoping to get some information shared among those who I feel are still unaware of how things work. Don’t be stupid. Research, study, understand, before you speak. Don’t just grow old, grow up, maybe?
Even I always thought supplements were magic. And now, as I grow up, I feel the magic has always been there. The magic is me, my efforts, the hours of exercise I put in everyday, and the discipline. Talking of discipline, here is what my everyday schedule looks like.
P.S. Although I have a corporate job to manage, I do ensure that I respond to my emails every Friday. If you are interested in getting your custom diet plans or have any Nutrition related queries, feel free to mail me at tcfmusings@gmail.com, or DM on my Instagram handle nikhil_anand45@. Cheers!
As I watched my nation’s heroes so diligently perform under the most extreme of professional pressure at the World Cup, I couldn’t help but think about myself.
What if that were me? What if I had really tried to make a career of it? What if that pulled hamstring in 2008 hadn’t held me back for 3 months despite doing no physio or prescribed strengthening exercises? What if I had stayed a little longer after practice to hit more balls? What if I had taken ten more catches at training? What if every umpire I’d had over the years wasn’t “completely fucked”? What if I was genetically gifted at birth with above-average-sized hands that literally make performing all sports incredibly easier?
The older I got, the less I idolised my country’s sporting representatives. At one time or another, we were contemporaries. Not in the ability or prospectus sense – just in an age group and birth year sense. We were born within similar dates and thus the superior athletes were forced to endure the necessity of age-group development until it was deemed that that was a waste of time for all and sundry.
The girl I occasionally asked to give me throwdowns was convinced that my jealousy stemmed from my birth sign, as if being a fucking Aquarius had anything to do with my crippling fear of the short ball.
I had grown up with some of these now men. Their paths were destined for fame and fortune and lionising and status and success and dream-realising. My path was more confusing. What do I do when I leave school? Should I get a job? How do I meet a woman? Property is expensive. Should I keep pouring 30 hours a week into this bottomless pit that is a pay-to-participate hobby? What would make my dad happy? Will this new 80k gig make him love me? Will moving to a new club mean they’ll appreciate me for the talented third grader I am?
In the midst of modern day confusion and spinning my wheels like a part time batter with a ring field between overs 25-35, I had just gone through the motions and realised none of those objectives.
I was caught between a dream and self-awareness.
Now I was just a twenty something year old man drinking on his own, enviously looking on as ten nation’s heroes did the thing that I had convinced myself I would one day do too; hit cricket balls for a living.
Fuck it, I’ll go to the gym in the morning and give this one last go.
You meet a lot of people in your life, but there are very few who catch your attention at first sight. ‘Love at first sight’ is a well-known adage. But does it really happen? Has it ever happened to you?
You meet someone, or perhaps just have a glimpse of them as they pass by, and your heart skips a beat. In no time, you start thinking about them. Despite repeated efforts, there is no control over your thoughts, and a seemingly random person becomes a top priority in your mind.
Wherever you go, you start looking out for them. You see perfection in them. In everything you see, or everyone that you meet, you try to find a shadow of that person in them. And when you finally meet that person again, even though they do not turn out to be like the one you had imagined them to be, you are ready to make every compromise possible only to accommodate them in your life.
There will come a time in life when you will become infatuated with a single soul. For this person, you would do anything and not think twice about it, but when asked why, you will have no answer.
You will try your whole life to understand how a single person can affect you as much as they do, but you will never find out. And no matter how badly you hate it or how badly it hurts, you will love this person without regret for the rest of your life.
Breathing Distance
Disclaimer: Again, art recreated. Found it on the Internet.
It was right then – when she asked a tough mathematics question, and all I did was stare at her. I had no clue about the answer because my mathematics knowledge had only dwindled to a dim verge after I left school.
She was expecting an answer from me – for the reason that I had actually approached her to teach me something as tricky as trigonometry. I knew it would be time consuming, and I would get my chances to be with her for a few extra minutes.
I uttered a rubbish answer which made no sense, and she smiled, and then guffawed. As I said, it was right then, just right then – that I realised the importance of curves, of the thousand places where girls’ bodies ease from one place to another, from the arc to the foot to ankle to calf, from calf to hip, to waist, to neck, to ski-slope nose to forehead, to shoulder, to the concave arch of the back… But out of the lot, the one on her face, the smile, catches your attention the most. And when that happens, you know it is love.
I had noticed curves before, of course, but I had never quite apprehended their significance until I had seen her smile that day.
And every time I have seen her since then, I have seen love.
As mortals, we have this tendency to put things on the pedestal. For the ones unaware about the word, to pedestalize (the word does not exist) someone or something refers to giving a person or a thing paramount importance in your life.
So who do you actually pedestalize? Usually, this thing called ‘love’ makes you pedestalize your lover. When it comes to the person you love, you just do not see anything else but them. Your thoughts towards the person become biased, you tend to show unconditional love towards everything that they do.
I have seen people go aww over ridiculous habits of their lovers. While I have found it uncool, I do agree that this is something that just happens to almost every person in love. This is because we make an image of our lover as the most perfect, i.e. ideal, one. Hence, no matter what they do, we do not see anything unusual in it. For us, all that matters is the person.
What happens when you pedestalize someone?
I am not stopping anyone from being in love. But one needs to know the value of oneself. Nothing is permanent. Apart from your parents, there is none who would unconditionally love you, and even this is not true in every case. So when you feel there is someone who has joined this list of people who love you dearly, you tend you give a part of your life to them.
And with chances of them leaving at some stage of life – not all people are fortunate enough and one has to accept the stark reality – this is very risky. I have seen a lot of people get depressed after their break up. The sudden absence of a person from your life will make you feel sad, because there is a void that gets created.
But more importantly, what a break-up essentially does to you is that you lose a part of yourself. How often have you quit doing something because you used to do it with your ex? I know people who have abandoned certain restaurants because those were the dinner date spots for them with their ex-lovers. Similarly, I have seen people not giving a second look to certain objects, be it certain flowers, certain movies, some songs, some ice-cream flavours, and what not – just because they remind them of their ex-lovers.
A part of you fades away.
I am not prophecising not loving anyone unconditionally. But the point here is that in life, you will meet a lot of people. If you let a part of you fade away with the departure of one soul, you are depriving people who are yet to come in your life from knowing that part of you. What if the one you meet next is the actual one for you? Aren’t you being unfair to them by not being your own self when you are with them?
Easier said than done, but try, just try, not letting a part of you fade away because of one person.
About the art – Recreated in 2015. Found it on Internet. With pens, and pencil colours.
Have you ever liked someone to an extent that you cannot stay mad at them for too long? If yes, you are very fortunate.
We meet a lot of people in our life, but there are very few who stay close to our thoughts. Fights are inevitable, for the reason that argument and disagreement forms the base of human thought process. If we do not disagree with each other, the world surely will be a calmer place, but one with no scope of improvements.
I see arguments and disagreements as perfect forums for opinions to emerge. While a particular thought might seem outrightly incorrect to you, there are serious chances that you might change your perspective towards that thought later.
You argue with the one you love over an issue. Obviously, in the heat of the moment, you put in arguments to prove your point somehow. Later, when the tensions drain down, the entire argument keeps running in your head. And this is the time when you realise that maybe, maybe, maybe the other person was correct too – not to entirety, but to some extent.
You feel like approaching that person to talk again, because they mean to you. One odd heated discussion cannot take anything away from the fact that they actually hold a special position in your life. But then there is this thing called ego, which holds you back.
This feeling, this very feeling of wanting to talk to your loved one, but also not wanting to talk to them because you want them to talk to you first, is just amazing. I find it cute, and this is what makes the fights bitter-sweet.
About the art – Recreated in 2014. Found it on Internet. All blues, from pens to paint, to sketch pens, to markers.
Minute Musings 