Sushi Speaks

 Imagine a school that has 4 classes of let's say grade 7. Now imagine if someone had asked you to analyze the performance of grade 7 of a particular school. The first metric that usually comes to mind is which particular class is performing well and which isn't. You may not want to report it, but it would definitely cross your mind. Now imagine the top performing class had 25 students. How would you rank these students? By the GPA? By the performance in sports? By the performance in some kind of an aptitude test?  The above was to just give a quick example of comparison. Throughout our life, we are compared to others. Even if your immediate family does not want such kind of an environment, they are tied down by society or the systems in place. The top-scoring students get admissions to good colleges, and students performing well are said to land a good jobs. It is a generalized statement, and I would stand corrected because the percentage of exceptions is minimal.  The w...

 It has been quite some time since I have reverted back to this site to put my thoughts out. It is just that phase, just past quarter-life crises to be chic. Or is it? Not really. Choices. I did write a lot about this previously but what got me thinking was, are too many choices good or bad? To write out a post, my mind had to compete with all the other choices I had to pass the time. Netflix, a LOT of Youtube, games, books, and even CandyCrush. If my only choice was to write, this site would have been spammed with content like it did a few years ago.  How would life actually be, if every corner of it had only one road to take? Exciting? Boring? Easy? We are at a point in an age where we are inundated with choices everywhere we look. Everywhere we walk in, we have like a hundred different choices to make. There were many references to the choices of cereals in America before I had been there, and I never thought it was not such a huge thing to worry about. I was always used to...

Destiny, if you search for the meaning of the word, you might end up looking at a few different meanings. But in general, in the context of our everyday lives, destiny is something that is to happen in the future. It may be causal. "I wonder what lies in my destiny.", "I wonder where my destiny would lead me.", these are quite regular thoughts for everybody. But what exactly is destiny? Is it something that is already out there pre-written for us? Is the destiny of an individual a fixed path?  I often stumble upon these same thoughts. But everything in nature depends on the past, or some cause, just like the butterfly effect. Wikipedia definition of it in chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. If we take the butterfly effect and apply it to our destiny, would it make sense? Absolutely! If a tiny butt...

What is it to live a meaningful life? Achieving something great? Earning a salary of six figures? Running your own successful business? Doing something worthwhile for society? All these might be the right answers, but what is it that runs behind the scenes? Happiness? Would it be considered worthy if you lead a happy life?  The human species have always been in search of something that makes them happy. It is a biological reward system tuned in to the system that gives us pleasure. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins are termed to be happy hormones. Whatever we end up doing, ultimately is to have a burst of these hormones in our system. The body doesn't really comprehend achievements, wealth, fame, love, etc. It only rewards us with a sudden rush of hormones that makes us feel good. After a while, the promotion you got at your job, the trophy you won at a sports event, marrying the love of your life, just don't end up in eternal happiness. Happiness is always a momentary ...

W hat would the world be like in the next 50 years? Will the world end? Will there be another mass extinction? How will human life change in the future? One might stumble upon these questions very rarely. Maybe when we see an article or a news extract showing us a few polar bears, with their visible skeleton. Ice caps have been melting near the poles, carbon level rising everyday, global warming. A scientist coming onto the news and giving us the information that the temperature of the earth has risen by 1 deg C doesn't make us glue our eyes to it. "Huge crowds have gathered for the premiere of a blockbuster movie",  " Maybe I should book the tickets for this". This is the general conscience. Human evolution per se. In our day-to-day life, these warnings are mostly taken for granted. True, I have been on that page as well. When I heard that an 11-year-old kid was responsible for huge protests across the world for a better future, I just shrugged off the whole ...

What is it to be in the present? "Live in the moment". How often do we come across the statement? But what it is to be in the present. Sitting under the night sky looking at the stars is the kind of peace everyone enjoys. Would you say it as being in the present? On a rainy day, sitting on the windowsill, hearing the raindrops fall to the ground, listening to your favourite playlist. Would you associate with being in the present?  img source Is there a present? Or is it just our perception of the present? We tend to assume time as a constant. But it is really based on sensory modalities. We are actually always in the past. Looking at the stars, did you ever think that you are actually looking at the past? The twinkling star must have met its destruction many millions of years ago. Even the moon is 1.3 seconds in the past. Even the object that is a meter away from you is 3.3 nanoseconds in the past. The speed of sound is 344 m/s, again, a source of sound that is 1 meter away...

Most of my childhood I had spent in solidarity. I learned to entertain myself with toys, riding my bicycle around the house in a confined space, and watching all the cartoons I possibly could. Many try to engross themselves in books having such a childhood. My dad had this obsession with buying books, not many fiction novels but mostly general knowledge, DIY books, magazines, etc. Though surrounded by a vast catalog of books I never really felt like reading any. Except glancing through the numerous car magazines just for the pictures. I despised reading books, the number of textbooks and especially English literature books sufficed the need to read a book. Ironically, I was made a bookkeeper during my 7th grade for the class library. Though I never read any of them I used to get. The only books other than textbooks I remember reading were the Harry Potter series. Why? The Hype.  Most of my family enjoyed reading books but I never did.  Even up until my teenage years, textboo...

Measuring Success We all have been at a conference or some kind of seminar where we see the anchor reading out a list of achievements of a person and introducing them to the crowd. And at times, the keynote speaker doesn't need an introduction because they might be famous. But what makes them eligible to give out talks to the public or audience? Success?  Many would say because of his achievements, experiences, or success.  I once had a small chat with a TEDx event organizer and asked them about their eligibility for being a speaker at such events. The answer, you have to be successful in your own field. We always look at achievers as successful people. But being successful, is it really that hard? What is being successful in life? Having earned a million dollars, is it a success?  A millionaire turning a billionaire, is it a success? Reaching the top position at a Fortune 500 company, is a success?  Becoming a head of state from a humble chai wala, is ...

S oci A l dis TAN cing CORONA VIRUS. It is everywhere and in discussions with everybody every day. All the media trying to present the situation to maintain their ratings. Please don't try too hard, people have nothing else to watch. Explaining the situation or talking about it is superfluous. But the situation and various videos emerging on social media opened up a new perspective to me about life.  I came across some emotional videos on Instagram of soldiers returning home from deployment. Being away from their loved ones for a really long time, with barely any contact possible at times, and the family waiting eagerly to see them. Just brings tears. Their purpose, serve their country and people. Doctors and nurses, A BIG THANK YOU . I came across a video of a doctor who was in the epicenter of this pandemic. She distanced her family when she got to know she would be treating the COVID patients and she contracted the disease after a while. Nobody has any idea ...

Long Drives It has been quite some time since I wrote something here, I guess the motivation was a bit off with other things in life bothering. People with the slightest idea about me know how much I love automobiles and driving. And just the past week, I embarked on a much-awaited drive. A 1300 mile drive covering bits and parts of 6 states in the United States. As the saying goes, sometimes the best therapy is a long drive and good music. Well, it is true in my case, driving has always been a getaway for me.  Img Source I always try to find analogies between life and everything else. This drive had me thinking about two things. A planned journey always takes us from point A to point B. Life is all about trying to get from that point A to B. We tend to use a map as a guide for the journey but at times, what if we tend to switch off the navigation and take the road by intuition. We have many people around to guide us to get to our destination in life, but there are tim...

Chicken-Hearted It's been ages since I sat down to write something. Brave-Hearted, having a brave heart i.e. having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear or difficulty. What is chicken-hearted? It is kind of an antonym of brave-hearted, cowardly; easily frightened. Shouldn't we be talking about being brave then?  People all around the world try to motivate you through quotes, speeches, stories. But most of them try to empower you with positivity. Rarely do people talk about the negative feelings in us. Why not empower with positivity through something that is negative. The universe does attract the opposites, right? They say all it takes is one person to believe in you. But at times in the phases of life, even though there is more than one person who believes in you, do we have the same belief in ourselves? Some instances in life break our faith in ourselves. We start doubting ourselves. A sense of fear instills. You really judge yourself whether ...

I usually don't update posts on my blog once in a week. Some thoughts strike randomly, at times once a month and times once a year. Hence the untimely posts. Insomnia is something everyone faces, I am, right now. Some thoughts flowing through my mind. Welcome back to my blog and thanks to my friends and family for constantly encouraging in these writings. Did it ever occur to you that what you are at this point of life is because of an instance in your life a few years back?  A small flashback into my own life, as a kid (or even a teenager), I never really liked poetic stuff, writings, meaningful greeting cards, blogs or even books. I considered the textbooks were the only ones you had to read, never even completed a single book that I used to take at the library. I used to read to fall asleep and never really caught the essence of the books. Harry Potter, for example, I started reading the books only after I watched the movie and only when everyone at school was so e...

Formalities apart, I am trying to pitch in some new thoughts into my blog and came forward with a small story. Not really a love story, but I guess it happens with everyone. Hope you enjoy reading it. Feel free to drop in your thoughts or suggestions in the comments below. It was a cold and sunny January day. A usual day to work, wake up at 10 in the morning, get ready and rush towards the bus stop trying to be on time. It was like a routine day and as always, waiting at the stop with the headphones on (trying to avoid unnecessary contact with people #introverts). The bus raced down the road and came to halt at our stop. Like every day, the lookout for the window seat was on, because #privacy. The bus then proceeded to the next stop. The ____ mind always searches for a known face in the crowd or maybe it just searches for the beauty in people. All covered in the winter wear, a known face (vice versa was not applicable) boarded the bus and was looking around for a seat. She looked ...

It's been really long since I published something here. I wasn't that busy but was searching for ideas to share something meaningful. In the last 2 months, I took up a part-time job at a bakery in a hospital. I was put on the line on the back where I had to make sandwiches, salads, and wraps for the customers. Many people back off when they are assigned that duty. But I really liked it.  There are a few reasons why I liked it and wanted to share them. Food is something that is right at the top in anybody's life. It is like the most basic necessity for any living organism. How do you feel when you are done with a really long day of work and you go out to grab some food and you get some extra food than you asked for? It makes my mood happy seeing that extra food. ALWAYS! There is a different kind of satisfaction when you see someone smile seeing good food at the end of the day. And that satisfaction gets elevated when you are the one making that food. Ain...

Ego : A person's sense of self esteem or self importance How would one react when their ego is hurt? Would you go all angry and violent? Or just let it go because you know what you are?  Bigg Boss in Telugu is a TV reality show just like Big Brother. I follow it regularly. Many people have a notion that it is all unwanted drama. But I see it as a social experiment. When you have nothing to do and need to live with a few other strangers for 100 days, is something of an experiment about human behavior.   There is a contestant in this season who is a human activist, atheist and many other things. There was a small disturbance last week where his ego was hurt. This made him react with anger to the situation. In my opinion and based on what was shown in the show,  he was superior to the other people in the house cause he had achieved so much in life and wanted to make a mark of it. He was later trolled a lot on social media by th...

Pain and Sculpture Hello everyone. It has been a long time since I posted something on my blog. I  was seeking for motivation to write something. I have been through more than 50 documentaries during the past 2 months trying to find any kind of inspiration that I usually tend to.  I was watching a famous event for the automotive world called GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED. It is an annual event where different kinds of cars are showcased and run over a hill climb course. The cars date back as long as 1903 to the future autonomous race cars. While I was watching these cars go up the hill, there was this small Formula 3 car by Billy Monger. Looking at the car you wouldn't know what the story of this kid is unless you are into motorsports. Formula 1 had its fair bit of safety record after the death of the famous Ayrton Senna on the 1st of May 1994. Until 2014, there were no fatalities because of accidents on the track. In 2014 Jules Bianchi crashed into a crane that...

Shadows As a kid, if there was a power outage in my house, the whole household used to gather around one lit candle, and I remember playing with the candle flame and making different kinds of shapes with hands to see how the shadows are cast on a wall. I am sure every one of us might have done this in our childhood.  img source This was all fun until you had to study these phenomena in physics in high school. A shadow as defined scientifically is " a dark area or shape produced by a body coming in between rays of light and a surface". It is a simple everyday phenomenon that we observe.  A few days back, I was watching some comedy programme in which a guys shadow comes alive and gets him into trouble. It was a stupid comedy. But that got me thinking about shadows in a different way. It has been quite a while that I wrote something from my thoughts and this started feeling like something I could relate to things that happen to us in life.  The ...

Feelings!! I came across this question when I was going through Quora recently. How do I mask my depression so it does not effect my day-to-day life? And this got me thinking. Is this even a valid question? While I came across this question, I also happen to watch a video on FALSE POSITIVITY in one of the Ted talks. I will attach the link to the video at the end of this post. But the video talks about how we judge some of the emotions as bad. So I replied to the question above as follows,  Why do you want to mask something that is a natural feeling? Why does the world see anger, depression, unhappiness etc as all bad? Aren’t they with us from the time of birth? If you are feeling depressed. Be so. Why do you want to show something other than what you feel? Would you mask your hunger to stop affecting your day to day life? All these so called negative feelings are part of life. There maybe a day you stop being depressed. Let everything flow naturally. It isn’t a no...

DO YOU BELIEVE IN KARMA? Hello. I hope you found my previous review about one of my scale model interesting. I will update more reviews as and when I can get them in my hands on them and will include a plethora of photos.  Coming back to this post, Karma! We all often come across this word. It is originated from the Sanskrit word Karman, which translates to 'duty'. But what does it actually mean?  Karma : noun  in Hinduism and Buddhism the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.   So do you believe in this karma? Everything we are today and will be in the future is affected by the state we were in or are currently in. We don't give a second thought to it as we assume such is life and it simply goes on.   Many a time, Karma is associated with the bad that happens in our lives. "Karma hits you back" is what we hear more often. Why is it that it is n...