A momentary brush with awareness...

Working for a consulting firm has its own perks and disadvantages. But apart from that the lessons to be learnt are immense and i just don't mean the lessons you learn on corporate bullshitting in a conference room filled with IBM/HP notebooks and a few dozen chewing gum packets ( I guess that's most important after your cellphone!!).

I have always believed that Family plays a very important role in one's life or maybe i was brought up that way. But either way, I personally have started feeling it does. During one of my travels, i got an opportunity to meet my cousin and her family. I decided to drop in for some home cooked south Indian food. I was meeting her and my bro-in-law after about a 12 years and needless to say,I hadn't seen her kids ( now 14 and 5). Eagerly waiting to catch up on childhood memories, I drove to their house. Within a few minutes of my arrival there, I realized that I wasn't able to catch up on any memories as I could not recollect anything. Every second line was " you were such a small kid when this happened and blah blah blah". "You were so small when I last saw you". With a MS degree in hand and a job at one Big 4 Consulting giants in today's world, I kind of had a reality check at that moment. Incidentally, my cousin's son who is 14 walked in and waved out. Unknowingly, I blurted out "You were so small when I last saw you". Oops!!! It didn't even take a second for me to realize that I was just a part of the same system against which I was fuming a few minutes ago...

For some reason, my whole life came to a perspective at that point. I somehow enjoy moments when you feel, your entire existence this far can be summarized into probably in a sentence/word or alphabet in that one instant!!! It was one of those moments for me...All these years, I knew I was a part of the family, had my own place but suddenly at that point, I could suddenly visualize an opportunity to give a direction to my family tree.

As I drove back, I enjoyed this new kind of serenity I was experiencing, a new kind of awareness, a new thought, a new relation.....all with myself!!

Perception?? Reality?? Duh...

Its been an eon since I scribbled my mind and not that I didn't have anything to write. Knowing my eccentric thoughts which zoom across at the speed of light, I am sure there were tons of stuff, I could have rambled upon. But I can just say that things took a twist and something we all know as "Life" happened to me. Lets leave it at that without dwelling too much into details.

I always believed "Perception is Reality" and started to run my life on those three words. To such an extent, that i found myself becoming more patient (or rather what I define as patient..lol) by the day simply because I literally started using that thought as my defense mechanism to deal with issues and also to exploit my strengths. But I guess it all came crashing today morning when I woke up to the most natural alarm clock ever. The gentle sound of a heavy downpour! I always for some reason equated rainfall to the balcony of my childhood home in Bombay. Sneaking a peek through those trees which formed a beautiful arc around my balcony, I remember trying to gaze into something I was completely oblivious to. I kind of had a Deja Vu today while sipping my morning tea on the porch of my apartment across one of the busiest highways in the Nation's Capital.

I felt that like there's no collective reality. We all seem to live in the same world
while everybody sees things in a different way. For everyone reality is
different then, because we perceive things differently. If so, how do people get so
close sometimes if they live in different worlds? I'm aware of the most cliched scientific principle based on magnetism that opposites attract. Maybe that's the reason why relationships are so difficult? It means that our perception is shaped not only by our way of looking and understanding but also by the influences/experiences of other people having a parallel existence. Our realities collide a lot causing constant uncertainty and distraction.

How can reality be real if it changes constantly? Looking beyond reality, I discovered that there's no reason why I came here - there's only a future consequence of it.Life is abstract. But it sure is more fun by the day....