Random Thoughts

I have seen a ted talk on procrastination. It was great. That video kind of explained why I live the way I live. It was informative, imaginative and illustrative. But, did that video change anything in me? I do not think so. Even after 18 hours after watching that video, I am here writing this blog procrastinating. Actually I have planned to spend these hours in the evening to complete an advanced business intelligence assignment. I do not feel like doing it mainly because I do not feel like doing it. The reason is as ambiguous as the issue. And that ambiguity is the issue. But, while thinking about this issue of mine I have stumbled upon something great. Well ,not great but may be good. Hmm, may not even be good but reasonable. Keeping the qualification of the idea aside for the moment, let me get into the details.

I keep procrastinating and that should have been understood by now. I am an extremely good planner and at times feel that I should take up that planning as a profession because I am so good at it. Jokes apart, I have started planning in advance from my class X board exams and I still am doing it. Only to realize that I will be re-scheduling each plan with a probability of 0.998 or 998 times out of every 1000 times. But, during the last few days I have observed a pattern in my execution. I think I plan things based on my interest and I execute them based on my hatred in performing them. I am an unbelievable optimist while planning and an astonishing pessimist while executing. With my guilt building up, I do things that I hate less to escape the guilt of not doing things I hate more. Here, the word hate is used due to my dearth in vocabulary and not absolute hate towards that particular thing. This is only to say that I love doing somethings but do not actually do them until I have to do something that I may not like that much and hence in that case I do those things for which I did not have the will to do but wanted to do.

To instantiate, at this particular moment, my optimistic me wanted to do the advanced business intelligence assignment. My pessimistic me wants to watch a movie and then do the assignment when it is due or just before the deadline. There is a hidden optimism in the pessimistic side of my life. I know that I have accomplished many things doing just before the due date and hence I can pull through another such feat with a effort . However, this time I did not allow the pessimist to win, but still am not able to allow the optimist to win as well. But, I took the middle route and have come here to write a blog post. This I think is the change in me. I am doing the thing I wanted to from a long time but did not have the will till now. This could be wrong but adds less guilt to my giga bytes of guilt history. I hope this is the way things change for the good and I hope I will reach my optimistic self some time soon.

This was the ted talk that tried to change me but yeahh...That is how life izzzz.

https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator?language=en#t-353041

He was a passionate Rishi - A small Tribute to Mr. Kasinathuni Viswanath

November - 2014

On a cold winter afternoon during the winter break in Dallas, I was browsing the YOUTUBE to just pass time. One of the suggested videos had an old man in a dancing pose in the rain. Yes, this video is from the age old Telugu classic “SHANKARAABHARANAM”. At that particular moment I felt compelled to click on the video. The music, lyric and the action aroused a feeling that was close to ecstasy in my heart. This made me watch the video again. The thirst for that feeling rose furthermore and I was induced into watching the full movie. Although this was one of the best Telugu movies ever made, I did not have had the good fortune of watching this master piece till then. Although my thirst for the ecstatic feeling was not satiated, the film was a revelation. It revealed the passion of a director, an able, creative and sensible human being trying to convey his love for music and his view on the then societal structure in India. He was subtle in conveying a message and sublime in praising an art. He was an ardent fan of classical music and a faithful follower of various Indian dance forms. He was Dr. K Vishwanath, honorably known as “KALATAPASWI”, a sage who meditated on art.

March -2016

He was a great visionary and an even better story teller. Each of his films, I may be exaggerating here a bit but many of his films were so gripping that few people like me do not want to move forward. This blog post was started in 2014 November. Apart from noting my laziness, any one reading this can see that today, it is 2016, and I have resumed writing this blog just after watching another epic of his “SAAGARA SANGAMAM”. This is the third time I am seeing the movie in the last year and a half. I value time. I always feel bad when I waste time but watching these movies does not look like wasting time. I do not know if this is rational but when I cry along with Kamal Hassan, who was weeping, after dancing for his mother for the last time, I feel that ecstasy again. I may be an emotional person, but I know that the movie is a story and it did not happen. I know that Kamal was just acting and he was not actually crying, but I cry. I involuntarily feel the pain and then I reach that state where I feel like I am close to the something that can be conceived only when we are not just conscious but super conscious. That feeling does not last long and then slowly my thoughts confluence into thinking about the person who had the conviction, confidence and most important of all, the content in him to create these master pieces.

This capability of his does not look like an inborn talent. He was not a gifted lyricist like his own Sirivennela Seeta Rama Sastry, or an extremely talented singer like his close associate SP Balasubramanyam. This man not only had love for Indian art forms but also had a penchant for societal reforms. He was a master in interweaving the ancient Indian art with the modern reformist ideas. He was an ancient modernist. He wanted the change in bad retaining the good. All these words do not do justice to his work. I, with my limited vocabulary and expression am not competent enough to complement the completeness of Mr. Vishwanath. So after darting out 586 words, I came to a conclusion that I am not able to transform my thoughts into words. Here, in this situation I will have to tell about his greatness. There is always a transmission loss in any kind of transfer be it tangible goods or intangible ideas. But his efforts were such that even after transferring his feelings to his lyricists, singers, actors and editors where there was a possibility of information deformity at a minimum of four centers, he was able to bring out so many subtle emotions on screen. Every single time after watching his movies like SWARNA KAMALAM, SWATI KIRANAM ET all, I somehow cannot believe that those movies were not made by single person. I cannot digest the idea that some hundred people or so were involved on doling out an epic which had a single theme. This again brings me to the influence of that man on the entire crew of those movies. If he was not passionate he could never have done such movies. Hence I called him a passionate person. Then I took the freedom of using the Sanskrit word R

ishi, which was used to refer Mantra- Drashtas or the seers of mantra. The Vedic seers. Mr. K. Vishwanath was no doubt not a mantra drsahta, but he was a bhava drashta and a kala drashta and hence he can definitely be referred to as a Rishi. Thus came the title “He Was a Passionate Rishi.”