vivek sekar

Everything that once made me happy just bores me, leaves me cold.

- The Zahir, Paulo Coehlo

its a known fact that one is close to 6000 km away from home. the arrival here was with the knowledge that one is going to stay away from home for a certain duration.
with all this as a known, why is it that there is still this feeling of making this place like home? so as to avoid the level of distance that is actually physically there?

Why expect to be home when you are not home?

I always try to stick to

“i hate the feeling of being at home, when i am travelling or away from home”.

“yeh joh des hai” from swades becomes the anthem, all the words from the song seem to relate and feel more meaningful.
somehow married Indian men become so heavily dependent on their wife, that they forget how to live a basic life for survival. i think the survival instinct is lost or may be they have become slaves, even though considering that they might be treating their other half like one.
Ashutosh Gowariker could not have gotten ‘the village elders’ and mohan’s talk about the cultural differences more spot on, dialogues from the movie seem to be allusively used in many instances.

i was planning to title this as ‘home’ but somehow decided not to since i value the word, and did not want to waste the title for this.

the road to understanding that home is some distance away might be long, but its more about how fast you want to travel it and understand it that seems to be a bigger question.

in a foreign place where everything is organized, routine and predictable. surprises are limited and randomness kept to the bare minimum.

cricket, bollywood, tollywood help.

laughing out at slapstick comedies. unconnected, random, filthy and cheap jokes.
seeing life getting changed in a moments notice in movies. shaving blades splitting bullets into 2 and thereby helping in taking out 2 of villain’s countless sidekicks.
edge of the seat finishes in matches, where the pendulum swings just as the dice rolls on, to play its own game.

Virtue and life needs some cheaper thrills.

the thing .. thinking about .. how long i want to continue .. work .. wat options …

what if i am … crazy … who cannot be handled … its all hormones thts all
… need to slow down things sometimes .. and keep the over excitation to the right moments

sometimes u think, a solution is found in a particular way, but mostly it turns out, the solution was the other one u did not take

Why am I unhappy? The question carries within it the virus that will destroy everything. If we ask that question, it means we want to find out what makes us happy. If what makes us happy is different from what we have now, then we must either change once and for all or stay as we are, feeling even more unhappy. - Paulo Coelho

random excerpts from me, my friends far and distant geographically, general stuff. for all the activity missing form this blog, i have some news, pictures and experience updates coming soon. how soon is again something i am not sure about.

the waveform has ebbed down quite a bit, the magnitude seems to very low.

things seem to going in a straight line. the excitement is missing, but still i am liking the challenge.
typical and odd types of challenges and pressure has been piling in on me and i feel very comfortable about it.

work is hectic and at times very challenging and very interesting,
work related out of work stuff seem to be piling on the most of the challenges,
the totally out of work stuff are getting interesting,
while i have not yet put enough time to get a proper theme ready for the blog after the upgrade i did.

all the while i have been entertained nearly on a daily basis by the little ones in the trams i have been on :), i will put up one of the instances soon.

on the day, the clouds decided not to let go of the water drops but instead descended down to the ground. water in pursuit of its freedom from the clouds would slowly come off the clouds, not as drops but water took the shapes of mist and fine droplets, sashaying off from the clouds and gliding down to ground. A day when laws of physics and nature seemed to be bending. a day earlier it was bright, sunny and warm unlike any other day in Helsinki this summer.

the Helsinki city marathon, 42 kilometers around the city of Helsinki with the finish line inside the Olympic stadium.I had decided to take part, registered and started my preparations only 2 weeks before the start date of the marathon. This sudden decision making was thanks to my friend Sriram’s participation in the New York half marathon - Thanks Sriram - but unlike him i was not doing it for a cause or may be i was doing it for my own cause. the first few days i was more than apprehensive about having to pay and join the marathon, i was hoping that may be they will allow free participation. that was not the case and i nearly decided to not take part, then Arun was wondering why i was backing out and after some talking we both got registered.

there started everything. i had never covered huge distances with a time goal. i was not sure if i would be able to make it to the 21km line, as that was the only aim first up.  while my preparations started 2 weeks before, marathoners start practice 4 months in advance and 2 weeks before a marathon they cool off to get ready for the marathon - our case was obviously the opposite.

BANG, the marathon started and the crowd in front of me began their steady jog and i for my part started with s brisk walking pace. within the first 100 meters i had a doubt that i should also start to jog rather than walk, but then the better sense prevailed for the next 1 km. close to the 2 km mark, i started to jog.just as some random music was playing out from the mp3 player, i was moving forward totally unware of the effort being put in and more bothered by the people around me. all i know i am moving ahead, without letting some runners back hold my interest for too long ;).

slowly i slip into a state were all my concentration is on everything around me with least amount of thought going into the my physical state or position with respect to the crowd. i am in auto-pilot and my legs did not need the attention i had given previous when training, more like its become my second nature.

as the distance i have covered increases, any thoughts in my mind vanish creating a empty vacuum. filling me with a feeling of being liberated, but from what i have no idea. i had imagined that during the marathon, i would be concentrating on what is happening to me, but it was the opposite. i was enjoying each and every moment of it, paying more and more attention to every thing around me.

each of the fine droplets slowly graced my face passing on that tingling feel along with the fresh chill, that you might expect from a freshly picked fruit after having shaken off the dew droplets on it. for whatever i felt, i still was quite empty headed and clueless as to what was going on. i was just obeying my previous decision to take part in the marathon and contrary to my expectation i was not uncomfortable as i thought i would have.

i crossed the 21km without much of a fuss being caused by myself. and then slowed down my pace, from then on the distance i was covering was bonus. with every kilometer i passed, my shoulder was caught up and i had a sprain, by 30km i felt like my feet had bulged up and they were trying to the bust up the shoe, pushing hard from within. the jogging became more intermittent and brisk walking more regular, i started to feel the distance. with close to 5 km remaining, me and arun decided to take it slow and finish the marathon in our pace rather than try and push against time.

inside the olympic stadium, in presence of many we crossed the line. it was done. a 42km marathon.

pushing forward to understand myself physically, i feel need to keep pushing to find the point or may be the breaking point. How do i know my limits ? yes fear does create imaginary limits, but what about the physical limits? Hopefully more challenges will lead to more understanding. may be the realm might change from the physical to mental. but that for what lies ahead.

like a moment taken from the Forrest gump movie, why did i decide to take part in the marathon ? - for no particular reason, i just felt like i had to take up some challenge and the marathon seemed to me that it was the challenge i was looking out for.