The first and the most important thing I will say is that the following text has not been written by me. I found this little gem on a reddit post posted by /u/photonasty. I feel that this is something many of us know, inherently, but do not realise until someone puts it to us in the form of words.

Last Saturday I was at a mall in South Delhi with my beautiful wife. We were in one of he apparel shops where she was checking out some cure cloths and I was wandering around doing the husband thing which would be to feign interest in the said cloths. At one point I realised that a few set of eyes were constantly following me. I saw that for some reason I was the centre for attention for 2 girls. Now I have a beard. Not a stubble a full grown-ass beard which is worthy of attention from all friends and foes alike. I am used to it. After some time one of the girls covertly (she tried but i saw) took a few pictures of mine. I noticed but IDWAF so I moved on. At the time of checking out one of the girls was within an earshot and was speaking to someone. As it turns out apparently I looked like that some someone and he was being duly informed that his doppelgänger has been spotted (she actually used the word duplicate but ugh..) and she will share the pics shortly. Now that the story was clear to me I still did not have any fucks to give so I moved along with wifey to the next stop. Later that evening as we were having dinner and discussing the incident we had a major realisation. What if it was the other way around? I, a male, would have been caught taking pics of some female secretly. I can easily imagine the viral videos shared on social media with heading like “_Two girls were out shopping happily, you would be shocked to see what this pervert did_” or “_These brave girls caught a perv secretly taking their pics. What happened next will surprise you_”. You all would have shared the video praising their heroics and cursing my mere existence. But what about my sensational headline? Now you can say I could have confronted them but even you know the outcome that would have brought. Nothing would have come out of it rather they would have turned it on me for falsely accusing and harassing them. Because women empowerment. It is a strange and scary realisation that I being a male have absolutely no rights when it comes to privacy and harassment.

For what it is worth it is not new for me that people tell me that I look like someone they know. Some 2 weeks back I was out with a friend when 2 guys came to me and told me that i looked like one of their friends and if they could take a picture. I happily obliged and posed for them. I would have done the same for these girls as well if they had only asked. After all who would not want to be photographed by 2 girls in front of his wife :)

Posting this because of my great fondness for T-Rex’s. Originally posted on reddit here

I found this amazing image on reddit and I think it is absolutely worth the share. Credits to the image creator are in the image only.

November is here and someone has introduced you to the concept of Movember. Not the exact philanthropic cause observed by men throughout the word but the oversimplified version – don’t shave for a month. And now you are a Movember bro because its easy to do and now you have a valid excuse for looking scruffy. Anyways now since you have decided to do it, why not do it right. Here are a few tips for Movember Bros who are all new to this growing and keeping facial hair on how to get through the month without losing your mind and dignity.

[caption id=”attachment_1348” align=”alignleft” width=”212”] That’s us![/caption]

They say love begins to fade 7 years into a relationship. The ‘7 year itch’ they call it. The habits and actions you like in the beginning no longer seem cute. All you see are the dark parts of the relationship and hence the itchy irritation. I don’t believe that.

I stopped looking up to god for specific things a long time back. For it is possible that what I think I need or is good for me might not be. And also it wouldn’t take god, if he exists, too long to realize that this kid only comes to me when he needs something. Since then my prayers have been super generic leaving all the burden on god himself to figure out what is good for me and then make that happen. Now it is hard to keep this resolution. Time to time I am in the mood to tell god that it is the right time for my Maserati and that a Gulf Stream makes sense now. Festive times are especially hard when you are constantly tempted to make a request or two. Today also I have a list ready of things that I want from god as my Christmas present. Again I will not ask for anything specific or materialistic but again it would not be as vague as world peace (dear god, if you could manage, world peace would be nice). I am a selfish being and most of my desires are local.

*Smiles for the people I love and people who love me *- all the wealth and all the tasty foods of the world combined cannot match the happiness that the smile of a loved one can get you. Please always give them the reason to smile. Make me the mean to it if you can.

Today is Dussehra, or Vijayadashmi as many call it. For those who do not know, without getting into much detail (which you can get here) I can tell you that this Hindu festival is celebrated because supposedly on this day many many years ago (Lord) Ram finally killed Ravan for having kidnapped his wife Sita. The essence of the festival is much more than just revenge as it might seem from my over simplified definition. The festival is said to signify the victory of good over evil, light over dark and truth over deception. Ram is worshiped in our homes as god and is usually pointed at as the ultimate role model for mankind. Not that I disagree (completely) with this but at times I wonder whether todays parents really do wish for a child like Ram. Are we truly aspirational towards having a Ram-like attitude towards life? More importantly, would the story would have remained and ended the same way it did if it had happened in this age and would Ram have been still able to come out victorious. And if somehow we manage to answer all of these answers with a yes, then despite knowing the benefits of being Ram-like why do we, all of us, have more in common with Ravan than Ram.

‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘Thou shalt not steal’, ‘Respect your parents’ and other such saying are not bound by religion, region, race or color. You do not have to be devout Hindu, or even religious or educated and not even just literate to have known these ‘virtues’. Everyone knows them and understands them. How hard is it to understand - “Don’t lie”. And yet we are dishonest in our behavior, we lie. It does not matter if it’s a small innocuous lie like “I am almost there”. A lie is a lie. And Ram supposedly never lied. We all steal. Maybe not directly like burglars, robbers and shoplifters but we do. Tax fraud is stealing. I really think Ram would approve of you manipulating your balance sheet to save tax (This by the way is a lying + stealing combo). I am sure we all love our parents a lot but are we as devoted towards them as Ram was? You can go deeper and deeper into all the aspects of your life and in the end you would only come back with a conclusion that we are much closer to Ravan than Ram. This confuses me. If we all know that being Ram-like is going to end in victory and is also the right way to go about things why are we all Ravans?

An idea is the most potent as well as the most convoluted thing in the world. A simple looking idea could turn out to be a major hassle of life and an extremely complex seeming one can be as easy as the process of breathing itself. They distract us, excite us, entice us and haunt us to sleeplessness. Yet we all consider them to be a good thing. And why not? It’s the ideas that get us out of sticky situations. If not because of ideas we would not have had so many amazing inventions and discoveries around us. Yet despite all the “goodness” about the ideas one should be careful about/with them. If an idea is the one thing that started the journey to success, it will take one rogue idea only to derail you from the right path. It is natural to get excited whenever you get a new idea and the sudden urge to try it, test it and implement could be unstoppable but it is important that you weigh the idea in the broader prospect of things and with long-term implications in mind. It is very easy for young entrepreneurs to get distracted by new ideas and waste their time and energy in chasing them jeopardizing the effort they have already put in their startup. It’s not uncommon to see new entrepreneurs running after new ideas like new marketing initiatives and adding new feature to the product totally disregarding the existing bugs or issues or drawbacks in the product that are already there. People tend to start building new shiny features when the old ones are still not working properly. They start chasing new marketing mediums even before they have properly used the conventional ones. They start chasing startup communities and VC meetups even when the product is half-baked just because that is the “cool” thing to do. It is true that entrepreneurship starts with an idea but an idea is all it takes to kill it as well. You have to see through the options and weight them based on your standing and direction. Optimization only comes after completion. You cannot optimize something that is not even there.

Don’t let your ideas kill your greatest idea.

It is hard not to be impressed by a body builder. They the healthiest, most attractive and hardworking group of individuals you will find. But beyond these external features there is much more to body building and the individuals pursuing it. There is a whole different lifestyle and ethos of living from which we all, entrepreneurs and other, can learn so much and make our lives much better. I am sharing a few things that I feel we call should definitely learn from body builders

1. Quantifiable goals – whether it is gaining muscles or losing weight a body builder always sets quantifiable goals and works around them. He knows exactly how many kilos he has to lose and then only he starts the activities. Even if it is as trivial as 6 he knows how many abs he wants. He will constantly log and monitor his stats and check for deviations. I am a firm believer of “What cannot be measured cannot be managed” and I feel that quantification as much as possible should be done.
2. Impeccable planning – If you are serious about your body and you have defined your goals you will have to have a proper and detailed plan of action to achieve those goals. You will define the daily routine and diet in granular details to the last bite and last rep. An experienced body builder will also accommodate some scope of adjustment based on the intermediate observations and deviations but those still are planned. Anything that is meticulously planned is bound to succeed.
3. Religiously follow routine – you cannot get a good body if you do not follow your plan religiously. Body builders are very particular about their diet, the quantities and the timings as well as their workout plan. They will workout in the exact same order and on exact same time as it is mentioned in the plan. This kind of commitment is something that we all can do with. Planning is easy, its only words. The real metal lies in the execution and consistency.
4. Push yourself to the limit – if you want to have a great physique we not only have to get out of our comfort zones but also push ourself into that painful zone where the body is almost about to yield and one more rep is just not possible. And yet a dedicated body builder will do 2 more reps. He knows that it is these 2 reps that count. As entrepreneurs we do push our self to the limit at times but far too rarely. But beyond the limit is where the heavens lie. As they say in the gym – pain is just weakness leaving the body.
5. Importance of rest – You will not get a good body if you workout 24 hours a day. When you workout your muscles break and then get reformed when you are resting (crude explanation). So the real muscle-building takes place when you are actually resting. All body builders know that and just like their workout are very particular about their rest. They know the importance of a good nights sleep and the importance of that 1 break in their schedule. They do all this to avoid fatigue and stress. In our lives it is called burnout. No one wants to burn out.
6. Meritocracy – A gym is almost always a meritocratic society. Everyone has to earn their place and respect by showing their metal. Fellow body builders will only accept you and respect you if they see you pushing yourself. Else you are just one of those distractions hogging the treadmill posting “At da Gym” on Facebook. In my last post I wrote about entrepreneurs being far too kind and accommodating towards fellow entrepreneurs even when they have not earned it.