Yes, you have read it correctly! The famous English phrase “ Lull before the storm” has been deliberately reworded to the aforementioned! 

What we have witnessed over the past few days is nothing less than a tsunami of tragedies and unsavoury developments! Starting with the dastardly act of killing innocent tourists in Pahalgam, followed by Operation Sindoor, stampede at Bengaluru, crash of Air India’s Dreamliner, Israel – Iran exchange of missiles that’s threatening to become a full fledged war to yesterday’s helicopter crash and caving in of a bridge over river Indrayani near Pune, our cup of woes is overflowing! And here, I am not even mentioning never ending Russia – Ukraine and Israel- Hamas sagas that seem to be never ending and worsening. 

Lull before the storm is eerie, chilling and disconcerting. On the contrary lull after the storm is painful – witnessing all the signs of destruction left behind by the raging storm, but relieving and comforting at the agony having gotten over! Let’s pray and hope for this lull. 

 If 2022 was to be 2025, today would have been my last day of working, 31st being a Saturday. However, in 2022, the year of my superannuation, 31st was a Woking day and accordingly, my last day in the organisation. 

Well before my last day before superannuation, I had started looking forward to the life post retirement. Having worked without a break for almost 4 decades, I was excited to have all the free time to myself to indulge in the activities that I along wanted , but never found time. Travelling, reading, exercising, writing and doing some voluntary work were a few things on my agenda.

On my third anniversary of retirement, after penning two books, reading a hoard of books, travelling inland and overseas and actively engaging in yoga, I have started missing the things that I wanted to be freed of- routine, office, active engagement, meetings, deadlines etc. 

Not that I am writing this post to announce my “ availability to work “! It’s just to tell all those actively engaged in work, especially the youngsters, to cherish their work life, instead of feeling burnt out, frustrated and demotivated. We always yearn for something that’s away from us! Each phase of life has its own significance that must be enjoyed! Retirement is interesting, but let’s make our journey to retirement interesting, productive and reasonably long.

 If 2022 was to be 2025, today would have been my last day of working, 31st being a Saturday. However, in 2022, the year of my superannuation, 31st was a Woking day and accordingly, my last day in the organisation. 

Well before my last day before superannuation, I had started looking forward to the life post retirement. Having worked without a break for almost 4 decades, I was excited to have all the free time to myself to indulge in the activities that I along wanted , but never found time. Travelling, reading, exercising, writing and doing some voluntary work were a few things on my agenda.

On my third anniversary of retirement, after penning two books, reading a hoard of books, travelling inland and overseas and actively engaging in yoga, I have started missing the things that I wanted to be freed of- routine, office, active engagement, meetings, deadlines etc. 

Not that I am writing this post to announce my “ availability to work “! It’s just to tell all those actively engaged in work, especially the youngsters, to cherish their work life, instead of feeling burnt out, frustrated and demotivated. We always yearn for something that’s away from us! Each phase of life has its own significance that must be enjoyed! Retirement is interesting, but let’s make our journey to retirement interesting, productive and reasonably long.

A view says that birthdays represent the ageing process, wondering what there’s to celebrate ? While it’s true that we look forward to growing older when we are are young, say may be up to the age of 40-45, we yearn to remain young after a age – want our limbs, teeth, organs, looks to remain the same as they were in our prime youth. 

But time and tide wait for none. Ageing is part of the process called life and it should, in no way, deter our spirit to live life king size. And it becomes all the more possible when the friends from school, college, first organisation, last organisation, newly encountered etc all join in to wish you happy birthday, exhorting you to celebrate the day with full zeal. That’s what I am doing on my 63rd birthday thanks to outpouring of love by all of you. 

Birthdays remind you of your arrival and existence,

And should be celebrated as an important day of your life,

Each passing year is an achievement and bundle of memories,

That enriches our personality, character and life! 

Growing old is the law of nature,

That can neither be opposed or reversed;

Celebrating each day as it comes with gratitude,

Is what that should be on our agenda first! 

GOAT ( the greatest of all time) is a fascinating term that we all tend to describe a great achiever in his or her field- music, sports or any other discipline. However, in a dynamic world like today’s, it would be more appropriate to use this term as GOTT ( the greater of today’s time ) instead of Goat. Take for instance Tennis – from my living memory, it was Connors, Ashe, McEnroe, Borg, Sampras, Agassi to the trio of Federer, Rafa and Joker! Ditto females from Billie Jean King to Evert to Navratilova to Graf to Seles to Serena – the list has always been dynamic. 

In case of cricket, Gavaskar donned the GOAT head for a long time till Kapil, Azhar, Sourav, Dravid, Sachin and Virat followed. The spin triumvirate of Bedi, Chandra and Prasanna, once considered GOAT and irreplaceable were followed by the likes of Kumble and Ashwin. 

Therefore, I will refrain from using superlatives such as GOAT for Virat, who has decided to hang his boots after 14 years of test cricket. But the fact remains that he will always be counted as  one of the greatest icons of modern day cricket in all its three formats, a run making machine with humongous appetite for runs and a powerhouse on the field with unending reserve of energy and enthusiasm. His never say die spirit and extremely positive body language always inspired hope and confidence even in the most hopeless of situations. His statistics are there all over and are not that important as there are players above him and there will be players in future bettering his stats. But when it comes to spirit, lion heartedness, delightful execution, copybook style and consistency, Virat will remain a Virat chapter in the history of the cricketing world. 

All the best Virat! Hope you help the cricketing scene of our country by grooming more Virats in future and continue to spread your charm like only you can! 

The first thing that many of us do upon waking up in the morning is to check our mobile for the messages, notifications or mails that we  receive while being asleep. This engagement with our smartphone continues throughout the day with frequent surfing through social media watching reels, posts, updates and likes and comments received on materials posted by us. And forget the time spent on smartphones by working professionals. They receive mails and messages non stop, including during the wee hours.

Therefore, increasingly the advice from experts and influencers is to restrict the use of smartphone. While it may not be possible for working professionals to pay heed to this advice, what about students, self employed, home makers and retired persons? 

All the above is very effectively discussed in a small book “ Dopamine Detox” by Thibaut Meurisse, which was suggested to me by a close friend.  Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that stimulates us to do something in anticipation of a reward. But no amount of stimulation or anticipation for reward can give fulfilment. As per the author, social media capitalises on our preference for certain content and repeatedly serve us with what we want to see or know about, getting us hooked on to that particular theme. While the companies and the content creators actually get rewarded in the form of revenue, we end up wasting our precious time by craving for more of something that’s of absolutely no use to us. In the process the time than we should be devoting to creative or important things gets diverted and we end up procrastinating or altogether avoiding doing it! 

At this stage of my life, I do not require to be hooked on to my phone for aimless surfing, but smartphone being a one stop shop for wasted as well as creative energy, hopefully I will display enough maturity to use discretion. Professionals and youngsters should definitely pay attention to this important aspect of detoxing themselves of this dopamine effect and restrict usage of non work related phone/ internet. 

Friends is a famous US sitcom that ran for 10 seasons spread over 10 years between 1994 and 2004. When the sitcom finally ended in 2004, 266 episodes had been aired. 

Started with virtual unknown actors, the six main leads gained immense popularity as the sitcom progressed episode after episode and season after season. Today Jeniffer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt Leblanc, Mathew Parry and David Schwimmer are well known names in Hollywood.  

I recently watched all the ten seasons on OTT and felt deeply connected with the 6 lead characters having this déjà vu feeling as to why 6 friends had to ultimately call it quits and go their respective ways! And there’s so much trivia around this iconic show – reunion of the protagonists after years, compilation of special moments, talk shows with the main actors, feelings of the actors for each other ( they continue to be best friends more than 2 decades after the last episode was aired) and death of Mathew Parry. 

The premise of the show is simple – friendship is above everything else. Characters have their angularities, ambiguities, oddities – but they are loveable and are always there for each other. The show has humour as its essence, though some of the situations, dialogues and scenes , including live-in arrangements could be too much for the sensibilities of Indian audience. However, there’s no denying that longevity of the show, its freshness and connect with the viewers over a prolonged period is something that our content makers can well learn. Some of the points that I could arrive at towards this end are;

(1) actors enjoyed great bonhomie in as much as they negotiated uniform salaries with the producers

(2) all 6 got equal importance and there were no show stealers

(3) none of the characters had to be changed by resorting to plastic surgery or other such unbelievable things seen in domestic shows 

(4) script always ensured situational humour and never appeared stretched. There were no generational leaps. 

When the show ended, the six actors had become the highest paid TV stars, earning a grand sum of 1 Mio dollar per episode. Thanks to OTT, we now have access to all these iconic shows about which we had only heard.

Qamar Jalalabadi is known for his work in Bollywood. However, his non-film poetry is much deeper and relevant, notwithstanding fast changing times. A friend circulated a beautiful poem by the great poet, “ uske baad kya? ( what after that)? It’s very difficult to capture the essence of any literary work in translation and therefore, the following may be read as the gist or the underlying message rather than a literal translation.

I will accumulate lots of wealth 

What after that

Shall acquire a dream home 

What after that 

Desire for liquor will take me to a bar

What after that

Weakness for beauty will lead to a satisfying experience 

What after that 

I will say great poetry much appreciated by connoisseurs 

What after that

Urge to discover the world will take me places 

What after that

One day death will come knocking at the door 

What after that

A body made of elements will get subsumed into the elements 

And who knows what happens after that ? 

We all would have heard the stories of people coming from their native places to Mumbai to meet their favourite actor. A few like Dharmendra could also be generous to actually not only meet such diehard fans but offer them a cup of tea too! Many others would just hang outside a studio or the residence of the star being sought to catch a glimpse and end up either returning home disappointed or hang around and live in penury doing odd jobs!

Gone are the days when such awestruck fans would come hoping to catch a glimpse, if not meet their idol – Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh, Salman or Aamir! Thanks to the power of television, some of the actors appearing in popular soaps and reality shows are now being sought after and I am saying this from my personal experience I Just had!

A young boy from the next door medicine shop came to deliver a few medicines ordered and after delivering the same, he came back to my amazement. Taking heart from my friendly demeanour and a small tip that I gave him, he asked me whether I knew where Dilip Joshi, the lead actor playing the role of Jethalal in now almost iconic, “ Tarak Mehta ka Ooltah Chashma” lived? He further confided that he had especially come from his native place in UP to meet his favourite actor and to survive in this big bad world of an expensive and busy megapolis, he had picked up this job of a delivery boy, hoping one day, one of the customers might connect him with his icon!

The incident has moved me and I wish I can fulfil the desire of this young boy, who seemingly has no other plan in life! It also awakens me to the power of television and the stars that it’s producing, which was hitherto the domain of cinema only!

Dilip Joshi is undoubtedly a fine actor and he has attained great popularity by playing the main protagonist in the aforesaid long running serial, but my above experience may surprise even the actor himself about his star power!

As a small kid, I have faint memories of watching Purab aur Pashchim with my parents at now defunct Imperial theatre in Delhi and remember audience dancing to the tune of “ Dulhan chali “ song. I also remember my father, who had seen the freedom struggle closely as a young boy, getting emotional while watching the movie. 

I also cannot forget that how difficult it was to get the tickets for blockbusters. Roti Kapada aur Makaan, Dus Numbri and Sanyasi. Shor was a classic movie and who doesn’t remember Upkar and Shaheed.

The maestro later lost his Midas touch and made a few forgettable flicks, the last of his blockbusters being Kranti, in which he co-starred and directed his idol Dilip Kumar.

All the above memories came back to haunt reading the news of the sad demise of Mr Bharat aka Harikrishna Goswami, known to us by his screen name Manoj Kumar. He knew the art of weaving patriotism into interesting story line that resulted in all the aforesaid blockbusters and many more in which he only acted but not directed. In times, when meaningless and forgettable cinema is ruling the roost, the loss of an icon like Manoj Kumar is more profound.