Husain Journal

No, it’s not getting into a top university. It’s not your luck, either. It’s rather something old, easy, humble. But – let me give you a little context first. What I learn while juggling my day job with reading, personal journaling and publishing blogposts here is that when I try to go ahead towards 1 particular area, my focus shifts away from other critical areas. These days I’m racking my mind on the issue of offering my daughter a great education and what could be the most advantageous for her: Schools, private tutor or home education. Before this it was the renovation of my dilapidated house. Because you know that it feels selfish to think only about personal growth. It’s your top responsibility to think about your family also. Of course, focussing on all the things simultaneously isn’t fun. Even if you permit no extra traffic in your head (news, gossip, social networks) there’s already more than you can easily handle. So? There’s the need to adopt an exquisite tec...

Hmm, let me guess… You have heard a ton of advice on the importance of planning. Yeah, they say that the soul of every project is its plan, and failing to plan is planning to fail. While this precious hunk of wisdom gets rehashed and reverberated in different new ways, we rarely come across the truth that no plan is executed accurately as sketched out. Guess why? Because as we go forth on the planned course, new and unexpected things pop up, and consequently we’re compelled to change the scripted steps. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former general and president of the U.S. said, “No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one.” This happens because when an army goes forward in the battlefield, unexpected situations come to surface. The enemy reacts in a different way, or the weather changes, or the ammunition supply gets stuck somewhere etc. If fresh conditions unfold but the general sticks with the same plan, he is going to lose. Going accurat...

Ever skipped down a blogpost feeling that the writer would have written it easily? Ever saw a jaw-dropping painting thinking that the artist might have made it effortlessly? Well, until recently I felt as if someone has thrown a glass of hot water on my face while I saw the attention-grabbing works of others. You know why? Because deep down I felt that I never will be able to bring the same charisma in my work. But not anymore. Now I know that if something looks lovely, then there have been many struggling hours behind it. If a piece looks polished and finished, then the worker would have toiled a lot before getting that beauty. The truth is that behind every finished product, there’re a terrific level of striving. But it’s a blunder that we don’t see how much a person has failed or got rejected before finally showcasing his best work. Rarely we hear guys talking about their failures or ham-fisted attempts at projects before getting a breakthrough. “I have not failed. I hav...

Without taking the time to decide the topic I'm going to write on, I have just started the timer and now I feel words will rush out. Even if you think I’m a fool, it’s fine because I have to just take out my thoughts on paper as rapidly as I can. No cares. I’m ready to destroy my reputation for the sake of productivity. I know that we human beings have the capacity of thinking stuff amounting to hundreds of words in a single sec. I also know that we require some effort of the mind to shape those thoughts to words, and when the writing task is also involved with it, the toughness notches up more. Yet I think that often it’s laziness and time-expensive to wait and wait for figuring out the topic because time – one of our most precious commodities – slips fast. It’s laziness because oftentimes what we need is just getting started and the topic takes form automatically. You have heard it hundreds of times that writing is tough as hell. But rarely the naked truth is heard tha...

What if, God forbid, tomorrow you’re thrown in the prison for 27 years? Not for killing people, not for looting banks, not for passing out any super classified information of your country…but you’re jailed just because you demanded the rights you’re entitled to. Would you feel that the cruelty of life has slapped you on your face? Most unfair huh? Well, this is exactly what happened with a lovely man whose name was Nelson. Yes, Nelson Mandela. Of South Africa. Who stood up against tyranny, against slavery, against injustice. And grabbed success. Who made the soil of his motherland so hot for the invaders that they eventually had to flee. Want to know one mind-quickening secret behind his success? You may be disappointed to know it. It was thinking, as he revealed in many of his interviews. Answering what he did in the vast time available to him in the prison, he said of thinking about the plan of action he needed to pursue. He said that introspecting about the past mist...

I gripped the glossy parapet and climbed up to hang on the other side which opened into a fear-provoking gorge – running hundreds of feet deep. Down on the slanting grass-carpeted hills, trees crookedly grew from different places as if telling that they’re stubborn and can grow up from anywhere. Had I slipped from such a blood-tingling height, my bones would have scattered in 40 different places. Whew! I was in the beautiful Nainital, at a mountain peak inside a shade where other tourists too were making picnic in the pure mountain air. Chatting with each other, they crushed fuming coffee and munched snacks, while some took pictures and played all around. And birds, white and red and green, some big and some small, flew and chirped beneath the sheets of clouds in the wide blue sky. Anyway, back to my foolishness: I was in my teenage then. I kept myself on the cliff of death because I fancied myself a Bollywood hero – a risk-lover. I wanted to signa...

“When you feel afraid or nervous of doing a thing then do it because the real harm you may thus receive is less poignant than its expectation and fear.” Imam Ali As the train engine whistled and the screeching wheals rolled forward, my heart pounded violently against my chest. The carriages swung side to side – making me feel giddy. I said to Brijesh, my travelling companion, that I don’t want to go further, that I want to step off the speeding train. It was a humid night of July. I was leaving Lucknow to pursue a 1-year computer course in Delhi. I felt horrified to leave my home because my fears, provoked by my blindness, had imprisoned me in the company of my family and friends. I’m embarrassed to confess that so nervous I felt then that venturing out even from my home chilled my soul. Yet I decided, with the help of my encouraging friends, that I’ll have to make a leap and so I haired off to the Delhi course. I heard the thudding and slamming sounds with the shaking ca...

The Government feels threatened and has to bring a hair-raising law to crush the astounding success of these people. Natal, South Africa It’s 1860s. The British government wants revenue from sugarcane farming in South Africa, and it's not possible without an outside support. So it tempts the poor, caste-crippled people of India by offering them the South African citizenship and full ownership of their farmland provided that they work there for 5 years. Poor Indians, far from their homeland and deprived of basic facilities, can’t pose a threat to the powerful, right? So the British Government thought. “But the Indians gave more than had been expected…” Mahatma Gandhi wrote in his autobiography. “They grew large quantities of vegetables. They introduced a number of Indian varieties and made it possible to grow the local varieties cheaper.” And, according to the conditions of the agreement, after 5 years these farmers became wealthy landowners. Alarmed, the British Gove...

Even in prison Nelson Mandela stuck to his physical exercise as he revealed in many interviews. We, on the other hand, spin up excuses to skip exercising: There’re no tools The environment is unsuitable Stress already fills our hours And you know you can add. But if we compare our circumstances with that which stood against Mandela in that prison? Our excuses aren't even flimsy. Turns out, all our excuses for not exercising are due mainly to our laziness, our lack of commitment. Yeah, I know it hits you on your face. But nothing can be truer than this statement: 9 times out of 10, we forge unreal excuses to run away from physical workouts. You might say that Mandela took to exercise because in the prison one hardly has a hectic to-do list to go about. Even if this was true for Mandela, then the emotional trauma heaped upon him quite outweighed the ease of free time. If we know that exercise is of prime consequence, then we have to make space for it. This m...

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. Rumi You can’t predict what work will get popular like crazy and what work is going to wither away unnoticed. So isn’t it a smarter approach to work thoroughly and then be brave enough to go ahead with its release? Apple's Steve Jobs said, “Real artists ship.” We can find the wisdom of this sentiment in the works of Michael Angelo. Angelo composed hundreds of paintings of which only a handful earned great popularity. It was those few paintings that forced Angelo rise to those meteoric heights. There’re folks who want to write their dream book or blog, and they even make efforts in that direction: Gathering relevant data and sifting through the pile of technical details. But when it comes to actually organising all that information and keeping it forth for public scrutiny? They invent clever excuses to put it off. Having wandered in the same territories, I know that these excu...