But yesterday when I had the pleasure of watching the concert “Hell Freezes Over” it was a different experience altogether listening to “The New York Minute”.

I have heard “The New York Minute” many times but when you watch them create music, the experience cannot be expressed in words, the intensity on Don Henley’s face simply puts life in to the performance.

Don Henley describes the song as “The song about appreciating what you have”, his words made me think about my philosophy of life, do I have one? Do I want one? Why do I need to have philosophy to live?

While I find answers to my questions, for those who have not had the pleasure yet, make an effort to listen to the song. I am sure you will have to answer some of your own questions.

Watch the video
While you read the lyrics

After playing a rigorous day and night match with my work for a few days, I was feeling very uneasy reaching home early and lying on my bed sleepless. So tossing and turning for about half an hour I finally decided to have some stress buster.

So here is my treat. Remember in my previous blog “Hard boiled in 48 hours” I mentioned an incident about finding a 50 rupee note lying on road. The story is like this.

One fine day, during my post graduation, I the Jakie Singh and my friend the Tommy Singh were coming home from our college. For some reason while crossing the busy road I was looking down instead of looking at the traffic, and suddenly I found a fifty rupee note lying there.

I called to my friend and showed it to her, after a brief discussion we quietly looked around and picked it up. During those days 50 rupee was a big amount for students like us, which means we can come and go to college for 5 days or have a feast of egg and bread in our breakfast for at least next few days. But our conscious was never in favor of us.

Suddenly I remembered an incident, when my father have found 5 rupee coin lying on road a few years ago and what I remembered specially was that, my mother made him donate the money in a temple, but not until he bought a 10 rupee Prasad along with it. She had a superstitious that if we keep the money that we have picked up lying like that, then some how double of that money will roll out of our pocket and yet it was true. My father did spend double the money of course in buying Prasad.

I shared this with my friend and she said that if we cannot keep that money or spend it on us, then what do we do. We cannot give it in mandir, because then the pandas will feast on that. The next option was to give it to a poor person, who was needy, so we kept the money only to give it away until we find an optimal person.

Now the search begins, every day when we were set for our college we both use to look for that chosen one. But no luck for a few days, one day when we were on our way back from our college, we found a very old lady who covered her self with rags or it was polyethylene, I do not remember properly.

So we the Jakie Singh and the Tommy Singh, were very convinced that she was the chosen one and she will be very happy to get the money, we approached her without any hesitation and offered her the money. Which she refused, but not before being angry and abusive, in our next try we offered that if she does not want the money may be we can buy her a piece of cloth, but that was again a mistake.

Shocked with her behavior, I am still in mystery, that why she turned down our offer, self respect?? May be!

But the story did not end here, next day when we were on our way back it was raining and we had to take shelter under one of the corridors of a go down, that day we saw a young chap, he was teaching a bunch of kids who use to reside in a near by slum, The idea to use the money there clicked both of us, so we bought a dozen of each notebooks, pencils and sharpeners and then the thought came in mind that if we buy the alphabet charts then it will be easy for the kids to learn, then we thought that the kids may be hungry and we should buy some biscuits and chocolates for them and finally ended up spending exactly double the amount that we have picked up, so my mother was correct, AGAIN!

While we were happy that we successfully completed our mission but we learned a good lesson, hence the moral of the story: Spend all the money as soon as you pick it up.

Ps: This is to the Tommy Singh, Microsoft Word behaves strangely, when ever I write “Jakie” it displays a red underline, but not when I type “Tommy”, HENCED PROOVED, that Tommy is an affiliated dog by Microsoft Word,

But I wonder, a noun is a noun, so! why be partial to any name, if BILL GATES, happens to read this blog, then its my humble request to him that please affiliate “Jakie” too, I am feeling a bit left out.

After 48 hours of continuous sweating I was inspired from the bottom of my heart to write this post (Stress buster, obviously!). I hope that my writing reflects the frustration through which I have been in past two days. I wonder is this global warming or just because I stay at the top floor I am feeling so hot.

The mercury is at constant 45 degrees and the Sun God has never shined like it has started shining now a days. After a long duration I was suppose to spend the two days of my weekend in peace, but it was just another expectation that didn’t get fulfill, the time seemed to have just stopped and I felt I was standing on the bridge of the Steel Rolling mill forever. Beads of sweat never stopped appearing on my skin I felt like thousands of fountains of salt water were springing out of my body squeezing out the essential fluid and minerals similar to the hot water fountain in Yellow Stone Park.

Added to the agony was the factor that there was no electricity most of the time. I asked myself how people use to live earlier when there was actually no electricity, which is the basic necessity of human being (at least who are living in the urban area). To this I logically answered myself that the people at that time were not facing the problems like global warming and pollution, but! even though we are at the verge of getting perished due to all these factors how many of us are actually thinking of doing something related to this topic (leave apart the drawing competitions that are held for creating awareness in children) and how many of us are actually aware of the real causes of these problems.

While I was logically trying to convince myself, I was passing through a street that has shops at its both the sides and overheard one of the shopkeepers say that there are still 1800 villages in India that do not have electricity. I was ashamed even to feel agonized because you only know the value of a thing when the thing is not for you to have. How mean I can be that the moment electricity is gone I start cursing the electricity board, the government, the sun for being hot, for the rain not pouring and for every thing else that is not according to my convenience I started cursing.

Every one whom I was meeting since yesterday just had one topic to talk about “Oh! it’s so hot”, when the fan was working; I was thinking its throwing hot air when there was not electricity I was almost down on my knees and begging to God. “Hey! bhagwan please light aajeye, pankha chalega to itni garmi to nahi lagegi”. I even know when it will start raining and I will have to get wet every now and then, I will be the first one to complaint, similar will be the case when it would be winters, I will pray “Oh God! Let there be a little sunshine”, after all I am a dissatisfied human, every body is, but days pass by and life goes on (and I still keep on postponing the high priority work until they become the highest priority).

Well with the mercury at its highest, how can I forget to say some thing about the daily life in Delhi and the default arrogance of an average delhite.

This is trivial even to notice, but the question that I want to ask is, if you have been in my position what you might have done?

I went to the local vegetable vendor after my routine evening walk and the moment I reached there, a fifty rupee note slipped and fell on the ground, it belonged to a lady (Who was very well dressed and educated looking) standing there, she motioned her hand indicating me to pick it up for her (which was rude) because even if she wouldn’t have made that rude gesture, I would have picked up the currency for her, in any case I picked it up and returned it to her. She took it from me without even looking at me, leave alone smiling or saying thank you (which was ruder).

While I had finished buying the vegetables and standing in the queue to pay for the stuff I have bought I overheard the conversation between the same lady and the vegetable vendor (I know I have started overhearing too much “Par ab sunai de deta hai to kya kareein”). She was ordering him to get the stuff that she has bought to be delivered by one of the shop boys to her house. The vegetable vendor said that no one is currently free and he could not engage any one to do that. So the lady gave a logic that I have bought stuff of rupee 100/- from you and hence you have to get the stuff delivered to my house. I bet she won’t go to a hip showroom and argue with the staff there in the same manner because that would be out of the status protocol. But just because the vegetable vendor owns a small business does not mean that there is no protocol for behavior.

Hence my conclusion, wearing branded clothes and moving around does not makes you educated, cultured or of any stature. So the next time I talk about the same lady she would just be a well dressed, going to attend kitty party, enjoying the money and status that husband had bought home, kind of person, who is of no value to me.

This whole episode reminds me of two more incidents one that occurred in DTC bus and the other one when me and my friend found a fifty rupee note lying on the road back in our post graduation days. But I guess that will require a whole new post.

Well! Mean while the heat is still on and once again I am on my knees praying for a little relief form the heat.

PS: One insightful advice that I would like to give (to take it or not is up to you) is that “Please keep your cool, because when u loose the cool you become a fool”. You don’t believe me then ask the PANKASS.