Viswanathan Anand - the profound genius!

I am inspired to write this blog post today because yesterday this genius - Viswanathan Anand, has defended his World Chess title for the fifth time (and fourth time in a row) since 2007! That's miles ahead of being spectacular. It's what Neil from 'How I Met Your Mother' would call it - Legen....dary!! And yet he's not as renowned in our country as he deserves to be. 

As we all know, Google searches are location/country specific and the results vary across regions. I stumbled upon this array of astonishing facts when I went to Google search on my computer. I punched in the following letters for eminent people in our country and this is what i found :

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I was exhilarated with Viswanathan’s achievement yesterday, and hence I punched his name first and pressed enter. I was shocked to look at the result. The first post from Places in India (highlighted below) is from a news channel - NDTV, and it's headline says, "Who is Viswanathan Anand"(highlighted above). That is one of the leading news channels in the country and their headline just depicts how ignorant we are about the greatest sportsperson our country possesses today (with all due respect to Sachin Tendulkar). He has carried the torch of India single handedly in the World Chess arena and has not let the fire perish until today.

Then I thought to myself, let’s give others a try; so I typed in just 3 letters to search for Sachin Tendulkar - the Demi-God of Indian as well as World cricket. And I need not enlist here the pages that I saw on the Google search page, because he needs no introduction in India.

Trust me, it gets better...

This time i had to punch in just 2 letter to search for Kareena Kapoor - an actress in Bollywood again, who belongs to a star-studded family and who is surprisingly famous even though she can get an Oscar for being unfit to act. But regardless of her acting skills she is well known to people residing in the remotest of the villages in our country.

So why don’t we know the guy who earned India such great respect globally in his sport and has been consistently doing it for so many years? Why don’t we know the guy who became India’s first grandmaster in 1987, 24 years ago? Why are we not aware of the person who was the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honour? If we worship cricket and its demi-gods, why do we not worship the guy who was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, making him the first sportsperson to receive the award in Indian history?

I think he deserves every bit of our attention and every bit of glamour that our cricketers get for contributing far much lesser than him. I think it’s high time we divert our attention to other sportspersons in our country who have given a lot more to our country than fame, such as Viswanathan himself, Saina Nehwal, Vijender Singh, Mary Kom, etc., don’t you think? And I am sure there are many more unnoticed people who have devoted their life to earn respect for our country. I’ll try to write about as many of them as possible in the future - just a small way of acknowledging their achievements!

Friends are Relatives you make for yourself

Friends are people in our life who are connected to us not by blood, but by soul. God doesn’t really give us a choice in the blood relations we have (mother, father, and the rest of the family), but we do have all the liberty of making friends and choosing them for ourselves. We get closer to them with complete cognizance and, in most cases, have a choice in the friends we want to hold on to. It’s also a popular belief that you’re judged by the friends you possess.

Everyone has friends, who are acquaintances, supporters, admirers and so on. But all of us have a few(or may be one) who are the closest to us. We call them our best friends and we preserve them as a witness to our life. We share secrets with them, love to hang out with them, enjoy their company. These are people who make our life worth living. Unfortunately, for many of us, our best friends keep changing over the course of time. We find new friends, we move on. But even though the person changes, the feeling in our heart for that one/few friends remains the same.

All animals, including humans, share a deep bond with their friends. All of us have memories with our friends, and these memories make our life worth living. It’s one gift that god leaves upon us to choose for ourselves.

Even I have a best friend, and I felt I must write a post to let her know how lucky I am to have her. Not every day we find people in our lives whom we wish to hold on to for long. Things might change in the future, situations might change, but she is someone who I’ll always remember as the one who helped me be who I am today. Our friends do influence our lives in magical ways, without us realizing. And the memories we share with these friends are something that defines us. I dedicate this blog post to you, and I earnestly wish we go on being the best buds forever. 

I know everyone who reads this post also has a person(s) in his/her mind right now. I would request you to go to that person(s) and tell him/her what he/she means to you. It’ll just strengthen your friendship - the best gift god gives us after our family!

It's now time to make a change...

By change, i mean a change in our society, in our country, and most importantly in our thoughts! We are all proud of being Indians, but if we're asked to write down 10 good things happening in our country and 20 bad things, i think the latter would be much easier for most of us. It's not that our country or the people are all that bad; it’s just that we listen and see only what we want to. We blame our politicians who are inept of uplifting our country, we blame the media for being largely biased and for practicing lobbyism, we blame our policemen for being lethargic and corrupt, we blame everyone around but us. This attitude needs to change.

Change does not happen in a blink, or not even in a fortnight, it's gradual. We need to change our way of thinking. What our country and we as individuals need today is to get a perspective. We need to be open to change and be more optimistic. I agree our politicians are not performing at their best, but there are many other people who devote their lives to causes that no-one even cares to bother about. We should bring such people to limelight and speak positively about them, instead of cribbing about the inefficiencies of our politicians and their pack of people. It's the negativity in our minds and hearts that's being vented out, and that's the obstacle on our path of development.

We blame the people outside our country to be more interested in our poor people than in our achievements, but are we ourselves aware of our current achievements? Do we even know about the thousands of people working in remote areas for the welfare of other fellow underprivileged citizens, away from the paparazzi? I believe, we should emphasize more on the noble deeds of such devoted people than on the actus reus of our government/media. We should recognize the exemplary deeds of today's heroes and spread their positivity.

Watch your thoughts for they become words. 

Watch your words for they become actions. 

Watch your actions for they become... habits. 

Watch your habits, for they become your character. 

And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny! 

What we think we become. 

-- Quote from the movie - 'The Iron Lady'(Margaret Thatcher)

If we think positive, we can change our destiny. It's what we think and what we believe that defines us. Great revolutions are caused by people who have the optimism to bring about a change. It's a positive thought that has the power to revolutionize, not a negative one. If we want to see our country and our people shine, we need to shed our pessimism and embrace optimism. As Aristotle said - "Hope is the dream of a waking man"! Hope is all we've got.