I wish I could….

A few days back, I had this extremely animated discussion with a couple of my close colleagues (they are a wonderful couple and are a dear family friend of mine). The discussion started casually with me stating that I will have my baby do all those things which I couldn’t do in my life(Just to add some drama to the discussion, I also pointed out the scene from DDLJ where Anupam Kher tells SRK ki ja agar tu apni jawani se uub gaya hai to meri jawani jeekar aa!). Quoting a quote I said ‘Men regret those mistakes which they did not commit when they had the opportunity!’ Dwelling deeper into specifics, I mentioned that I may not have had enjoyed the earlier years of my life as much as I could have had OR rather I should have had. I felt that I took life too seriously (from school time to college life to pre marriage days) and that I missed out on many ‘kool’ things which characterize a typical adolescence/juvenile life. As a counter argument, I was reminded by my friends that I may not have come so far in my life (careerwise so to speak) if I had committed all those mistakes which I regret not committing now. To a great extent I agreed with them and drew a conclusion that may be I was not given a choice in the first place to explore a little wilder side of my life. I mean I don’t really regret for it now in the sense that I am enjoying my life to the fullest now, I have a wonderful life, a beautiful son and a wife(in that order that is !!), I indulge in rash driving occasionally(so what if it’s an 800 cc car, I can still derive the same devil pleasure from it you see!), I have been to some of the best places in the world(courtesy company deputations) and I own some of the mean gadgets which I take pride in. But then, we are missing a point here - I started having all these worldly pleasures(I am not that hedonistic by the way, this is all just for the argument sake!) when I was around 25 or 26. What happened to the golden period of one’s life called adolescence and the start of youth(14 to 24 years), wouldn’t it have been great if I had a few of the above fun during this time frame(substituting wife/kid with a couple of girlfriends if I am allowed to be little naughtier here!!). There is no harm I feel if we accept a few hard facts of life, I just wanted to confront them which I did in the above discussion with my couple friend and thought to share it here in the blog.

A few days later, I came across an interesting thing – an interview with SRK by some news magazine. I have reproduced the relevant part here. It kind of vindicated my stand that I did miss out something in my life.

But hey that’s life. Infact if given an opportunity, I would like to be reborn with exactly same parameters of my life as I have them now - not a single variable varied in anyway!

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SRK....."In some strange way, all that I've done in the last 17-18 years through my work is to speak to the youngsters. I've never spoken to anyone else because I understand their language and emotions. I've been a youngster who's had to grow up too fast because of the (early) death of my parents. I missed out on my youth. At the age of 16, I lost my dad. By 20-21, I had to start getting more responsible than I should have been. By 25, I was completely on my own with a sister to look after. I think I missed on these 10 years where I could have had a chance to be youthfully wild.

I wish I can afford my kids to have a wild youth. When I say wild youth I mean flights of fantasy, have fun. Have no worries. Go wrong because there's a long life in front of you to rectify them. Do things your heart tells you to do, otherwise for the rest of your life you will be doing what your boss tells you to do.
I could never do it. I had to take up a job as an actor and I'm glad I did. I could give a huge speech to youngsters, because I really feel like that. I am re-living my youth now after having achieved a level of comfort where I think I can be on a flight of fantasy.
When I was 34 I said, listen, I am good enough now to go back to being that age between 17 and 27 in my head because I don't have to worry about my future anymore.........."

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What’s there in a name..!

Shakespeare didn’t have an iota of idea about the importance of a ‘name’ when he wrote the above. Well, no offence meant to the legend but I realize how important it is to have a good name for anything and everything – animate to inanimate objects in today’s politically correct world, well so to speak.
Since the time baby arrived, I was shouldered with the task of finding a good name for him. Just to give a little background here – I was expecting a baby girl all along (oh I am crazy for a baby girl but seems God had different plans) and had thought of several good names, really sweet names but all for a baby girl. Some of them I can recall being Riya, Risha, Aanchal, Kangana, Palak, Mahak, Khushboo and a few more. Now when a baby boy arrived instead, all my calculations went for a toss literally. So there I was – looking real bad for a good name. So how do you define a good name in 21st century(I have to mention this as my own name really belongs to some historical/mythological time you see!) - A good name for me is one which should be short, sweet, easy to pronounce (even in phoren land!) and last but not least – should be unique. A few names which were doing the round but extremely common were Aditya(god knows whats with this name, every second child had this name), Adi, Adwait and many more starting with the letter ‘A’. I didn’t like any of them. So now its almost 3 weeks since the baby’s birth with no good names in sight. Some of them which we could dig out were good but not really good! To mention a few- Rishabh(short, sweet but common place), Yash(very royal but again a little too common), Rajat (an old name), Shourya(unique but little old fashioned) and finally Arjun (there was almost near unanimity for this name but somehow I was not too sure about the fashion quotient of this name when my baby turns say 20- Imagine him with the name Arjunsingh wald Devendrasingh Rathor in 2025 A.D.- infact it might turn out to be a BIG turnoff for all his prospective girl friends!!). Alright , so now its one month now and still no name being finalized.
A few months back I had my life insurance done from a local LIC agent. He is a good person by heart (infact he is the only one who religiously keeps track of all the important dates of my life be it my b’day, anniversary and so on and makes it a point to wish me on all such occasions without fail!). I just happened to run into him when he related a story as to how one of his couple client named Tanuja and Manish named their child ‘Tanish’ which is an interesting combination of their individual names(just like Raveena is derived from Ravi and Veena). I kind of instantly liked the name for some reason. It was short, sweet, unique, easy to pronounce and stylish as well, so basically meeting all my CTQs(that’s Critical to Quality for the uninitiated). I bid him good bye but the name had got etched into my sub conscious. Back at home, I told this name to Sonu and everyone else and after a little bit of canvassing, got a complete unanimity on the name. And so the name game was atlast done with but really had all of us wondering ‘Whats there in a name after all!!’