Success, anybody?

Have you ever taken the time to seriously think about what it is that makes people successful? I mean, look around you... there are scores of people who have really made it big; and I'm often left deriving this equation that would tell me what I would have to have, and in what measure, to be like any of them. Then, all that would remain is to get those variables in those proportions, et voila!

Is it that they are great at what they do? Is it their personality? Or is it just plain luck... you know, being in the right place at the right time? If it is luck, then I must be as successful as they get, cos I have been very lucky in my life. But I get the feeling it is more than that.

Take the example of Shah Rukh Khan. I mean look at the guy. I can't be sure if it is the pitiable state of the Bollywood movie goers, who have not crossed a mental age of five, or the fact that every year there is a new batch of girls that go into junior college and have nothing to do while they bunk lectures. Whatever it is, and however hard I try, I can't seem to figure out what it is that makes the guy click. He looks terrible, at best. His acting skills are definitely lacking. Now I don't know much about the field, but the least I expect is that he play a different role in atleast some of his movies. He claims to "become the person" he is playing, but it looks to me like he makes the character more like himself. Would you ever imagine Asoka, Emperor Ashoka no less, telling his mother that she is the most < enter appropriate word for sexy from that era > woman he knows. Doesn't this sound terribly like a similar dialogue in 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai'! His physique is nowhere close to perfect and his personality about as engaging as Siraskar's lectures on mechanical engineering! (Now I know that's a terrible analogy since many of you may not have heard him talk, but I could think of nothing less engaging... other than Shah Rukh Khan of course.) The point I am trying to make here, is that the guy rules over an industry where all the things that I stated above count for a lot.

And he's not the only example. There are many more, and closer to our lives... people who you would least expect... people at work who barely know what they are doing, the most popular guy in class, the girl who gets all the attention. The only common thing I can see is that they can keep a crowd hooked on to them. Yes, even Shah Rukh Khan can do that, for there're thousands of people out there, just like me, who keep watching him, just to find out how people can love such a goon.

So basically, the answer to being successful, which pretty much boils down to being popular (cos there are very few people who are successful without being popular first), lies in being mediocre at what you do and awesome at entertaining people.

Why I Started Blogging...

This post is dedicated to all those people who are wondering what happened to all my tall claims of never starting a blog.

A blog to me was this mechanism through which a large population of highly uncreative people could act "cool" and bore the s*** out of the rest of the world. Of course there were some who were entertaining, but on the whole it seemed to me like those ugly, smiley-faced, plastic rings that teenage girls started wearing soon after 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' was released.

But all that changed over the past two days when I realized something terrible had started happening to me. I was asked to write three separate documents at different points in time: a personal history statement, a technical description of a device driver I have written and a script for a play. On all three occasions, I could not get myself to write beyond four sentences, and I realized that my creativity (as well as any little skill in writing I might have had until now) had reached its all time low.

And then my boyfriend told me something about writing being the only art that must be learnt by wrote. I briefly contemplated on going back to keeping a diary, but I figured that would turn into one of my starting-to-exercise-regularly attempts, not lasting longer than a week. So I thought, while I'm getting my daily (or at least weekly) writing practise, I might as well enlighten you poor, lost souls who seem to have very little to do at the moment, with some gyaan that I have gained through the very enriching experiences I have had in my life.

Well, at least if I start blogging, I might have *some* amount of incentive to write a little better each day. Here goes nothing!