1 - War against North Indians:

It is a mere coincident that MNS chief and his cadres had opened up the first surprise wrap for me. That was my first day in the city and the MNS workers had gone amuck ransacking the localities dense with North-Indians and beat mercilessly the poor rick guys and the daily wagers; rest all were NEWS headlines in all channels and are not unknown to anyone. The buzz in the air was the next target of the MNS folks were the IT people from North India. This was quite embarrassing (scary to be very honest) and had forced me to be cocooned in the hotel suit and be glued to the news channel to keep a tab on the vandalism. Finally the suspense and the tension got over after 3 days and I had a sigh of relief to return to my old city.

2 - Getting a rented house:

Before I disclose the second surprise, let me tell you all that I follow Islam as my religion; and believe me I am neither an iconoclast nor a Jihadi with a terrorist look, rather I am just another middle class guy with a next-door-neighbor look. However, my (notion) firm belief of living in a secular country got a severe jolt when I had been turned down by 12 house owners to rent out their house to me; the reason: I am a Muslim. Fortunately there are no proprietary religious stamps on our currency notes, else I might have been denied of food as well in this city.

The rest of the surprises will follow shortly in my next blog

When I was a young boy, I used to dream a lot; dream about going to beautiful places, places as beautiful as they are found as paintings on the wall of an elite class hotel, meeting new people, embracing new cultures. This dream had fascinated me so much that I had decided to study well and get settled in such one beautiful foreign land. But life was quite ruthless to me never giving an opportunity to materialize my dream until sometime back.

Likely it was destined; my current job as an IT manager takes me to different parts of the world, relish the beauty of nature, meet different people and embrace their cultures. My dreams have been fulfilled now, but still I am not happy, there is an emptiness somewhere in the fathom of my mind. I ask myself - why am I not happy? While ransacking my soul to find the answer I ask many more questions to me.

The last couple of days I have been attending an expensive training sponsored by my employer to improve my performance. The gyaan-rich training has added more questions to my mind rather than answering a few of mine. I ask myself, 'Am i doing at my workplace what I like the most to do?' 'Is it what I had dreamt of doing when I was that young boy with those dreamy eyes?' I keep quiet....I feel that I am entangled in a war between brain and mind. There are so many such questions which i am asking myself every other minute, but the one question 'Why I am not happy' has been haunting me every moment of my life.

While doing repetitive soul searching to find an answer, I realized that I have found the answer. I am not happy today because I have stopped dreaming....

When I log off today after writing this blog, I will close my eyes with a hope that I will DREAM again..