The Alien Franchise...

"yada yada hi dharmasya
glanir bhavati bharata
abhyutthanam adharmasya
tadatmanam srjamy aham"

Is what Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavat geeta which means “Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion--at that time I descend Myself” thus giving the Mankind a hope and assurance against anarchy. Almost all the faiths around the world function around an imaginary power they call ‘God’, ‘Messaih’, ‘Prophet’,’Guru’ etc. to create ,protect and destroy mankind. I am sure I would not alone when I hoped my Math paper or a bad code review or at least my performance appraisal would qualify as this rise of irreligion for the God to hit the restart button to life. I am proud of myself for not giving up hope even if there were minor setbacks in my expectations so far.

Not so long ago I came across an interesting article that there are theories furnishing that the Earth was invaded by the aliens not recently but around thousands of years ago who are now being worshipped as Gods by the mankind. The author of the article noticed an interesting behavior from an African tribe which sparked his interest in the research about the subject. During the first world war, the Allies were supposed to have stationed themselves in a remote African tribal village to enable a more clandestine war and accessed the land by special aircrafts which brought in all the necessary food and groceries. Some of them were even shared with the natives who were in awe of the people needless to mention all the modern equipment they never knew of. The soldiers moved on to their homelands after the war while one of them returned after a couple of years to check on a friend he had made during those years. He noticed things had changed in the village and people were more religious now that they had a God. He saw that the villagers were worshipping a wooden aircraft structure at the spot where the aircraft carrying the food used to land during the war with a hope that one day the God would bring them the food as he did during the war. The more I think about this the more sense it makes and the more scary our world looks.

What if our Gods really were Aliens who had advanced technology which we never knew existed when they came to the earth? They had a spaceship we call pushpaka Vimana, a glowing weapon we call Vajrayudha, a leaders who had four heads or someone who could play melodious flute that mesmerized people around him or who had a swirling weapon we called Vishnu Chakra? That would make the Prophets /Gurus of the present day ordinary folks who could just ape the aliens in some way thus revered as Gods. What if the story of the tribal village applies to all the mankind? What if the aliens who formed a solid subject to numerous Hollywood and some very bad bollywood movies were not just visitors to earth but a center of the faith system to the entire Earth? Scary huh?

If this were to be true, all hell would break lose. I use the word Hell for the lack of any other word as this would also cease to exist if there were no heaven where the Gods (who don’t exist) live. Then let’s just say All Planet X would break lose assuming the Aliens live on Planet Y. Religion which is an integral part of our lives would be just a joke as they would just refer to an alien creature we thought was God. I could not help but imagine how ridiculous we would look to worship Lord Rama or Goddess Durga if they turned out to be aliens. And the hymns we sing in their praise would be an exponential of the ludicrosity.

On the flipside, it appears to be such an efficient way of bringing order to an anarchy if that's what the Earth was when the Aliens first visited her. If all this is true, then kudos to them for having established their franchise so competent and foolproof in product strategy which custom delivered the form of God, in marketing strategy which invented a form for the earthlings to base their faith up on, and in sales strategy which proliferated the entire planet that it survived thousands of years without a shred of competition. I wonder if the earth was just a project they had to finish to graduate and forgot to ctrl+z it. We would never know. But it sure lays down the perfect Business Sutra to the so called top business schools that churn out the so called cream of the business professionals in this world or should I say on this planet. Harvard, Stanford can you beat it?

Of all the things....

Have you ever wished for a magic potion for Happiness? One which can save you from this eternal roller coaster of emotions? I have been thinking about it lately and realize that it’s not a bad thing to ask for at all if God makes an appearance to me one day. But then again who will remember to ask for a nonexistent potion when there are countless other tangible things you would rather ask Him? Anyway back to the issue at hand. I am sure we have at some point or phase in life asked around for a prescription to happiness in life. Apparently no one has got one or it would have made someone ridiculously rich with a patent.

I would not be completely wrong if I said that the extent of our happiness is often a function of success. The more success we get in life the happier we are or so we think. So what does it take to succeed? Somehow the adage ‘Where there is a will there is a way’ doesn’t always make sense to me. I would say the equation of success is not often a simple expression of will and hard work. There is a hidden variable called Emotions which decides whether the equation equals Success or not. We all agree that when there is a conflict between the heart and mind, it is seldom that mind behaves rationally. I speak for matters other than life and death because then your mind generally puts you in an auto mode giving you only necessary instructions to get through the crisis. But chasing your dream of getting into that top business school, making it big in the career etc. are some things in life though not critical but very taxing because of the sheer effort they demand from us and here I would say we bring them into our lives by choice. Everyone tells us the ways to success but what they don’t tell you is how long the road is and how tedious the journey is. Sometimes on this road you don’t even see a sign saying Way to success until your feet are blistered and you are completely sapped out ready to take the first cab out.

At the end of the day no matter how many successful people we idolize and no matter how many adages we memorize about winning, nothing prepares us for the real test. We all have a prompt home delivery of a personalized question paper called life everyday to solve with only free advices and our own past experiences to count on. Not very promising stationery to take on the paper I would say.
Surprisingly enough we often link our precious happiness to the outcome of this test. Wouldn’t it be great if happiness was an independent function? Something which we could get in small quantities at intervals to keep us going. That brings us back to the magic potion we wished for in the beginning. With all the brainstorming I have been doing these days to cope up with my journey to have a career in the United States for over a year now, I have discovered the two most important things you ought to have in your life in order for you to be even sane to enjoy the success when it finally comes your way.

The first ingredient to our magic potion is Hope. Hope, to hold your hand when you are down and out and to give you a new reason to wake up the next morning.
The second and the most important one is Patience. Patience to not give up when things go haywire. Patience to still love the destination when all the paths leading to it are under maintenance. Easier said than done right?

I would say if we can trick ourselves in to believing that we are actually happy, a little attitude adjustment is a very small price to pay for this magic potion. It would not hurt to try something which can help us bounce back after a setback and not to look for that cab when the destination is just around the corner. On this long road to success and hence happiness, let patience make us strong to wait for tomorrow and let hope make tomorrow worth waking up for. Till then let’s just say When the going gets tough, the patient and the hopeful get going…